The first Neuralink implant in a human malfunctioned after several threads recording neural activity retracted from the brain, the Elon Musk-owned startup revealed Wednesday.
The threads retracted in the weeks following the surgery in late January that placed the Neuralink hardware in 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh’s brain, the company said in a blog post.
This reduced the number of effective electrodes and the ability of Arbaugh, a quadriplegic, to control a computer cursor with his brain.
“In response to this change, we modified the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural population signals, improved the techniques to translate these signals into cursor movements, and enhanced the user interface,” Neuralink said in the blog post.
The company said the adjustments resulted in a “rapid and sustained improvement” in bits-per-second, a measure of speed and accuracy of cursor control, surpassing Arbaugh’s initial performance.
While the problem doesn’t appear to pose a risk to Arbaugh’s safety, Neuralink reportedly floated the idea of removing his implant, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company has also told the Food and Drug Administration that it believes it has a solution for the issue that occurred with Arbaugh’s implant, the Journal reported.
The implant was placed just more than 100 days ago. In the blog post, the company touted Arbaugh’s ability to play online computer games, browse the internet, livestream and use other applications “all by controlling a cursor with his mind.”
shocked Pikachu face
That’s weird. Did he try subscribing to Twitter Blue?
This is more than enough to turn me off from the idea of neural anything in the brains of humans. Especially if it’s all being ran by a fledgling sycophant like Musk.
Even if it’s not drastic, I don’t want to know what the worst case scenario would’ve been.
Especially if the extent of it is that it lets you move a mouse. How does that offer any improvement over eye tracking adaptive tech?
Idk… I don’t like Elon, but this is actually incredibly huge overall. he controlled a computer with his mind. That’s amazing for people who could benefit from it. I think it’s worth continuing down this path, just to see how it evolves. I’m sure the man knew the risks and still chose to do it, meaning it was worth it to him.
This isn’t something new to nueralink. Brain-machine interfaces have existed for quite some time. Neuralink is one of a number of companies that are exploring directly implanting these devices rather than using an externally attached (hence, easily removable) interface, but the core thesis of “Brain control computer” isn’t any kind of grand leap forward. That’s just Musk’s marketing.
I saw a dude play chess with his mind where otherwise he couldn’t. I’ve never even heard of tech like this, so it’s 100% new to me lol
Just because you never heard of it doesn’t mean it hasn’t existed…
released in 2008
[I never said it didn’t exist but cool I guess.]
Is it because you are unfamiliar with adaptive tech? Eye tracking devices allowing quadriplegic people to interact with computers by looking at them and blinking have been around since at least the mid 00s. Like a decade ago the “mind reading” external tech got cheap enough for simplified toys to be made with it. Implanting it directly into the body is a lot of risk for very little benefit.
I just think it’s cool, but fuck me right?
If you think it’s cool I would hope you think it’s even cooler than you can do this without surgery and that there are literal cheap ass toys you can buy to play with yourself?
Not the person you were responding too but I’d love to learn more about these toys/tech. Are there some key words that would help me search? I’m having some trouble sifting through the search results.
You’re presupposing that surgical implants can’t be more responsive, intuitive, speedy, or sophisticated than an external device. The eye trackers are very useful but objectively pretty limited. Non-invasive EEG is weak and distorted because there is skull and more brain in the way, so “resolution” is limited.
If better outcomes are possible by putting electrodes as close to the signal source as can be, why not explore that option?
Hate Elon or love him, this is pretty cool honestly. I hope it succeeds.
Nah this is a pretty dumb idea that is going to go poorly. It’s just techobros wishing we lived in a science fiction novel.
Maybe someday, but that’s not the point of the tech as it stands. It’s accessibility.
They guy who it failed in (Noland Arbaugh) is a full on quadriplegic. The ability to use a computer in a semi-normal way is absolutely beyond life changing for him.
How dare you state anything but “I hate Elon and he’s a POS and everything he does is bad”. Elon is a garbage human being and I dislike him just as much as the other person, but I’m still going to give credit when it’s due. This is a fucking cool idea and will help a lot of people.
But those options were available to him without a risky brain implant. There’s a large amount of alternative interface methods and tools available for these purposes, they just don’t have Musk’s marketing budget and they aren’t run by someone that owns a newspaper, so they’re not well known outside the disabled community.
We’ve had wearable (and thus removable and non invasive) neural interfaces for years now that have been able to do mouse control.
We’ve had robust eye tracker control since Steven fucking Hawking.
This is being framed as though this was the only way for this person to have these abilities and options available, and that is patently false.
Those alternatives are old tech that has way more limitations than a neural implant.
Just because there is old tech that SORT OF does this, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. That’s the same attitude behind “not needing more than 4mb of RAM” back in the day. You can’t stop progress all because YOU are fine with the current state of the tech.
