Neuralink’s human trials volunteers ‘should have serious concerns,’ say medical experts::A medical ethics committee responded to Elon Musk’s brain-interface startup issuing an open call for patients yesterday.
Anyone doing anything with Elon Musk should have serious concerns.
Are you sure? Reality check time. If Tesla gave you a job offer that’s in your field and the wage is at least 20k what you are making or over the industry avg. would you put aside your morals and take the offer?
Where did you get the idea Tesla pays above market rates for any role? They’re notorious for hiring fresh college grads and just burning them out. And that’s on the software side, the people building the actual cars have it even worse.
No, don’t you see, in an impossible hypothetical situation, they assume you’d do something against your stated values. You’ve been pwned by a person of logic and intellect, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, but you agree with them now.
This is correct, Tesla is known for underpaying
Maybe things have changed but for a while Elons companies paid very well for engineering/technical staff, as in solid six figures fresh out of school. Of course the only reason they paid that much was that they expected 80+ hour weeks
I said if. Would you take the offer
If I gave you a million dollars would you take it?
Me personally my morals would prevent me from taking the offer no matter the price.
You didn’t read my question because that answer makes no sense.
I’d choose being paid less over working for a bipolar narcissist who fires people at the drop of a hat. But again, it’s not a choice I’d have to make as I pointed out above.
Absolutely not. I wouldn’t work for the Heritage Foundation for any price either. Maybe money can control you, but it doesn’t control me. I’d rather be poor than hate myself.
$20k isn’t going to make you rich anyway
If Tesla offered me $200k over maybe I’d think about it
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AH HA HA HA HA
20K above average? Not a chance in hell. For all the reports of how shitty the work environment is at ALL of his companies, coupled with the constant need to push far past whats ethical, or in some cases even legal… no.
Fuck no.
Not a chance in hell.
Now, throw me 500% of the average and maybe we’ll talk. But You’d only get a year from me. Two tops. Just enough to pay off my bills. Then I’m gonna tell you to fuck off.
Software engineer here. I’ve literally had to make that choice. The answer was no. He treats his workers like shit, underpays a ton compared to the industry standard, and constantly engages in union busting
Even without the moral issues I wouldn’t work for him.
No.
Lol 20k. tell me you’re a musk cuck without… you know the rest.
Tesla doesn’t pay more than other places, so I feel like this person just doesn’t make much money and $20k is a huge differential to their hourly wage. Otherwise why not choose another arbitrary number like $50k?
At the scales of wages for engineers, project managers, etc, powering these companies, somebody in those positions would be be using a percentage.
20k is 5-15% wage over average wages for most of those job roles and that’s easy to find competing offers for and not sell yourself out to overwork yourself if you qualified anyways.
Even if you did take the money, you just described a scenario in which you do have serious concerns. Ones you’ve ignored.
Oh, sweet soul. You just revealed to the world that you yourself lack any kind of morals, maybe you should work for Musk.
Hey! Don’t talk to them like that! It might be that they don’t have any self respect or are just a trash human being
Lol i just find it interesting. I asked the same question in a meta thread and over there, majority said they would take the offer!
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No.
It’s not about morals, it’s about work life balance and not having the risk of being illegally fired for no reason.
Lmao, I’m a public servant and a developer. I make that choice every year.
Absolutely not.
Tesla under pays compared to other car companies.
Sometimes you gotta weigh job security and a tolerable work environment into the mix. Working for Musk doesn’t seem low-stress.
Tolerable work environment is at the top of my list. If I were to even consider working at an intolerable business, I would need to be paid enough to retire after a year. We have made it so that work is life, and also now retirement is very uncertain for most young people. There’s no way I’m gonna take an intolerable job that will go on indefinitely.
No. I routinely turn down offers of 80% increase to go work for companies like Palantir, Raytheon, etc… Fuck that noise.
