Elon Musk's Neuralink says this monkey is playing Pong with its mind

[arnavvr]

 

 

Summary

Neuralink, the brain chip implant company started by Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, has posted its first working prototype of its product. The Monkey, who has a Neuralink implanted in its head, it able to play a game of Pong by thinking of moving certain spaces on the screen.

 

Quotes

Quote

Pager, a 9-year-old macaque monkey, had a Neuralink implanted about six weeks before the video was shot, the video’s unnamed narrator says. He was first taught to play video games with a joystick for a banana smoothie reward, delivered through a metal straw. While he was doing this, the Neuralink device recorded information about which neurons were firing — learning, essentially, to predict hand movements by recording which regions fired. After learning the patterns, the joystick Pager used to play was disconnected from the computer. The monkey appears to go on playing the game using only his mind — playing a game of Pong with no joystick whatsoever.

 

My thoughts

This is one of the few pieces of technology that has launched recently that I think it extremely cool. Being able to play a video game just by thinking sounds awesome, and I can't wait until this technology progress further, and you can do even cooler things with it.

 

Sources

The Verge

 

[Beskamir]

Neat but I'm skeptical, a lot of musk's endeavors are extremely over exaggerated or hyped

[Salv8 (sam)]

an IOT device with the ability to interface with my mind?

this won't back fire at all!

[poochyena]

wow

This tech in very basic form has been around for at least a decade, but the accuracy and response time is unreal. I can't believe how far this has come.

[Drama Lama]

3 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

an IOT device with the ability to interface with my mind?

this won't back fire at all!

give me 10 bitcoin or I'll make your brain go poof

[VanayadGaming]

5 hours ago, Beskamir said:

Neat but I'm skeptical, a lot of musk's endeavors are extremely over exaggerated or hyped

Yeah, remember those total failures that Tesla or SpaceX are?... yeah...  I see Elon getting a lot of flak for his innovative ideas. Some fail, some work out. Usually they work out, but not in the time span he plans. 18 years ago everyone was laughing about a new 'private space company'. Then everyone was laughing at him getting a rocket to orbit. Then everyone was laughing and saying it is impossible to do reuse on rockets. Now everyone is shitting their pants that they are way too behind and can't catch up. SpaceX now has ~80% of the market share of the launch market. They have boosters that have been reused more than 7 or 8 times. And they are building Starship. Everyone is laughing about it now as well. We'll see in a few years. 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/europes-challenger-to-the-falcon-9-rocket-runs-into-more-delays/
 

Vulcan/Ariane 6 are planned competitors for the Falcon, not in any way for Starship. Which will replace it completely 
 

[Beskamir]

2 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

Yeah, remember those total failures that Tesla or SpaceX are?... yeah...  I see Elon getting a lot of flak for his innovative ideas. Some fail, some work out. Usually they work out, but not in the time span he plans. 18 years ago everyone was laughing about a new 'private space company'. Then everyone was laughing at him getting a rocket to orbit. Then everyone was laughing and saying it is impossible to do reuse on rockets. Now everyone is shitting their pants that they are way too behind and can't catch up. SpaceX now has ~80% of the market share of the launch market. They have boosters that have been reused more than 7 or 8 times. And they are building Starship. Everyone is laughing about it now as well. We'll see in a few years. 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/europes-challenger-to-the-falcon-9-rocket-runs-into-more-delays/
 

Vulcan/Ariane 6 are planned competitors for the Falcon, not in any way for Starship. Which will replace it completely 
 

The thing is, I wouldn't credit those successes to him but rather the people that he either employed or were at the company before, did most of the work and as payment got kicked out of the company. I'd highly recommend checking out this channel for a more comprehensive view of Musk https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgKWj1pn3_7hRSFIypunYog their sources seem really well researched and when I fact checked a few of them I found out they were indeed true so definitely worth looking into.

[BuckGup]

Absolutely amazing but I want to see it without the banana feeder as I can see the monkey grabbing it and moving it's arm and hand as if it was the joystick. This probably makes it much more effective and it would be more impressive if they strapped the monkey down or put him in a straight jacket

[StDragon]

Will he strap an ape into a giant mecha ape?

[Tristerin]

Someone will hack this monkey, and it will be throwing its shit everywhere!

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

Yeah, remember those total failures that Tesla or SpaceX are?... yeah...  I see Elon getting a lot of flak for his innovative ideas.

What ideas? "I want to make electric cars and rockets"? Wow, big brain, I bet nobody came up with that before. If you put enough good engineers in a room doing something they might come up with something decent... or not, if the thing you ask them to build is extremely stupid like, say, the hyperloop.

 

Musk is like Steve Jobs, he had no part in developing anything he sells and actively treats the people who do like shit, and yet he has a cult of dedicated fanboys ready to praise him for anything good that comes out of the companies he owns.

[Master Disaster]

5 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

Yeah, remember those total failures that Tesla or SpaceX are?... yeah...

He most certainly didn't invent electric vehicles or rockets. Heck he didn't invent reusable rockets either but I'll get to that later.

 

The hyperloop? An invention from almost 100 years ago, wildly impractical and much more dangerous than any existing transport system. We're now YEARS past the point he said it would be running and all we have is a metal pipe in a desert and a car subway system. This was his first 100x claim.

 

The boring company being able to dig a tunnel for 100x less than anyone else (his second 100x) claim. Yeah, turns out he was taking his cost of digging just the tunnel and comparing it with entire transport systems including tunnelling, tracking, building stations, adding electricity and air circulation and putting vehicles on tracks. You know, things that transport systems need to be more than a tunnel.

