The problem with the comic’s premise is that Neuralink doesn’t do memories at all. It’s more like a replacement for a keyboard and mouse.
But sure, I guess: never pass up a cheap shot on Elon ;)
He’s also said that full self driving mode is just a year away… He’s said that 10 years running.
He also said we’d be on mars by 2021.
…and here’s a 20 second clip where he lets on that he knows it’s all a grift…
I’m no neuroscientist (just a regular scientist who happens to know a little about neurology). But those quotes are entirely speculation. Dealing first with the premise of the comic:
(1) The comic has the chip loading arbitrary memories into a person’s brain. In order to do that, we would have to have a total map of the person’s brain and then craft a memory that fits into it. The processing power and the number of interconnections to have a total map are entirely in the realm of science fiction for the foreseeable future. Neuralink is advertising 1024 electrodes. To pull this off you would need trillions of electrodes.
(2) Furthermore, you’d need to have a computer craft the precise stimulus response mapped to an individuals unique neural network – that would mean that a computer will have had to completely decode their entire brain and memories first, or at a minimum be able to simulate their entire brain. And then run a bunch of forward models trying to fit the new data into the existing data in a seamless way. Yes, theoretically possible given infinite computing power, but not actually practical.
(3) The first two require major leaps in technology beyond neuralink itself. Probably you’re looking at borg style nano-machines in order to pull off this level of neural integration and the processing power to map, understand, and model an entire brain (NVIDIA isn’t going to cut it, even projecting Moore’s law decades down the road).
(4) In conclusion, Elon will never be able to pull this off the comic before he dies.
Now, if you assume Elon is extrapolating into the far future.
(5) saving and replaying memories might be easier, because you don’t have to map and entire brain (just a section), and you don’t have to model the brain to create the memory – just restimulate the same neurons. This is probable, with or without Neuralink, as a technological advancement in probably decades.
(6) Likewise, copying an existing brain into a new or simulated brain is easier than injecting a memory into an existing brain. You’d still need to have another “blank brain” as a host (whatever form that entails), and you’d need enough data from your real brain to make the copy (well, that brings us back to items 2&3). This is probable, with or without Neuralink, as a technological advancement in probably centuries.
Neither 5 nor 6 help with the premise of the comic. But I suppose if we have the tech to do (6) in a few centuries, we could probably have the computing power to model new memories on an individual basis too.
Elon will be dead by then.
1, the comic is a joke, and 2, the author obviously doesn’t believe the technology will exist imminently since the premise is what Elon has promised it will do, not the actual science and what is currently possible.
Stop giving the benefit of the doubt to somebody who has repeatedly and demonstrably lied about the capabilities of things they have a financial interest in. He has more money than God, in part in thanks to his deceit, he really doesn’t need your help.
I’d be on board with Neuralink… if Musk wasn’t behind it.
Think I"ll wait for an open source brain chip
It is a really interesting, very scary technology that requires a solid institutional foundation to provide trust. Musk degrades trust, he doesn’t build it.
His maga fanboys would ram a rusty nail into their skull if he tells them it’s the hot new shit.
I’m not sure I’d even trust a fully local open source one.
The issues about trusting hardware and software development tools all lead to problems here.
Yeah if a bug or a hardware failure can make me see nightmare spiders everywhere or send a signal to my pain centers, that’s a permanent no.
Actual augments like this will never work if they phone home to do their job. There could be massive benefits to people with a huge variety of conditions and interests, but if it’s corpo ware and isn’t hyper protected by medical review, and long term support, it’s junk
Just play Deus Ex to see the potential ramifications. That and I know things go to the lowest bidder and I know what developers are like….
One of many futuristic “dystopias” that actually ended up being far too optimistic compared to reality.
“This plague…the rioting is intensifying to the point where we may not be able to contain it.”
“Why contain it? Let it spill over the schools and churches, let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end they’ll beg us to save them.”
Reality: “In the end they’ll refuse to be vaccinated anyway.”
Saw an interview with Warren Spector where he said if he was making Deus Ex today, it would be completely different, since the game they made back then would look like a documentary.
The joke is that something Elon’s companies make actually works reliably.
I think you people are vastly overestimating how much we actually know about the brain or severely underestimating how freaking complex it is.
The “you” reading this right now, is a fucking stack of six A4 sized sheets, each one nanometers thick, and crumpled into something which, by all appearances, looks to an external observer as an oversized walnut seed, cooled and maintained by a network of 400 miles capillaries, and isolated from the world by the blood brain barrier, which can only be described as a fucking miracle.
No. No one is going to be implanting any memories soon
AI is better at recognizing patterns than we are. The brain may be unfathomable to us, but technology already exists which could recognize the signals in your brain that represent memories and reproduce or alter them.
Neuralink and similar devices are being used right now, today, to record the thoughts of animals. The first neuralink patient is alive and well, meaning it’s already being used on humans.
Do you really think this technology won’t exist in our lifetime?
Do you really think this technology won’t exist in our lifetime?
Yes, absolutely. What you’re describing is AGI. If an AI could untangle engrams from branched clusters of extremely plastic neurons, it could understand and improve it’s own thinking. It would actually be self aware before it could untangle the mess that our brains are. And I don’t see AGI happening with our current material and resource constraints before I die. Seeing brain regions being active and de-novo engram implantation is about as close as an LLM is to AGI.
Being 70-80 years old sucks. My condolences. We’ll mess around with AGI when you’re gone and I’ll think about you
Respectfully, this sounds like opinion and doubt rather than a credibly timeline. Other than rattling off industry terms the only support you’ve given your argument is “I don’t see AGI happening”. You’ve collected an impressive shopping basket of buzz words but done little to dissuade me or the engineers developing this technology that it won’t be ready within a lifetime. Stay tuned.
Oh, and “its own thinking” not “it’s own thinking”. His, hers, its.
Memory and simple are words that you can only read when saying “memory IS NOT simple”
For fucks sake, our body stores memories for preferences in our literal guts
Memory is a lot of things except simple