
With Neuralink, Elon Musk Promises Human-To-Human Telepathy - pmcpinto
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604254/with-neuralink-elon-musk-promises-human-to-human-telepathy-dont-believe-it
======
tsaprailis
"So what facts am I missing? What makes it even remotely okay that Musk and
Facebook are promising the public telepathy within a few short years?"

The author probably didn't read Tim Urban's WBW article[1]. Elon Musk never
claimed that we were going to have telepathy n a few short years but rather
that he was hoping that he would have some sort of BCI that would also be used
by people who don't have some sort of disability.

"I think we are about 8 to 10 years away from this being usable by people with
no disability … It is important to note that this depends heavily on
regulatory approval timing and how well our devices work on people with
disabilities."

"And Mark Zuckerberg gave a timeline of about 25 years. Mark Zuckerberg said:
“I would be pretty disappointed if in 25 years we hadn’t made some progress
towards thinking things to computers.”"

So I think the whole article has a clickbait-y theme, I would expect something
more objective from the MIT Technology Review.

Finally as the author said Musk has indeed missed the deadlines on his
achievements, but nonetheless also he manages to go through with his plans,
both with SpaceX and with Tesla.

So even though I don't expect the neural lace in "a few short years" I think
it will come eventually.

[1]
[http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html)

------
djsumdog
These claims by Musk and the FB exec are pretty outlandish. Any type of
surgery is very high risk. Brain surgery is incredibly dangerous. There's a
reason why so few surgeons specialise in it. The article even mentions one of
the human trials which used implants was directed at people who were already
paralysed.

But all that aside, developing sensor technology that could get accurate
measures of brain activity in a non-invasive and non-destructive way would be
quite a breakthrough (and really the first step to anything more substantial.
Until we invent nano-robots, implants will simply be way too dangerous).

We have no real idea of how the brain works. It's so vastly different from any
machine we've ever designed, filled with redundancy and not only electrical
signals, but chemical signals that combine to create all kinds of inputs and
feedback. Trying to read our stream of consciousness is not an easy task, as
it may not be represented in the brain in a way we could recognise with
instruments (or even in one discrete location in the brain at all).

Brain research is always amazing, but it also shows just how far humanity is
lacking in our own understanding of the world. Advertising/Propaganda, the
Stanley Milgram Experiments, conformity experiments all suggest brains may be
more deterministic than we care to admit. We have hundreds of thousands of
inputs (skin, eyes, internal pain/nerve cells, hearing) and there's no way we
could raise twins in a lab and control all those inputs to see if we can get
two humans to always do the same thing (ethically).

I wonder if we ever do create machines/AI that have connotative abilities and
that can understand self-awareness; if they may end up telling us that they
(and in turn us) don't actually have the free well we think we do.

~~~
r3bl
> These claims by Musk and the FB exec are pretty outlandish.

Except that those are not claims made by Musk and Zuckerberg.

Musk-related, the article says:

> He says that within eight to 10 years healthy people could be getting brain
> implants as new computer interfaces.

While in WBW's article Musk's quote is:

> I think we are about 8 to 10 years away from this being usable by people
> with no disability … It is important to note that this depends heavily on
> regulatory approval timing and how well our devices work on people with
> disabilities.

Notice the second part, which this article totally dismisses. That was his
optimistic, "if all goes perfect" claim.

From the article:

> What makes it even remotely okay that Musk and Facebook are promising the
> public telepathy within a few short years?

...while Zuckerberg's quote is:

> I would be pretty disappointed if in 25 years we hadn’t made some progress
> towards thinking things to computers.

------
skummetmaelk
It does not even matter if it will be ready in a few years or not. Musk is
adding to the hype of brain technology.

In the past few weeks I have seen the number of articles, even on HN, about
the brain skyrocket. This has been a trend for the past two or so years, but
since the announcement of Neuralink it has exploded.

Braintech is becoming a topic that people are actually talking about. This
will hopefully stimulate people to go out and work on related technology
instead of letting it sit in obscurity as it has previously.

~~~
jtraffic
> It does not even matter if it will be ready in a few years or not. Musk is
> adding to the hype of brain technology.

I suspect Musk agrees with you and that his figures have a 30-50 year margin
of error. With Hyperloop, he caused a stir and moved on, and now someone else
is working on it. I realize that's not a perfect comparison (he never
indicated much intention to work on Hyperloop). He often claims that Tesla's
main purpose is to get other car manufacturers to act.

Musk is good at using leverage, but with social capital instead of financial
capital.

~~~
skummetmaelk
At this point Musk's MO seems rather clear.

He realizes that our current societal structures are too prone to corruption
and too slow to act before it is too late.

So instead of waiting for politicians to force the use of green energy he
makes everyone want to drive an electric car.

If that fails, he makes sure that, at least some of, humanity can escape to
another planet.

Now he is tackling the existential problem of AI.

I believe this was already touched upon in the waitbutwhy article, but it has
obviously been clear for quite a while now and Musk has been rather open about
it.

He proved himself with Tesla, even though there were extremely close moments.
Now he is leveraging the Tony Stark image to make people interested in
whatever ideas he throws out there.