I’m well aware of the existence of alternatives. But you must agree that what is achievable with an implant far outstrips the current alternatives?
Based on your reaction, I’d hate to hear your opinion on AI. Let me guess, its corpo data theft and only data theft?
What about the multitude of FOSS projects that even you could use if you wanted?
You are making a lot of assumptions
Everything’s “techbros living in a sci-fi novel”, until one day it isn’t.
I’m only 42 and I have seen very incredible advancements made in my lifetime that I never thought would be reality as a child. Handheld mobile communications devices that allow you to talk and share media instantly with anyone on the planet, for instance. That’s some literal Star Trek shit. Or the fact we now have the equivalent computing power of all the world’s supercomputers in the 80s put together on our desks.
The USB-C set a new benchmark for the popular Apollo 11 comparison. With the release of the USB-C, your phone’s charger now is about 563x faster, can store about 75% more commands, and has about 2x the RAM vs the Apollo 11.
Elon is just the face and money man.
Understand that, and kudos to all the great minds who made this thing a reality.
And when it succeeds, next update will push ads directly in your brain.
That made me chuckle. Lol
The implant failing when the subject’s connected tissue died has always been the best possible outcome from this, tbh.
Not the first, first they told people about.
Definitely a closet full of dead bodies over there.
Dead monkeys and apes, yes. The bodycount in primates for the development of Neuralink isn’t… Fun.
“DAddy mUsk laav mme uskahdkadvbgbdg” said the first Neuralink volunteer, Mr. Guinny A. Peeg.
Dude, the guy is quadriplegic. You might take a chance too if you were quadriplegic.
I’ve got an peripheral nerve implant that was installed on an experimental basis myself. It was not a fangirl situation, it was a “please please please help me with this pain” situation.
It’s the first attempt. Failure is gonna happen. This isn’t big news. If they were rolling it out to market that would be different.
damn, imagine we did any other medical research with that attitude!
Yeah that’s exactly what we’ve been doing in medicine for ever. Are you supposed to just stop trying?
so, hate to break it to you, but we in fact don’t take that attitude with medical research, anything that had a tendency to kill the pre human control groups generally doesn’t keep going, Musk can do this because he is a high profile case, ironically it’s how he slips regulations all the time, because there would be backlash from the musk sycophants, but also the general wealthy community who use people like musk as a barometer on how much corruption they can get away with
Maybe not now but a lot of what we know in medicine caused animals and people to die despite knowing the risks of experimentation
no, not really, that’s just a commonly believed myth
Wow. Tell that to all the dead people. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Anesthesia. Vaccines. More recently Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
ya, nothing was learned in the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study”(see racist torture), Vaccines also didn’t one about because we just started injecting people with random shit, and we knew of Anesthesia for a long time, it just wasn’t seen as something you use in medicine in more recent history because of religious superstitions in medicine.
again, Myths, just like the idea that we learned anything from Mengele’s horrors
What attitude you think people take with other medical research
not the silicone valley “keep breaking stuff until it works”
Sure failure is gonna happen but neuralink hasn’t been particularly successful with all the primates that have been tested with for previous version either.
This is an article saying it failed in a primate too!
Yeah it’s a really difficult problem. The criticism might be that it’s animal cruelty.
This is the most Omni Consumer Products situation.
“Humanity can not progress without heaps” - Hubert Farnsworth
Neuralink reportedly floated the idea of removing his implant
This immediately sank when someone pointed out that it would be a PR nightmare, which naturally was more important than patient safety.
When did they work? Prior to getting approved in humans they were killing animals at a high rate. To the point where animals were smashing their heads against shit to get the chip out.
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.
I understand testing on animals is tough but this was straight cruelty.
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/
When I was in college working in a lab, we were worried about accidentally killing frogs with our equipment because we didn’t have anything filed with the IRB about frogs.
Everything with Elon bewilders me. I thought this is why we had regulatory agencies.
This is also why regulatory agencies have been systematically crippled over the last 40 years or so. Damn near every sector has had their regulatory agencies crippled by some combination of reducing authority, underfunding, and understaffing. When the agencies work, the message is “see, we don’t need those regulations anymore because we’re taking care of things fine on our own,” and when they stop working, the message is “we shouldn’t be spending money on these agencies! They don’t do anything anyway!”
As we see most regulation agencies are underfunded and undermanned on purpose. I’m sure they are the same.
Ah but you see, that was when they were testing the Worker Attitude Modulation software. (Researchers called it WAM for short and vehemently denied any connection to the word Wham.)
they’re mice, they’re supposed to be used for testing. Yeah its unfortunate but its not like they are trying to hurt them.
monkey
mice
Can you read?
