First Human Patient to Receive a Neuralink Brain Implant Used it to Stay Up All Night Playing Civilization 6
First Human Patient to Receive a Neuralink Brain Implant Used it to Stay Up All Night Playing Civilization 6
The first human recipient of a Neuralink brain implant has shared new details on his recovery and experience of living with the experimental assistive tech.
It sounds like things are going well for this guy and that is great and all, but how much would we honestly expect to hear if it wasn't going well?
This story is circulating all the media outlets and feels more like PR than a legit example of how this procedure is actually going to work for most people.
It sounds like things are going well for this guy and that is great and all, but how much would we honestly expect to hear if it wasn't going well?
Given how eager people are to pounce on negative news about anything Elon Musk-related, I expect we would be hearing way, way more about this if it wasn't going well. "Elon Musk's Neuralink Damages a Man's Brain!" and "Elon Musk's Neuralink Fails!" Headlines and such from every rooftop.
You mean like these articles doing the rounds a while back? https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/
considering that we're not out of the realm of complications... it's too soon to know if it's going well or not.
there's a reason most CBI researchers are keeping things as not-implants.
Patient 2: "unresponsive"
Two years later
Patient 27: "unresponsive"
Patient 28: "Guys! We've got a live one here!"
"Patient 28, you are now Patient 1."
It let him control a mouse with his brain, which is actually great since he's a quadriplegic. Getting it if you aren't fully paralyzed would be stupid.
Doctor organizations did bash the news release for being PR. Especially when there's desperate people who are watching this tech and all they got was a tweet saying "installed it, lmao".
My only concern is that people are going to think that he only stayed playing civ all night because it’s exciting to do something. But that’s not the case.
Innocent people are going to try this game and keep saying “one more turn”.
loool, we need to team up with schools and warn the kids of the danger that civ poses to their health and their future
Just one more turn AAAANNND it's dawn!
I would be a lot more impressed if the brain implant had given him the willpower to walk away and go to bed
Yeah he should have played a good game
Because this patient playing Civ 6 is the modern version of Joshua playing games on WOPR.
Lets hope the patient is not named Mohandas.
I think it's an amazing advancement and that's awesome for a quadriplegic person to interact with the world.
The part that I haven't heard anyone mention is what is the life cycle of these chips. Computers and cell phones all become outdated so quickly. Are recipients guaranteed upgraded chips as they become available?
I was reading an article recently about people who have had implants in their eyes that help them to see become obsolete. One because the company stopped supporting the specific version that was in the patient. The other because the company had gone out of business.
Even if the chip never went obsolete, the scar tissue build up around implanted brain devices interferes with signal over time and they need to be replaced.
Also, each installation/replacement has a few percentage point chance of leading to a life threatening infection.
Unless both those issues are solved, irrespective of obsolescence this is only the sort of thing that makes sense for patients who feel that their life is effectively over without it and have low risk thresholds for treatment options.
The story of "Second Sight" and the folks that depended on them is pretty sad. I hope there's some kind of backup plan in case the company goes under, gets acquired, or decides to abandon existing technology. Like placing the key tech in a trust of sorts.
This tech is extremely experimental and nowhere near ready to market as a consumer device that a regular person can purchase, so a lot of those questions don't really have answers.
Part of the study is to see how long it lasts. It's replaceable in theory but there's things like are there complications with redoing it (e.g scar tissue) to be explored.
As a human trial, he may never get an upgrade, and it might fail in a few months unexpectedly.
It's part of the risk of being in a trial vs waiting until it's a finished product.
"Sorry, your brain is out of warranty."
Many have mentioned that so you didn't look very far then. It's like the first thing people wonder. They have no answer of course, this is research and not a product
I suppose the counter argument is people don't ask that kind of question when they get a pacemaker. At some point you have to get an implant if you need an implant you can't go oh well our weight six months because then version 2.0 is out
One... More... Turn...
I have played one game of Civ in my life. After spending the better part of a weekend with it, I realized the “one more turn” thing was too addictive for me and decided it was best if I never play the game again.