I mean we’re talking about Tesla opening a marketing department and me running it from scratch, you’d have to at least triple the industry average as I would likely be working 16 hour days.
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Have you never heard of work/life balance?
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.
What’s really sad is hearing how they treated them. Considering how intelligent they are, I find it disgusting that they treated them so bad they all died. It’s not worth a bunch of sentient creatures lives to do experiments like this and then just throw them away.
At least your lab was treating them with dignity.
Yeah, in academia getting approval for primate research projects is a huge process where you need to clarify every aspect of the protocol, housing, care, and experimental operations to submit before the project can start. I’m less sure if it’s voluntary or required, but we had funding allocated for their retirement from the start. They’re smart enough and strong enough that I’d be terrified to work with unhappy and unwell primates.
Not that all research projects are have happy endings, but I don’t think corporate research has the same restrictions and oversight that academic research does, given that this even happened. I’m pretty accepting of the necessity of primate research models, but we should be doing everything we can to treat them as best we can. Withdrawing a subject from the experimental protocol should be preferred over letting an infection fester just because the implant is in the way. Just seems really poorly done on their part.
If it makes you feel any better, they’d treat humans the same way if they could.
Not really. I know people have done some crazy despicable experiments during wartime, so not surprising people are willing to do it if allowed.
Didn’t Neuralink fail animal testing? Something about most of their monkeys dying from the trials? How did this get to human testing?
Kinda like how Elon promised a mars colony by 3 years ago, and his big rocket exploded on its first flight a few months ago.
Or how full self driving has been ready “next year” for the passed 5 years.
Hyperloop was going to revolutionize transportation, by having a train in a vacuum tunnel, and is currently an abandoned tube in the desert.
The boring company was going to create high speed car tunnels under cities, and it’s test track is a 30mph traffic jam, but now underground.
Solar city was going to put solar tiles in place of your shingles and offset your power usage, but the demo musk showed was an actual fraud, and there were no solar panels.
Last but not least, spaceX promised “rapidly reusable rockets” with a 10x decrease in cost to low earth orbit. The fastest turn around they’ve ever had was a month or so, about as long as the space shuttles’ fastest turn around. The falcon 9 still costs between 50 to 60 million per launch, even if it’s a reused booster or not, and the space shuttle was capable of taking crew and cargo/payload at the same time, while the falcon can only take one or the other.
Musk companies have a long history of promising the moon and delivering playground sand. Don’t buy any of his products and don’t fall for his “saving humanity” bullshit. He’s just a conman who’s defrauding investors for billions.
Musk has since come out and all but stated Hyperloop was specifically funded and hyped ONLY to kill mass transit initiatives in the area. It was a total vaporware project, they never intended to solve anything.
To be fair, SpaceX cost of 50-60 million per launch is almost a 10x drop in price, ULA is around 400-500 million per rocket. And since they have next to no competition on price, they have no incentive to lower it. It’s just business.
And don’t bring the broken vehicle the shuttle turned out to be into this. A great vehicle on paper, but with to many cooks. The shuttle era gave us the ISS, but is cost us almost all activity outside of LEO.
Yeah, I agree with all of their points except for SpaceX, which has been an unequivocal success that doesn’t deserve to be painted with the same brush Elon is. They revolutionized space flight, broke into the national security launch industry that was entirely captured by the United Launch alliance, and stand to obsolete the (93 billion dollar!) Space Launch System the moment the Starship is approved for commercial launches.
Dozens of Falcon 9’s exploded while testing them and especially while attempting to land and reuse boosters, so the Starship failure was all but expected. I hate Elon Musk too, but SpaceX is arguably the most successful aerospace company at the moment. Were NASA allowed full control of their money, I think it’d be better, but as it is the viability of many of their future projects hinges on SpaceX.
