Neuralink’s human trials volunteers ‘should have serious concerns,’ say medical experts
Neuralink's human trials volunteers 'should have serious concerns,' say medical experts
Neuralink’s human trials volunteers ‘should have serious concerns,’ say medical experts::A medical ethics committee responded to Elon Musk's brain-interface startup issuing an open call for patients yesterday.
Yeah, I mean we've been working on brain implants of various stripes for a couple decades now, and they're not the first to attempt motor cortex implants for paralyzed patients as a method to begin human trials, but the current state of the art for brain implants is honestly pretty... primitive. There's no good way to avoid damaging neurons, so it's mainly a focus on not causing too much damage while fine mapping and targeting has to be done on an individual basis.
Implants are hugely useful, and arguably the current state of the art treatment for several conditions (epilepsy and parkinsons), but we're so far out from computer brain interfaces being useful for anything outside of dire medical needs that it's kinda surprising they're pushing ahead when they had so much trouble with their experimental subjects.
I worked in a brain imaging lab in college, and we had a couple of chimpanzees with brain implants that did daily research protocols. Bastards were better than me at the testing regimen, and other than some minor discomfort (water intake is restricted prior to the tests so that the gatorade reward was more attractive), they were large children that could tear your face off if they got angry. Once they got older, they would have surgery to remove the implants and retire to a primate ranch where they just got to live out the rest of their life. All of the grad students there had been working with the same chimps for years, so it's a little alarming Neuralink had so many issues.
It doesn't exactly engender confidence.
What's really sad is hearing how they treated them. Considering how intelligent they are, I find it disgusting that they treated them so bad they all died. It's not worth a bunch of sentient creatures lives to do experiments like this and then just throw them away.
At least your lab was treating them with dignity.
Didn't Neuralink fail animal testing? Something about most of their monkeys dying from the trials? How did this get to human testing?
Kinda like how Elon promised a mars colony by 3 years ago, and his big rocket exploded on its first flight a few months ago.
Or how full self driving has been ready “next year” for the passed 5 years.
Hyperloop was going to revolutionize transportation, by having a train in a vacuum tunnel, and is currently an abandoned tube in the desert.
The boring company was going to create high speed car tunnels under cities, and it’s test track is a 30mph traffic jam, but now underground.
Solar city was going to put solar tiles in place of your shingles and offset your power usage, but the demo musk showed was an actual fraud, and there were no solar panels.
Last but not least, spaceX promised “rapidly reusable rockets” with a 10x decrease in cost to low earth orbit. The fastest turn around they’ve ever had was a month or so, about as long as the space shuttles’ fastest turn around. The falcon 9 still costs between 50 to 60 million per launch, even if it’s a reused booster or not, and the space shuttle was capable of taking crew and cargo/payload at the same time, while the falcon can only take one or the other.
Musk companies have a long history of promising the moon and delivering playground sand. Don’t buy any of his products and don’t fall for his “saving humanity” bullshit. He’s just a conman who’s defrauding investors for billions.
Musk has since come out and all but stated Hyperloop was specifically funded and hyped ONLY to kill mass transit initiatives in the area. It was a total vaporware project, they never intended to solve anything.
To be fair, SpaceX cost of 50-60 million per launch is almost a 10x drop in price, ULA is around 400-500 million per rocket. And since they have next to no competition on price, they have no incentive to lower it. It’s just business.
And don’t bring the broken vehicle the shuttle turned out to be into this. A great vehicle on paper, but with to many cooks. The shuttle era gave us the ISS, but is cost us almost all activity outside of LEO.
There an article in Wired just this week I think about how horrid the experiments on the animal were.
Musk, of course, lied again saying the monkeys were old and going to be euthanized anyway. They were young, and the experiments were terrible for them — where they were clawing at their heads trying to remove the devices. Some had literal screws coming loose.
Reading this story I decided to boycott everything related to Elon Musk.