I hurt my finger from clicking so much once night and haven't been willing to go back. It was a bit too addictive, but ngl, playing it with just my brain sounds interesting. I'm just left thinking, what's the catch? What "ergo" issues might come up from using this thing for hours to do something repetitive? None? Big, if true
And then the realization hits that you're at turn 200 and it takes like half an hour
To do the turn or to process the turn when you submit? Lol
I’m very happy for this guy. Fuck musk.
The start of the article is confusing. Given what it tells us that the patient has been doing, it sounds like the chip only acts as a receptor of the brain's outputs, this is, the chip should act on the brain as little as possible. However,
The billionaire also hinted at the time that the implant was functioning well and had detected a “promising neuron spike”.
Which makes it sound like the very opposite. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if Elon had no goddamn idea about what the implant does yet rushed to comment on it anyway.
Or, he's just a liar.
He uses those words as buzzwords, having no real clue about the correct terms are.
But obviously looks like they do aim to "interface", not just interpret, eeg already can do that from outside the brain
I would never have assumed he had a clue what was happening in the first place. What role, apart from money, does the Boer even play in this thing?
'Spike' probably is refering to a shape on a graph and not any physical harpoon like component.
for me it just sounds like the chip is receiving signals from neurons and the "spike" is basically a signal.
short: the chips works well in receiving signals and you can control the mouse by that. so nothing sending hut just receiving and getting a clear signal.
I don't know why, I have zero reason to even think this. Maybe it's my growing distaste for Musk and his bullshit. But something about this whole thing has my "press X to doubt" meter going off the charts.
If I'm wrong. Great. But something in my gut tells me that you don't just go from multiple dead test subjects and a steven king novel's worth of FDA investigations, to suddenly having someone using it perfectly fine with no side effects.
Again, this is all allegedly. I have no proof or evidence either way. It's just my own gut. So don't sue me, Elon.
We've been able to do this for years. The difficult part has been making it cheap, reliable and non-invasive. Electrodes in the brain degrade neural tissue and... There's good reason this isn't done on the regular.
You're right to be sceptical, considering Musk's other company - Tesla - faked self-driving footage on his direction. The videos were just straight up edited to generate hype while in reality the product was still failing during internal testing.
Why? Because time and time again it has been shown that Musk's big bold ideas are shaky prototypes based on lies that just blagged it long enough for him to find someone who could kind of make something work. It's a complete coin toss as to whether it actually works out or not, but it will be despite Musk not because of him.
you don't just go from multiple dead test subjects and a steven king novel's worth of FDA investigations, to suddenly having someone using it perfectly fine with no side effects
What this article doesn't tell you is that before neuralink, this patient absolutely hated turn-based strategy games. But now the only thing they can do is play Civ 6. Day or night, doesn't matter, Civ 6 is the only thing in their brain. Just one more turn. Just one... more... turn...
I was expecting the source to be The Onion
This is your scheduled reminder that Musk's companies have a history of faking test footage and results on his direction.
Good game choice.
Could you imagine if he used his new powers to be toxic in League of Legends instead?
I have 200 hours in Civ 6, and have yet to win a game on anything except points. The latter eras are such a slog.
You almost need to pick your victory condition at the start and focus everything on that, and what you can't focus on that win condition you focus on denying the win for someone else, whoever happens to be winning by that point. Generally the same will be over before you get to the modern era.
Religion and war are the sloggiest.
Culture victory is almost impossible without mods. Even if you get past how cryptic it is, other civs basically have free reign to stall you if they focus at all on culture.
Funny thing is though, I got a culture victory as Gilgamesh... because I nuked Greece. I was going for war victory so it was really funny to launch a nuke at the greek capital then suddenly jump to the culture victory cutscene.
I want Doom running on a Neuralink outputting the game directly in your eyes
The year is 2028, and thousands of neckbeards, volunteers of Musk's implant program, run screaming through the streets, blasting people with shotguns and cutting them down with chainsaws. The DOOM Zombie Crisis has begun.