~~~
komali2
I remember way back in highschool there was a kid like this. We had a river
that was just utterly disgusting, and there was a group at our school trying
to do bake sales and shit to raise money to get it cleaned up, or they once
went to city hall to petition the mayor, etc. He joined up and that weekend
just... went to the river and started picking up trash. Alone. The next
weekend the whole student org came, the weekend after that the local channel 9
showed up, and so on. Within the month the mayor was announcing plans for
bringing in a dredger or something, I don't remember all the details, just the
lesson I learned - if nobody else is doing it, just fucking do it, others will
follow.

------
Animats
Musk needs to get back to work. His 2017 task list:

\- Get Model 3 Tesla in production by mid-summer. (Musk said he'd sleep at the
plant to make that happen.)

\- Launch Falcon Heavy late this year.

\- Launch Dragon spacecraft in crewed configuration, unmanned.

\- Catch up on Space-X launch backlog and make some money. (Some customers
have canceled because of delays.)

\- Finish battery factory in Nevada and make some money.

\- Get Brownsville launch facility ready for 2018 launch. (March drone video:
[1] Not much but dirt piles.)

\- Get self-driving car technology to work. (Vehicles are currently shipping
with the hardware, but no software.)

That's just this year. For 2018, he's supposed to send people to the moon.

Not a good time for the CEO to be doing a new startup.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEFsGRgrvTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEFsGRgrvTc)

~~~
nabla9
Musk is leveraging constantly.

Part of his strategy is using his public personality and track record to lure
more investments in. His is using financing as rocket fuel. Either there is a
huge explosion or spectacular success.

What is admirable in him is that his risk taking is directed towards making
new things that provide value even if his business totally collapses and he
loses it all personally.

------
T-A
By now everybody probably realizes that Musk's "predictions" are on some kind
of relativistic timescale related to Earth's frame by a factor O(10). In 2008,
the Falcon Heavy was going to fly "in a couple of years"; with some luck, it
will actually fly this summer.

Let's be optimistic and call it a factor 9/2 ~ 4. Using the same factor for
Neuralink, it will have its first medical device out in 15 years and its first
general consumer device in 30 years.

The one big objection I have to this article is the emphasis on how "opening a
person’s skull is not a trivial procedure". I would be willing to bet that
Neuralink is shooting for something which won't require that, along the lines
of injectable "neural dust" or stents:

[http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v34/n3/full/nbt.3428.html](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v34/n3/full/nbt.3428.html)

~~~
drwl
Would you mind elaborating on the O(10) and what you mean by that? O(10) ==
O(1)

~~~
T-A
True if you are wearing your mathematician's or computer scientist's hat. If
you are wearing your engineer's or physicist's hat, "O(10)" means "probably >=
5 but <= 50". Context usually makes it obvious which one it is.

~~~
adrianN
Man, I hope the engineers who design the bridges I use paid more attention in
their math classes.

~~~
T-A
I am perplexed by the negativity. This has nothing to do with mathematics,
it's about notational conventions. Only knowing about one of them does not
make you better at taking limits.

If the objection is about context dependence, why is nobody going "Would you
mind elaborating on the O(10) and what you mean by that? O(10) is the
orthogonal group in ten dimensions".

------
nabla9
Best way to improve brain implant technology is to pour the money into the
basic research and technology. When they work in medical treatments, other
uses can follow.

For example:

* new way to insert implants into the brain without the risks of seizure, infection, stroke, swelling and eroding wires.

* New nonmetallic electrode array implants and wires that don't require removal before using MRI.

\---

If I had few millions of extra money. I would spend it to figure out how the
brain of Caenorhabditis elegans (roundworm) works in detail. The brain of
roundworm has been mapped exactly (connectome is known) and we know it's 302
neurons and 8000 synapses well but we still can't understand how it brain
works.

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/10/30/sim...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/10/30/simulating-
the-brain-sure-thing)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WormBase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WormBase)

[http://www.openworm.org/](http://www.openworm.org/)

~~~
skummetmaelk
The C. elegans nervous system is completely different from that of higher
animals. Its neurons do not even spike.

~~~
nabla9
Not completely different, but significantly less complex.

There are non-spiking neurons in humans as well. They may have significant
role in neuroplasticity.

------
ironchief
There is a large public knowledge gap in understanding the difference between
engineering and science. Neuralink is much more basic R&D science heavy than
Tesla and SpaceX are. Both Tesla and SpaceX had decades and hundreds of
billions of dollars of research already invested in the R&D. Both had proof of
concepts and a well trained work force. This is why Elon was able to "build a
spreadsheet of a rocket on his flight back from Russia".

Neuralink has none of that. However, I am very happy that someone is putting
in the effort because the results so far have been real and impactful.

