Neuralink’s human trials volunteers ‘should have serious concerns,’ say medical experts

Anyone doing anything with Elon Musk should have serious concerns.

Yeah, I mean we've been working on brain implants of various stripes for a couple decades now, and they're not the first to attempt motor cortex implants for paralyzed patients as a method to begin human trials, but the current state of the art for brain implants is honestly pretty... primitive. There's no good way to avoid damaging neurons, so it's mainly a focus on not causing too much damage while fine mapping and targeting has to be done on an individual basis.

Implants are hugely useful, and arguably the current state of the art treatment for several conditions (epilepsy and parkinsons), but we're so far out from computer brain interfaces being useful for anything outside of dire medical needs that it's kinda surprising they're pushing ahead when they had so much trouble with their experimental subjects.

I worked in a brain imaging lab in college, and we had a couple of chimpanzees with brain implants that did daily research protocols. Bastards were better than me at the testing regimen, and other than some minor discomfort (water intake is restricted prior to the tests so that the gatorade reward was more attractive), they were large children that could tear your face off if they got angry. Once they got older, they would have surgery to remove the implants and retire to a primate ranch where they just got to live out the rest of their life. All of the grad students there had been working with the same chimps for years, so it's a little alarming Neuralink had so many issues.

It doesn't exactly engender confidence.

I'm going to go ahead and not have something with the build quality of a Tesla attached to my brain, thanks.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a43625242/tesla-is-the-most-recalled-car-brand/

Didn't Neuralink fail animal testing? Something about most of their monkeys dying from the trials? How did this get to human testing?

This is a publicity stunt to get more funding. They are going to get some volunteers, but they won't ever get the implants. Neuralink will just keep delaying the procedure by a year and then cancel it once the public stops paying attention.

I imagine advertisements being streamed into the user's dreams, turning them into remote controlled zombies and causing mental breakdowns.

Elon's going to try putting your memories behind a paywall.

I think any person signing up for this Black-Mirror storyline is by definition a vulnerable person.

Should but if musk fans want to put their brains in the hands of right-wing moron that's running his companies into the ground, week who am I to argue with their logic.

Mark Zuckerberg was surprised that all those dumb fucks trusted him with Facebook, and Elon must be thinking the same right about now.

I guess we never run out of stupid people.

Neuralink will have all participants sign a waiver stating they know about the risks of death, etc etc. People will just sign and ignore all that because Elon!

Never mind that he's an incompetent scammer.

Maybe we should force the participants to go on an exploration trip to the Titanic before they can join...

Want to use your senses? Pay a small fee...

I think Elon should go first

Oh shit, you don’t say?

Fucking lol. LOL.

I can’t stress this enough: LOL

If Mr. X is so confident in Neuralink he should be first in line.

I won’t even consider investing until “The Man Himself” gets one.

Musk is a transhumanist who is trying to figure out how to transfer his consciousness into one of his brood, or into a machine.

Darn, a Musk article got through my anti Twitter, anti Musk Sync for Lemmy filter. Time to ass Neuralink to it.

Ifs been glorious weeks since I saw Musk on Lemmy.

Lol they aren’t the type have ‘concerns’ . They would get in the bus to Mars TOMORROW.

I wanna posit an extension to Dunning Kruger - something that describes the phenomena whereby rational, moderately educated individuals don’t really understand the full potential of Maximum Stupid

Having to pay a monthly payment to access a childhood memory would suck

Imagine having a button you could use to make people shit their pants on demand.

Where the fuck is John Connor when de need him.

Do you really think so, medical expert? lol

“If you're interested in an additional sixty dollars, flag down a test associate and let 'em know. You could walk out of here with a hundred and twenty weighing down your bindle if you let us take you apart, put some science stuff in you, then put you back together good as new.“

I don't think this isgoing to have much success, anyone that volunteers for this is braindead already