It was working for a while for the guy. He was paralyzed from the neck down and he was able to use it to play some lame game like LoL or something.
Yeah I seen a money kinda play pong on it. It was cool and all but not ripping at your skull cool.
It sucks bc there are real companies developing the tech for an amazing cause. Elon is a dip shit that has no clue on how to run a company and he is actually hurting the research.
You don’t even need to be inserting probes to be able to do that…
OCZ had this ‘toy’ out in 2008.
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16826100006
one of the reviews…
Ultra-sensitive, excellent response time. Partial hands free gaming. Cool looking blue LED glow from interface box. This is the future of computer user interface. While designed primarily for FPS games, works exceptionally well with MMOs. Makes Crysis WARHEAD and FarCry 2 a joy to play. As a disabled person, this unit has allowed me to game with all the “normal” folks on the same level.
This thing seems to be a later iteration of the Atari Mindlink idea from the 1980s, which presented the illusion of controlling the game with just your thoughts/brain waves/whatever but which was actually just reading the neuromuscular voltage from your forehead (meaning you scrunch your forehead muscles around to control it).
ok but the real interesting stuff like reading hand writing from a paralyzed person imagining writing it and etc are all only for actual electrodes in brains.
I still have this, but suspect it’s bricked after I’ve pressed the “do not press” button on the side. (i’m a filthy button pusher) If anybody has some firmware dumps or at least documentation, I’d appreciate it.
Never managed to use the brainwaves, but it was sensitive to the facial muscle movement. Good enough to play pong.
IIRC dude went home and played Civ all night
I’m not defending this, but at least a human electively chooses this procedure and understands why they have a device attached to their head. The monkeys must have had no idea what was going on and just wanted to remove the foreign object.
Very valid point.
I could argue that the person was mislead, thinking it was successful in animal trials when it wasn’t. Plus the mental manipulation on a person that is a paraplegic, having hope this will improve their life is sad. Musk falsely claimed it was safe and no monkeys died due to the implant.
I hope Noland has unlimited use because he might risk having to pay a sub to use the implant that they put in his brain
I would never put something in my brain that doesn’t at least have a public API documentation. If the company discontinued the product I want to be able to keep using it. Open Source software would be best.
deleted by creator
‘Have you consider running Linux on your neural implant?’
“I have a busted old brain from the 80s, what distro would you suggest?”
My question is, does the neutral implant even run Doom?
Open source is the only way for anything that should enter our brains.
Really hope regulations will come to this.
Was The Lawnmower Man a documentary?
That movie was so awful, even then. That and Battlefield Earth are guilty pleasures but they’re truly terrible.
Come on, the CGI was groundbreaking.
Tron has entered the chat
If I recall, Tron was almost entirely practical effects despite its premise.
15 minutes of CGI-only scenes, but ok. Last Starfighter then.
I thought The Last Starfighter was shot on location.
Honestly the fact it had any CGI was groundbreaking. We take it for granted these days how easy CGI is, but at the time Tron was made movies were still recorded on physical film and most computer monitors were 480P resolution at best. The movies in the 70s and 80s that had “digital” displays like the terrain map in Aliens used some really clever tricks to fake things that would be utterly trivial to do today but were almost impractical to do back then.
I feel like they belong in separate categories though. Lawnmower man was regular bad, like it started as something that had value but effects and writing just weren’t up to where they should have been resulting in a hilarious, guilty pleasure mess.
Battlefield earth never stood a chance, everything about it was cursed start to finish and was a complete vanity project by a religious weirdo. There’s just plain guilt with it, no pleasure.
Calling him a religious weirdo gives too much credit to the cult/scam that scientology is. At best he’s a brainwashed cult member. I feel like 200 years from now people will be studying the rise and fall of scientology as it’s a fascinating case study of what happens when a scammer sets out to create a cult and actually succeeds. The fact he got away with it despite evidence that it was always intended as a scam is even more mind blowing.
The only thing remarkable about Scientology and Mormonism are that they were recent creations. That means we have fairly decent information about the founders. The other religions probably started similar ways but that has been obscured by time and poor documentation. The more people that get involved in steering them through the years, the more blurred it gets.
I mean yeah, but it’s interesting that even with all that readily available evidence of how much of a scam it is people still sign up. At the end of the day the only real difference between a cult and a religion is how old it is. But while you can give followers of other religions the benefit of the doubt because that evidence has been lost to time, it’s very much still available for scientology. Hence calling him a religious weirdo is too much credit, followers of scientology have ample evidence that it’s a scam/cult, but they choose to ignore that evidence. There’s basically no excuse for believing in scientology much like there’s no excuse for believing the Earth is flat.
Pretty much. At this point a religious weirdo is a religious weirdo no matter what flavor they prefer.
