What Neuralink is missing (it turns out that connecting brains with computers is the easy part)
What Neuralink is missing (it turns out that connecting brains with computers is the easy part)
It turns out that connecting brains with computers is the easy part.
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After reading the article it makes me think how much of human advancement has been in the service of vice. Home video recorders took off when home video porn became available. Both high speed NASCAR auto racing and high performance jet boats owe their existence to illegal liquor and cigarette smuggling. The internet is another beneficiary of ubiquitous porn.
While fraught with ethical questions, there's a vice based path for Neuralink link BCI technology: Replacement for narcotics.
Instead of the difficult task of replacing sight, motor function, or other complicated bi-directional systems, how hard would it be to simply electrically stimulate dopamine release in the brain? At its extreme, you press a button and you feel like you've taken a huge dose of cocaine or heroin except without all of the nasty cardiac or digestive system impacts. Also, the effects stop in the matter of minutes, and at the command of the user. No more driving while intoxicated. You just turn off the electrical current simulating the intoxicant and you have your full facilities available to you.
Should these companies be developing their technology as drug and alcohol addiction recovery systems?
This path would be without problems of its own. This technology itself would be crazy crazy additive! This is explore in fiction including by Sci-Fi author Larry Niven. He calls his a droud, and describes some of the downsides of a society that could choose to feel good whenever they want with no monetary cost or limits
Instead of the difficult task of replacing sight, motor function, or other complicated bi-directional systems, how hard would it be to simply electrically stimulate dopamine release in the brain? At its extreme, you press a button and you feel like you’ve taken a huge dose of cocaine or heroin
Easy. Been done lots of times with rats and I imagine that must be hard with those tiny brains. Brain surgery on humans must be much easier, but they are not allowed to press their own buttons. You know, ethics.
Rats will perform lever-pressing at rates of several thousand responses per hour for days in exchange for direct electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus. Multiple studies have demonstrated that rats will perform reinforced behaviors at the exclusion of all other behaviors. Experiments have shown rats will forgo food to the point of starvation in exchange for brain stimulation or intravenous cocaine when both food and stimulation are offered concurrently for a limited time each day. Rats will also cross electrified grids to press a lever, and they are willing to withstand higher levels of shock to obtain electrical stimulation than to obtain food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward
The lesson here is that only the pursuit of porn drives ethical, sustainable progress.
I think you have it backwards, human brains are bigger and thus more complicated, so I think much more complicated to do the same things as in mice. Thats why we "practice" on mice
Elephants have much bigger brains than humans. That doesn't necessarily mean they are more complicated. Maybe they are, but elephants are obviously not able to do, intellectually, nearly as much as humans. Generally, brain size scales with body size. Humans are unusual in that we have brains that are much too big for our bodies.
Structurally, our brains are like those of other mammals. What makes them too big for our bodies is the cerebral cortex. Now, I don't want to mislead anyone by appearing too confident. So let me say that this was pretty much the extent of my knowledge on comparative brain anatomy. I believe that the structures one is aiming for here, are simply larger in larger animals. Besides, when operating on a human, you can always ask them how they feel when you apply a current to a part of their brain to make sure you got the right bit. Standard practice, actually.
Ah sweet! Braindances from Cyberpunk 2077!
Simulated acid high? SIGN ME UP.
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Or they use the addictive qualities to make workers behave. "Work a 30-hour shift, then the pain stops."
That's the 1984 version, perhaps.
I'd posit the Brave New World version is
"It keeps buzzing your brain into doing your stupid task until the 30 hour shift is up, but don't worry, you get sweet dopamine hits and painkillers the whole time and aren't sure why this is so enjoyable! The pleasure-task curve is perfectly computed. You're not even sure how long it's been. There's a momentary sadness when you witness a fellow worker just convulse and drop like a sack of rocks. This work feels so important though! You can understand their dedication."
The vcr porn thing is a myth fwiw