I wonder whether this could be a good early human application for Neurallink — with sufficient direct brain I/O we could interact with these patients in a metaverse setting!
Nobody is mentioning Zuckerberg but you and it's pretty worrying you'd rather patients have less options just because Facebook seperately works on related tech.
I keep seeing comments like this all the time—discussion on some solution that is evidently not ideal, but for some reason, the commenter is also very quick to settle for and defend the solution despite its non-negligible negative tradeoffs; as if it’s impossible for something better to be done, which in this case, is not true, because it is not difficult for a social media platform to choose not to track people in coma so that it can show them ads later. Is there a term for it yet? I can only think of reductionism but it doesn’t feel enough.
I don't. If facebook works on VR, that just gives a general push in that area in my opinion. It would be really sad, if fb will be the only option, but I doubt that. In either case, a "coma" patient not being able to move, would be probably thankful for any option.
I don't know about that. Nobody was talking about the metaverse in earnest until FB went and rebranded themselves to it.
Before then, it was some fictional concept in a dystopian sci-fi novel. Now it's got Facebook--I mean Meta--all over it. So it's reasonable to bring this up when someone imagines the potential of neuralinking someone to the metaverse. It almost feels like the suggestion is making Zuckerberg's dream come true for him.
That's not really true. It was a real trend on which Facebook jumped on[0] but yes their involvement overshadowed that. And at any rate clearly the poster here used it in a general sense of a VR Environment rather than meaning Facebook's specific implementation.
> with sufficient direct brain I/O we could interact with these patients in a metaverse setting
I feel like the complexity behind this idea is often lost in optimism about our current capabilities.
While Neuralink and other brain/computer interfaces should be developed (ideally in a non-invasive mode of operation) and have a wide range of possible uses in the future, i think that we're still decades if not centuries away from something like a "metaverse" of any kind.
Instead, currently instead of a simulated room (a la VRChat), it would probably be more like getting direct access to the spindles of a HDD and not really knowing much about the file system or the data on the drive, being able to write/read some arbitrary data and hope for the best.
If it were at all viable at the moment, you could probably communicate in a basic manner (e.g. morse code or yes/no) with someone who cannot utilize their muscles for whatever reason. This is still immensely useful, for example, in the cases as described in the article, but is still far off from immersive environments.
Or maybe my knowledge is out of date and there is promising research out there? Has anyone directly streamed video/3D environments or even pictures to someone's brain, maybe through the optical nerve? What about creating body sensations or interacting with one's sense of balance, or even smell/hearing?
Video has been done, and been around for a while, but IIRC the main barrier to long-term success has been the tendency of scar tissue to form around implanted electrodes (this is not my wheelhouse at all though, someone else can probably offer much more detail).
That's a pretty impressive technology, but isn't it primarily used on blind people, instead of someone who'd need to experience images/video by alternate means temporarily?
It's probably still a viable approach, it's just that care should be taken to not disrupt the functionality of one's eyes whilst adding the necessary implant, which may or may not be doable, depending on the method.
Of course, the point about scar tissue is also a valid one.
It's not exactly photorealistic. most of those in the linked article are <2000 (monochrome) pixels total. Better than totally blind, but still legally blind.
use transient gene therapy to mutate a light sensitive channel into the relevant neurons, guide an optical fiber to the area and trigger via light coupled into the fiber.That is as precise as we can make the targeting of the mutation, and does not cause scaring. Even if some of the vector goes where it is not supppsed to there is litte light inside a skull...
The biggest problem is neural rewiring as response to the unnatural stimulus and ethics comitees.
The technology of brain links is well established. Many people have received surgeries that allow them control things (e.g. robot arms) and feel things (e.g. force feedback on said robot arms). However, these systems require a ton of training and feedback to use. It’s not clear how someone could learn to use the system if they can’t talk. And once you have a chip in someone’s brain, they’re never getting an MRI again.
Neurallink is a fantasy in terms of form factor, ease of use, and that specific teams ability to make something like this. The underlying technology exists but probably isn’t going to be ready for an application like this.
In the article, they mention that these patients can understand verbal commands being given to them. It is also non-trivial to communicate with apes, as they have successfully demonstrated on neuralink.
Even using the basics of left arm and right arm broadly you can establish communication by using dichotomous questioning.
I'd stay away from a corporation attempting to mess with my brain. Especially Elon Musk's corporation. The guy shows tyrant tendencies, made people pay monthly for unfinished software in upfront-paid "self driving" cars, exploits and endangers his employees for profit and is a COVID-downplaying dick using his influencing potential to endanger even more people.
I consider Elon Musk too unstable and unethical sociopath to trust that Neuralink would be used to better mankind, not just Elon Musk. The dude wants power.
I will say no to any kind of direct neural interface run by anyone with any kind of connection to “the cloud.” I must have absolute control over it or absolutely not. The only exception would be something used by a proper doctor to treat an actual medical condition.
A neural link could be thousands of times worse in terms of privacy invasion, addiction, and “rabbit hole effect” brainwashing than anything we have now. Phones and home assistants are invasive but they are not merging with our biology. One can put them down or disconnect them.
History has shown that overt malice or ill intent is not required for things to go evil either. All you need is perverse economic incentives and/or feedback loops leading to destructive emergent behaviors.
But if the choice is that or be a vegetable for a few weeks before my family decide to pull the plug on me, I'll take musk/zuckerbergs brain implant, as I suspect many people would.
So The Matrix but run by Zuckerberg instead of the machines? I'm having a hard time deciding which would be worse.