The joke is that something Elon’s companies make actually works reliably.
The joke is also that the burning car was a Tesla, and if Elon could, he’d push a patch to copy/paste his face onto any memories of firefighters found in a Neuralink customer’s brain
I was gonna say Tesla but he actually bought that company, and it doesn’t do as well anymore
I’d be on board with Neuralink… if Musk wasn’t behind it.
Think I"ll wait for an open source brain chip
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.
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.
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.
Cyberpunk dystopias are depressing because we have all of the bad stuff (corporations running everything) and none of the cool stuff (cybernetic augments).
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 ;)
The problem with the comic’s premise is that Neuralink doesn’t do memories at all.
Elon Musk says you could save and replay memories with Neuralink
‘The future’s gonna be weird’: Musk says memories could be downloaded into a new body or robot
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.
(just like Black Mirror)
Technology’s red flag.
What, are you saying we shouldn’t build the Torment Nexus as envisioned in sci-fi classic ‘Don’t Create the Torment Nexus’?
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…
no. this is a cheap shot.