Just need to write a driver that interfaces to the Neuralink visualization API.
Their next product is to give vision to blind people and they claim its working in monkeys now to some extent with graphics to start off low like a NES game.
So that might not be too far off.
I'm pretty sure this could be done non-invasively like 5 years ago if not 10
You can literally go on youtube right now and watch people play racing games and other things with those brainwave readers or whatever they are called.
I mean, the guys quadraplegic. They have this computer controller you can control with your mouth, but I'm sure just thinking about moving thr mouse and the mouse moves is far easier.
People staying up all night playing Civ?
Lol, take the upvote go back to playing civ
Tongue controllers have existed for a very long time.
And doesn't require drilling into your skull to install.
If you watch the interview, he says he can't do that for extended time because he can't sit in the chair for that long without getting sore spots, and he has body spasms which put him out of place which would require someone else to put him back into a playable spot.
He can do this with neuralink in his bed, despite the spasms that change his position.
Edit: that one might be different though, the tongue one he has is part of his chair
Fuck Elon, but that’s awesome for this guy.
Imagine letting Elon Musk drill a hole in your head just so you can make the mouse move with your mind
He's a quadriplegic. It's not like it was done because he was a Musk fanboy.
You can do this non-invasively though. Like, nothing I've heard about this so far justifies cracking someone's skull open for it. I mean, someone came up with a way of controlling their avatar's ears in VRChat using a Muse2 headset. While that's not quite on the same level as being able to control a mouse pointer, I've seen articles on more advanced non-invasive BCIs being used to interface with PCs or even controlling robotic arms.
Edit: if this was giving him some kind of feedback, like making him feel things in response to on-screen information, I'd feel differently. However, as of right now, this seems like an overly invasive procedure for something that can be done without an implant.
More likely he's both a quadriplegic and a Musk fan.
Imagine being a quadriplegic and having someone invent a method by which you can better interact with the outside world again, but refusing it because "Twitter man bad!"
You realize Elon Musk doesn't actually do the surgery himself, right?
Check out my reply to PugJesus. The gist of it is that, so far, I haven't heard about neuralink doing anything that a non-invasive BCI can't do. I'd feel differently if the implant was giving him feedback on the things he was doing, but right now it seems like an overly complicated and invasive way of doing something that can already be accomplished without surgery.
I have a number of concerns about Neuralink specifically. Mainly:
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The scientists I've seen saying stuff like, "I work in a lab with Nematoads (flatworms), and if we had casualty rates like they've had with monkeys, we'd have our license revoked and a full investigation of the lab."
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What's the long-term look like for these? How often will they need to be replaced? What's the End of Service going to look like? Will they be like that recent issue with those bionic eyes that the company just stopped supporting and the patients who had them implanted had no other choice but to go back under and get them surgically removed because they were going to just stop working.
The idea of the tech is great, but I don't trust a for-profit company to care about the people that it's going into, and a company under Musk especially. Look at all the issues with Teslas that make it seem like there's no regulatory oversight on those cars. From that billionaire woman who just drowned because the glass Tesla uses is shatterproof when submerged and the doors are electronic (so don't work without power - like when the car touches water) and the only way to manually open them is to disassemble the door panel and pull an unmarked wire, to how they have the highest accident rates of any car brand. And supposedly, their newer models (since 2021 or so) don't even have a manual shifter. The car guesses whether you want the car in drive or reverse, and if it guesses wrong, you have to change it in the touchscreen menu.
Musk's name being attached is reason enough to worry simply because of how often it seems that safety regulations just seem to disappear when he's involved.
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I hate Elon Musk, but come on, man. Use a bit of that critical thinking I am sure you have in the back of your brain.
But... Did he play it better?
I was just thinking about this game and how it took so long to play.
Considering that he doesn't have functioning arms... Probably.
Time to introduce him to Hearts of Iron
Civ VI over V? Philistine.
I mean it's basically the definition of "one more turn..." so is it really that special?