SpaceX becomes NASA’s second-largest vendor, surpassing Boeing
NASA obligated $2.04 billion to SpaceX in fiscal year 2022.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are about to ruin stargazing for everyone
With the naked eye, stargazing from a dark-sky location allows you to see about 4,500 stars. From a typical suburban location, you can see about 400. Simulations show that from 52 degrees north (the latitude of both Saskatoon and London, U.K.) hundreds of Starlinks will be visible for a couple of hours after sunset and before sunrise (comparable to the number of visible stars) and dozens of these will be visible all night during the summer months.
Boondoggle
I’m a little confused, the first article glowingly supports my comment, while the second is somewhat neutral. Pointing out that Starlink satellites show up on long exposure astronomy images, while also pointing out that they’ve already launched a new gen testing surface dimming. Given that Starlink satellites only have an orbital lifespan of five years, there’s a 0% chance of old Starlinks cluttering up the night sky. If they stop trying to improve the light reflection issue, that would be the time to be angry.
Also, boondoggles are a “wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft”. The Space Launch System is a boondoggle, Starlink is dozens of times cheaper than laying cable, especially in rural areas. The alternative is to install radio towers for 5G coverage, which is something that developing nations have done to skip the expense of rolling out a unified power and data grid, but there are a lot of advantages to not having ground based hardware beyond the receiver.
After living in fairly rural areas for quite a while, LEO internet coverage is much nicer than watching billions get funneled the telecom giants to lay cable, only for them to just… not lay cable.
you’re right. I wasn’t necessarily disagreeing with you, sorry to come off that way. I just think that any money from the public treasury given to an entity associated with Elon Musk is going in the wrong direction.
I understand that having lousy internet service sucks. I’d just prefer if no part of public spending whatsoever was going to an individual as malodorous as Elon Musk, who already has abundantly more than his fair share.
That’s alright, I was just a little unsure about the mixed tone. As far as public funding goes, I’d much rather NASA funding go to SpaceX than Boeing, especially since unlike the cost plus development contracts that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin have gotten as the United Launch Alliance, SpaceX’s payments are almost mostly contracted purchases. That package you linked pays for specific flights to the ISS, as well as paying for a propulsive lunar lander as part of Artemis Project.
I mean, I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but none of this money is going to him. Compared to pouring money into the telecoms or aerospace companies owned by less vocal billionaires, and then watching them go back for seconds without doing anything, I’d much rather see something productive come of public funding.
As an aside, Starlink has never received public funding, so this really isn’t the project to complain about that. It was tentatively approved for 900 million to be awarded after delivering gigabit speeds to 99.7% of rural America, but the money would only have been awarded after completion, and the funding was pulled a month after Viasat (another satellite internet company) pressured the FCC, a decision that the FCC Commissioner publicly declaimed, which was kinda funny.
There an article in Wired just this week I think about how horrid the experiments on the animal were.
Musk, of course, lied again saying the monkeys were old and going to be euthanized anyway. They were young, and the experiments were terrible for them — where they were clawing at their heads trying to remove the devices. Some had literal screws coming loose.
Reading this story I decided to boycott everything related to Elon Musk.
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.
Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. Her condition deteriorated for months until the staff finally euthanized her. A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex “focally tattered.”
Thanks for this. Never buying anything of his now
I don’t understand how researchers could see that and allow it to continue. What kind of sociopath do you have to be to knowingly, continually torture an animal like that, especially for something this fucking stupid?
And Animal 15 was still smarter than charlie kirk
Neural link did not “fail” animal testing. It got FDA approval which actually means animal testing was a success.
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/
You could then just run over kids in strollers and blame the Tesla chip in your head.
Finally! A way to fake senility without needing to wait so long
I just use copious amount of Jameson’s for that purpose.
Beep, beep, motherfuckers.
Maybe Musk has a malfunctioning Neuralink chip in his brain. Would explain a lot.
I’m not dumb enough to be interested in a first generation brain implant, but surely someone is.
That being said the car thing is a bunch of bullshit. Separate OTA software patches from physical drive-the-car-to-a-dealership recalls and get back to me on the real “recall” count.