Additional veterinary reports show the condition of a female monkey called “Animal 15” during the months leading up to her death in March 2019. Days after her implant surgery, she began to press her head against the floor for no apparent reason; a symptom of pain or infection, the records say. Staff observed that though she was uncomfortable, picking and pulling at her implant until it bled, she would often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate.
Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. Her condition deteriorated for months until the staff finally euthanized her. A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex “focally tattered.”
Neural link did not "fail" animal testing. It got FDA approval which actually means animal testing was a success.
I'm going to go ahead and not have something with the build quality of a Tesla attached to my brain, thanks.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a43625242/tesla-is-the-most-recalled-car-brand/
Maybe Musk has a malfunctioning Neuralink chip in his brain. Would explain a lot.
I'm not dumb enough to be interested in a first generation brain implant, but surely someone is.
That being said the car thing is a bunch of bullshit. Separate OTA software patches from physical drive-the-car-to-a-dealership recalls and get back to me on the real "recall" count.
I'm not really interested in driving a full electric car (hybrids seem to be the sweet spot until we find better batteries) but people cling to arbitrary metrics for all kinds of criticism in a red vs blue or console war fashion to proclaim why their chosen product is better. It's so asinine. All of the electronic systems in modern cars have issues because all software has issues. The ones that are the worst are the ones with no OTA patching, of which there are many.
This is a publicity stunt to get more funding. They are going to get some volunteers, but they won't ever get the implants. Neuralink will just keep delaying the procedure by a year and then cancel it once the public stops paying attention.
Hey dumbshit, I just wanted to drop by and let you know you were so wrong and it only took a few months to prove you wrong.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/30/1227850900/elon-musk-neuralink-implant-clinical-trial
I think you are hating simply because musk, they have FDA approval. People are going to get this implant in their brain, and if I remember I'll come back here and send you a message that you were wrong when it happens.
Did you see the article about what they did to those monkeys?
Any human that allows this half-baked shit near them in it's current state should be terrified.
FDA approval ain't evidence that something is safe. See the recent approvals for anti-Alzheimers meds that have a terrible side-effect to benefit ratio.
So you're worried the implant will affect your memory. Got it.
I hope you sign up
I imagine advertisements being streamed into the user's dreams, turning them into remote controlled zombies and causing mental breakdowns.
That's a good Futurama episode! Oh wait
Sounds like a black mirror episode - if it weren't actually possible reality...
"Your subscription is about to expire. Serotonin and dopamine will be blocked until you renew it. Please, select automatic renewal to avoid unwanted depression or suicide. Thanks for choosing our services. Fuck you."
Or maybe they become little Elon copies
Elon's going to try putting your memories behind a paywall.
Why let you have your memories at all? Each day you remember the doctored history of a happy employee. You're excited for another day of peak productivity with a short break for your favorite meal (the only food you're aware of): Soylent green. Hey where's Steve today... who's Steve... better get back to work.
Memories if you're lucky. He'd try to put all autonomic functions behind a paywall.
Your free trial has expired. Click here to buy the ATP cycle pack for 84.99/mo!
Acephale horror podcast has a story about buying people's memories. But what if they take more than they're supposed to? Would you even know?
I think any person signing up for this Black-Mirror storyline is by definition a vulnerable person.
Should but if musk fans want to put their brains in the hands of right-wing moron that's running his companies into the ground, week who am I to argue with their logic.
An aside, it's so fucking easy to become a right wing idol. You literally just say the talking points and now you're part of the gang! It literally is that easy.
Natural selection at work
Mark Zuckerberg was surprised that all those dumb fucks trusted him with Facebook, and Elon must be thinking the same right about now.
I guess we never run out of stupid people.
Don't know if they're stupid, but probably misled and very desperate enough to bet on an invasive experimental treatment messing with your brain from 'some guy' with 'good enough publicity'.
I hope they all read about Animal 15 before actually agreeing.
Neuralink will have all participants sign a waiver stating they know about the risks of death, etc etc. People will just sign and ignore all that because Elon!
Never mind that he's an incompetent scammer.
Maybe we should force the participants to go on an exploration trip to the Titanic before they can join...