~~~
aggie
Neuroscience and even brain-computer interfaces have indeed had decades of
research and billions (though not hundreds of billions) in funding. As a
partial proof of concept, BCI's are already capable of multiple-degree-of-
freedom control of prosthetics. And there just so happens to be a glut of PhDs
and post-docs in the sciences looking for a way to apply their training.

Of course it is true that Neuralink is a much larger leap from the current
state of the art than mass production electric vehicles or reusable rocket
stages. But is it a larger leap than a million people living on Mars? These
ventures have many valuable milestones along the way, even if the ultimate
goal proves unreachable.

------
deegles
If we had 100% reliable brain to machine interfaces _today_ , I don't think it
would change much for the average person. It would be like having a voice
assistant with 100% ASR accuracy. Yes, you would be able to use it silently
and that would certainly be more convenient, but we have to build better
bots/skills to handle that input. Maybe in 25 years we'll get there, and by
then brain interfaces will be a natural evolution.

~~~
nabla9
If we had good resolution brain brain machine interfaces, we could use them to
modify own our own behavior using biofeedback.

------
mamon
And who would like to actually use such device, willingly? It is bad enough
that our computers can be hacked, I don't need anyone directly hacking my
brain.

Not to mention that sometimes you want to just take a break from your spouse's
stream of grumbling, "telepathy device" would make that even harder.

~~~
adrianN
I would.

------
kordless
<rant>There is _no fucking way_ I'm getting a neural implant. Musk, Zuck and
their likes can go fuck themselves for even daring to put money behind these
ideas before working on the larger problem of understanding how the Internet,
and then intercommunications it gives our brains, has negatively affected us
as a society[1]. Being aware of our brain's weak spots is critical to
preserving a rational society. I would extend that to the infrastructure that
connects them as well. </rant>

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

~~~
MichaelMoser123
but think of the business potential! advertising and propaganda can be
streamed right into the brain, no way to block this information, this feature
alone must be worth its price in gold.

------
itburnslikeice
So can we experience the scene with Sandra and Stallone in Demolition man in
the future or no?

------
DougN7
I'm a huge Elon fan, but it feels like he's jumped the shark on this one.

------
komali2
How does this guy have this much energy

~~~
psyc
There are massive positive feedback effects at that level of power and
connectedness.

~~~
komali2
But arguably more massive negative feedback effects. Just look at this comment
section, or the stuff the guy gets tweeted at him. Maybe he doesn't read any
of that, sure. Still, though, must be exhausting.

------
jfarlow
For as much as Musk goes back to 'first principles', I am unclear how, from
first principles, a metal electrode can healthily and sustainably interface
with a living human cell. From first principles the size, material,
sensitivity, and most importantly, energy dissipation and efficiency of metals
are incompatible with living tissue in the long run, as far as I know. There
might be ways to get around any of the above features, but in doing so you
often end up sacrificing exactly the point of the chip (power vs speed,
sensitivity vs utility, size vs sensitivity).

To my mind the far more reasonable mechanism to interact with living neural
tissue is given just a cursory 'in the future' remark in the mentioned essay,
optogenetics. If you use light for the transmission of signals you get rid of
many of the above issues. But, unlike Facebook's tech, you would actually need
direct line-of-sight to the cells. The trouble with optogenetics currently is
there is the same delivery problems associated with using CRISPR in a live
organism. On the other hand, if you solve that delivery problem, you not only
get all the medical benefits of being able to fix mutated genes, but you also
get the (from first principles) useful access to optical I/O in the brain.

And the fact is that optogentics actually has some significant capabilities
even today. It's much more of a bottom-up approach, but that is traditionally
the direction Musk has used for his success:

[http://web.stanford.edu/group/dlab/optogenetics/sequence_inf...](http://web.stanford.edu/group/dlab/optogenetics/sequence_info.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mouse+optogenet...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mouse+optogenetics)

Rockets and electric cars were invented decades, if not a century before Musk
came in and 'redid' the technologies from first principles. In this case he
seems to have approached this like a rich man, not a principled engineer -
rather than from first principles, more simply, "let just hire lots of smart
people". And I don't think the result will be without utility - lots of good
things have come from such research groups. But the result of this experiment
will look nothing like the commercial success of Tesla or SpaceX. A best-case
scenario is a bell-labs investment into a multi-decade long exploration of
technology.

------
pokemongoaway
Maybe this will help him communicate telepathically how terrestrial
transportation in a vacuum tube will be made economical, or even safe...

~~~
pokemongoaway
Ha, so quick on the down votes! If this joke hits such a sore spot, then
shouldn't you at least explain why? Last time I checked, critiques like
thunderf00t's have not been appropriately addressed.

