Anything that's being shown has already been done by government black ops a long time ago. This is basically just declassification. The people in power have no ethics or morality that would hold them back, especially after MKUltra stuff which was decades ago.
Given they've chucked rat brains into little brain-in-a-jar vehicles (highly informative: The rats slowly go insane and then quickly die), anything involving minor computer hook-ups is FAR on the side of "been done before". Scientists have moved one person's arm using another person's brain, just by crossing the signals. A Raspberry Pi board reinterpreting visual stimuli is pretty basic.
On the OTHER hand, with AI learning, Vtuber tech, optical implants, and a tactile/haptic override at the brain stem, it is soon 100% possible for a person to perceive a catgirl as existing IRL, and interact with her. So in a way, Elon is now making his promise of making catgirls come true.
Yes, that is the stuff they are doing publicly. How many secret labs do you think exist? We really don't know, but that is where any real experimentation is being done. We all know that very little actual science happens in the Universities. After something has proven to be effective in a black lab they would greenlight people to research "clean" versions of it in public.
This will always be a basic bitch kinda thing. Think garage door opener instead of cybernetic implant from a movie. We can create fake eyes that will interface with the brain, but it won't work for long and once the body adapts to it, will never be able to work again. The problem is that we can't introduce functional foreign bodies without our immune system attacking it or our cells breaking down at the point of contact. We would do better to develop artificial living tissue rather than interfaces for our existing tech.
I think the biological route is also the more ideal one when we go into immortality/extra long life kind of territory. The makeup of biological life is just far more adaptable and robust, self-sustainable, and just more efficient in general.
The main reason mechanical means are appealing is the same reason why it's sometimes challenging to work through manipulating biology: It's easier to engineer a machine to follow programmable code than it is to get cells to do what you want them to do. It's also a lot more difficult to reverse engineer something so complex that wasn't exactly designed so much as built up through eons of adaptation and mutation.
If and when we manage to unlock those many missing pages in the blueprint/manual though, there's a lot of possibilities we might have available. And not all of them are stereotypical science fiction nightmares.
You forget that DARPA and other more shady organizations have been researching into this for at least a decade already.
Not that I'm saying I necessarily trust Musk, but even if he ends up being the front man pushing a nefarious product, he's certainly not the genius that came up with the idea nor is he likely the one pulling the strings.
I wonder when the first Neuralink viruses make their rounds and malware consumers' passwords and private information right out of their heads. Browsing data sells for boatloads, so what about thinking data?
Decades sounds optimistic to me. I'll grant that specific information held in neural networks, like passwords, would be tricky compared with what's currently possible, but if these devices can read appetite... then what about attention, mood, sleep patterns? What about associations, like emotional responses associated with stimuli like political messages? Out of the gate, I bet data from these devices would be considered valuable.
More likely, track a person's media habits and their stress levels/seratonin. Determine what makes them fear, what makes them consumer product, what allegiances they have, and how they can be broken.
Some poor soul is literally going to start seeing manmade horrors beyond his comprehension.
I hope the They Live app isn't a subscription-only feature.
Anything that's being shown has already been done by government black ops a long time ago. This is basically just declassification. The people in power have no ethics or morality that would hold them back, especially after MKUltra stuff which was decades ago.
Given they've chucked rat brains into little brain-in-a-jar vehicles (highly informative: The rats slowly go insane and then quickly die), anything involving minor computer hook-ups is FAR on the side of "been done before". Scientists have moved one person's arm using another person's brain, just by crossing the signals. A Raspberry Pi board reinterpreting visual stimuli is pretty basic.
On the OTHER hand, with AI learning, Vtuber tech, optical implants, and a tactile/haptic override at the brain stem, it is soon 100% possible for a person to perceive a catgirl as existing IRL, and interact with her. So in a way, Elon is now making his promise of making catgirls come true.
Yes, that is the stuff they are doing publicly. How many secret labs do you think exist? We really don't know, but that is where any real experimentation is being done. We all know that very little actual science happens in the Universities. After something has proven to be effective in a black lab they would greenlight people to research "clean" versions of it in public.
Now with NPC programming & OTA updates.
This will always be a basic bitch kinda thing. Think garage door opener instead of cybernetic implant from a movie. We can create fake eyes that will interface with the brain, but it won't work for long and once the body adapts to it, will never be able to work again. The problem is that we can't introduce functional foreign bodies without our immune system attacking it or our cells breaking down at the point of contact. We would do better to develop artificial living tissue rather than interfaces for our existing tech.
I think the biological route is also the more ideal one when we go into immortality/extra long life kind of territory. The makeup of biological life is just far more adaptable and robust, self-sustainable, and just more efficient in general.
The main reason mechanical means are appealing is the same reason why it's sometimes challenging to work through manipulating biology: It's easier to engineer a machine to follow programmable code than it is to get cells to do what you want them to do. It's also a lot more difficult to reverse engineer something so complex that wasn't exactly designed so much as built up through eons of adaptation and mutation.
If and when we manage to unlock those many missing pages in the blueprint/manual though, there's a lot of possibilities we might have available. And not all of them are stereotypical science fiction nightmares.
Elon's Neuralink is a good reminder to everyone that he isn't /ourguy/. Clearly he's not /theirguy/ but he's certainly not ours.
No thanks
I've seen what high energy batteries can do, I'd rather not have one in my head.
Wait until the first bored Russian kid figures out how to hack these things, Rick Rolls and stupid memes directly into your brain.
Or an explosion.
You forget that DARPA and other more shady organizations have been researching into this for at least a decade already.
Not that I'm saying I necessarily trust Musk, but even if he ends up being the front man pushing a nefarious product, he's certainly not the genius that came up with the idea nor is he likely the one pulling the strings.
I wonder when the first Neuralink viruses make their rounds and malware consumers' passwords and private information right out of their heads. Browsing data sells for boatloads, so what about thinking data?
Decades sounds optimistic to me. I'll grant that specific information held in neural networks, like passwords, would be tricky compared with what's currently possible, but if these devices can read appetite... then what about attention, mood, sleep patterns? What about associations, like emotional responses associated with stimuli like political messages? Out of the gate, I bet data from these devices would be considered valuable.
More likely, track a person's media habits and their stress levels/seratonin. Determine what makes them fear, what makes them consumer product, what allegiances they have, and how they can be broken.
SEL gets the kids and what makes them react in certain ways, this will get the adults psychodata.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Sure, I like the idea of playing something like a Shadowrun rigger. But the only way you're getting a computer in my head is over my cold, dead, body.
In other news: https://archive.is/Pbb75
Oh well, you can't make an omelet without cracking a few monkey brains.