Waivers can't totally exonerate someone from all harm caused
I think Elon should go first
If Mr. X is so confident in Neuralink he should be first in line.
Oh shit, you don’t say?
Fucking lol. LOL.
I can’t stress this enough: LOL
Make people desperate enough and then offer them shady stuff like this.
They'll do it.
I won’t even consider investing until “The Man Himself” gets one.
But they were all of them deceived, for another chip was made. In the land of Texas, in the labs of Neuralink, the Dark Lord Elon forged in secret, a master chip, to control all others.
One Chip to rule them all,
One Chip to find them,
One Chip to network them all,
and in the TOS legally bind them.
In poems, press Enter twice
to create a stanza splice.↲↲
End a line with double space␣␣↲
where a line break should take place.
I get it, he won't be getting an ad-sponsored or cheaply made version. The concern is safety, and it will be for a while.
Maybe Elon has a malfunctioning chip in his brain already, which would explain a lot. Anyone seen him getting seizures?
Musk is a transhumanist who is trying to figure out how to transfer his consciousness into one of his brood, or into a machine.
Darn, a Musk article got through my anti Twitter, anti Musk Sync for Lemmy filter. Time to ass Neuralink to it.
Ifs been glorious weeks since I saw Musk on Lemmy.
gotta tighten up those filters homie. musk talk is brain-rotting
idk man his stupid face always makes me happy
Lol they aren’t the type have ‘concerns’ . They would get in the bus to Mars TOMORROW.
I wanna posit an extension to Dunning Kruger - something that describes the phenomena whereby rational, moderately educated individuals don’t really understand the full potential of Maximum Stupid
Imagine having a button you could use to make people shit their pants on demand.
Having to pay a monthly payment to access a childhood memory would suck
Where the fuck is John Connor when de need him.
Do you really think so, medical expert? lol
I don't think this isgoing to have much success, anyone that volunteers for this is braindead already
Or they are desperate. People who volunter need help, or needed help long ago..
Anyone doing anything with Elon Musk should have serious concerns.
Are you sure? Reality check time. If Tesla gave you a job offer that’s in your field and the wage is at least 20k what you are making or over the industry avg. would you put aside your morals and take the offer?
Where did you get the idea Tesla pays above market rates for any role? They're notorious for hiring fresh college grads and just burning them out. And that's on the software side, the people building the actual cars have it even worse.
Absolutely not. I wouldn't work for the Heritage Foundation for any price either. Maybe money can control you, but it doesn't control me. I'd rather be poor than hate myself.
AH HA HA HA HA
20K above average? Not a chance in hell. For all the reports of how shitty the work environment is at ALL of his companies, coupled with the constant need to push far past whats ethical, or in some cases even legal... no.
Fuck no.
Not a chance in hell.
Now, throw me 500% of the average and maybe we'll talk. But You'd only get a year from me. Two tops. Just enough to pay off my bills. Then I'm gonna tell you to fuck off.
Software engineer here. I’ve literally had to make that choice. The answer was no. He treats his workers like shit, underpays a ton compared to the industry standard, and constantly engages in union busting
Even without the moral issues I wouldn’t work for him.
Lol 20k. tell me you’re a musk cuck without… you know the rest.
No.
Even if you did take the money, you just described a scenario in which you do have serious concerns. Ones you've ignored.
Oh, sweet soul. You just revealed to the world that you yourself lack any kind of morals, maybe you should work for Musk.
No.
It's not about morals, it's about work life balance and not having the risk of being illegally fired for no reason.
Tesla under pays compared to other car companies.
Lmao, I'm a public servant and a developer. I make that choice every year.
Absolutely not.
Sometimes you gotta weigh job security and a tolerable work environment into the mix. Working for Musk doesn't seem low-stress.
No. I routinely turn down offers of 80% increase to go work for companies like Palantir, Raytheon, etc... Fuck that noise.
I mean we're talking about Tesla opening a marketing department and me running it from scratch, you'd have to at least triple the industry average as I would likely be working 16 hour days.
Have you never heard of work/life balance?