I’m not really interested in driving a full electric car (hybrids seem to be the sweet spot until we find better batteries) but people cling to arbitrary metrics for all kinds of criticism in a red vs blue or console war fashion to proclaim why their chosen product is better. It’s so asinine. All of the electronic systems in modern cars have issues because all software has issues. The ones that are the worst are the ones with no OTA patching, of which there are many.
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.
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I don’t see Neuralink taking the legal risk, regardless of what the FDA says. The approval is part of the publicity stunt IMO.
I don’t think they’d care about the legal risk from people who’d sign up. However it’d be pretty bad publicity having them all die
Hey now, that’s not fair. Some of them might just end up paralyzed or brain dead.
I think you are hating simply because musk, they have FDA approval. People are going to get this implant in their brain, and if I remember I’ll come back here and send you a message that you were wrong when it happens.
Did you see the article about what they did to those monkeys?
Any human that allows this half-baked shit near them in it’s current state should be terrified.
They only said people would get the implants, not that they would survive. If they have FDA approval, I’m afraid the previous poster may be correct.
No, what did they do to them?
Warning: animal suffering.
that’s just… that gave me nausea
I’ll let someone else link it, or I’m sure you can easily find it if you search Google News. Just a warning though, is awful to read.
I’m with the other guy, I’m not reading that again, but I remember it was on the verge if that helps.
FDA approval ain’t evidence that something is safe. See the recent approvals for anti-Alzheimers meds that have a terrible side-effect to benefit ratio.
So you’re worried the implant will affect your memory. Got it.
I hope you sign up
I’m not disabled, so I can’t even if I wanted to. I don’t want to either, I’m not stupid
I imagine advertisements being streamed into the user’s dreams, turning them into remote controlled zombies and causing mental breakdowns.
Can’t wait to need an ad blocker in my brain.
Should I go with NeuroFirefox or NeuroPihole?
Neurofox and neuroblock origin
Just rip the cables off your brain, go back to monke.
That’s a good Futurama episode! Oh wait
Sounds like a black mirror episode - if it weren’t actually possible reality…
“Your subscription is about to expire. Serotonin and dopamine will be blocked until you renew it. Please, select automatic renewal to avoid unwanted depression or suicide. Thanks for choosing our services. Fuck you.”
Or maybe they become little Elon copies
Elon’s going to try putting your memories behind a paywall.
Why let you have your memories at all? Each day you remember the doctored history of a happy employee. You’re excited for another day of peak productivity with a short break for your favorite meal (the only food you’re aware of): Soylent green. Hey where’s Steve today… who’s Steve… better get back to work.
Hey that’s an episode of Stargate
And Farscape.
Memories if you’re lucky. He’d try to put all autonomic functions behind a paywall.
Your free trial has expired. Click here to buy the ATP cycle pack for 84.99/mo!
Acephale horror podcast has a story about buying people’s memories. But what if they take more than they’re supposed to? Would you even know?
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.
An aside, it’s so fucking easy to become a right wing idol. You literally just say the talking points and now you’re part of the gang! It literally is that easy.
Natural selection at work
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.
Don’t know if they’re stupid, but probably misled and very desperate enough to bet on an invasive experimental treatment messing with your brain from ‘some guy’ with ‘good enough publicity’.
I hope they all read about Animal 15 before actually agreeing.
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…
Waivers can’t totally exonerate someone from all harm caused
Want to use your senses? Pay a small fee…
Motor functions only $299 for the first three months**
Otherwise known as Neuralink Blue.
We’ve changed our ToS, you are no longer entitled to breathing or heartbeats for free.
I think Elon should go first
If Mr. X is so confident in Neuralink he should be first in line.
Oh shit, you don’t say?
Fucking lol. LOL.
I can’t stress this enough: LOL
Make people desperate enough and then offer them shady stuff like this.
They’ll do it.