 

5 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

I see Elon getting a lot of flak for his innovative ideas. Some fail, some work out. Usually they work out, but not in the time span he plans. 18 years ago everyone was laughing about a new 'private space company'. Then everyone was laughing at him getting a rocket to orbit. Then everyone was laughing and saying it is impossible to do reuse on rockets.

Non of these things are either innovative or his ideas.

 

People weren't laughing at him for the idea of reusable rockets. They were laughing at him because, as it happens, the US government already investigated this back in the 60s (might have been the 70s). The idea was abandoned at around the point Elon is at now because the Govt scientist came to the conclusion that the it wasn't any more cost effective than using single use rockets. This was the entire reason why NASA created the space shuttles.

 

Lets talk about another one of his 100x claims (his third), getting payloads into LEO for 100x less than anybody else can. NASA have publicly stated that since they started using SpaceX cost per Kilo to LEO has increased, not decreased. What happened? Well again Elon was comparing the cost of payload only rockets to human certified rockets.

 

Starting to see a pattern here?

 

Lets not forget that when he started SpaceX he said that by now he would be doing space tourism, would have been to the moon and be almost ready to go to Mars.

 

5 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

Now everyone is shitting their pants that they are way too behind and can't catch up. SpaceX now has ~80% of the market share of the launch market. They have boosters that have been reused more than 7 or 8 times. And they are building Starship. Everyone is laughing about it now as well. We'll see in a few years. 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/europes-challenger-to-the-falcon-9-rocket-runs-into-more-delays/
 

Vulcan/Ariane 6 are planned competitors for the Falcon, not in any way for Starship. Which will replace it completely 
 

What the F does this even mean? Nasa have a good working relationship with SX, it literally benefits NASA if SX get newer and better equipment.

 

They have 80% of the payload delivery market, those are not human rated flights and having 80% of the market when you're the only player (outside of government funded agencies) is hardly an achievement or a surprise.

 

And those reusable boosters save nothing in terms of cost, if they did save money then why did he increase the per Kilo price to LEO last year? On the one hand he claims to be lowering the price of Space while on the other he keeps increasing his cost to orbit.

 

 

[strajk-]

10 hours ago, Beskamir said:

Neat but I'm skeptical, a lot of musk's endeavors are extremely over exaggerated or hyped

Which ones?

PayPal, Tesla, StarLink, SpaceX and now NeuroLink all groundbreaking and setting standards in their respective fields.

[Bombastinator]

12 hours ago, poochyena said:

wow

This tech in very basic form has been around for at least a decade, but the accuracy and response time is unreal. I can't believe how far this has come.

Has and hasn’t. The problem is a lot of it is faked.  There’s a whole bunch of “brain” stuff that actually records contractions of small muscles in the head. Biofeedback, not actual real “brain” stuff.  
Part of the issue is they work by detecting electrical signals and even a small facial muscle will totally overwhelm brain electrical detection.  The skull is not completely covered with muscles though, so stuff like EKG works by attaching to points NOT covered by muscle. 

 Every time you see a “helmet” that covers the temple or the forehead they’re putting sensors over muscles and it’s biofeedback not brain control.  Another way to tell is if the user makes a sort of “O” face when using it.  The issue there is biofeedback requires relaxation of those muscles as well as contraction.  

The biggest problem with electro detection of signals is the implantation.  The body tends to reject the implant.  This has been a problem for parapalegics in the past. There are parapalegics with literally hundreds of wires in their bodies because the wiring just doesn’t last very long and can’t be removed.  The hard part here isn’t data collection, it’s the interface.

 

I saw posts about Musk based stuff before on this subject and it was pretty worrisome because he was claiming to not go after paraplegic controls but autism.  The issue there is they were talking about involuntary implantation, and it was bluntly creepy as hell.  Autism is a potential life ruiner, but it also affects personality.  This research seems to be not going after that bit.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Bombastinator
Argh. Brain turned into “Brian”. Organ, not “the life of”. Ihateautocorrect

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, strajk- said:

Which ones?

PayPal, Tesla, StarLink, SpaceX and now NeuroLink all groundbreaking and setting standards in their respective fields.

Hyperloop being 100x faster than anything we currently.

Digging a tunnel for 100x less than anyone else can do it for.

Getting cargo into space for 100x less than anyone else can do it.

 

Also the effectiveness of Starlink is still to be determined, its not been deployed on a large enough scale for the usual satellite broadband issues to surface.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Hyperloop being 100x faster than anything we currently.

Digging a tunnel for 100x less than anyone else can do it for.

Getting cargo into space for 100x less than anyone else can do it.

 

Also the effectiveness of Starlink is still to be determined, its not been deployed on a large enough scale for the usual satellite broadband issues to surface.

I thought the big problem with satellite broadband was uplink speed.  If it’s actually congestion and he’s not even testing that it could be a problem. 

[BuckGup]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Musk is like Steve Jobs, he had no part in developing anything he sells

That's simply not true. I've never seen people get so mad at scientific innovation 

[Master Disaster]

23 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I thought the big problem with satellite broadband was uplink speed.  If it’s actually congestion and he’s not even testing that it could be a problem. 

The issue with satellite broadband has always been congestion. My understanding of Starlink (and if I'm wrong I welcome being corrected) is that Musk intends to brute force it.

 

When there is lots of data flying around it causes extra delay since satellites have to bounce data around between themselves and more data means more wait time per bounce. Musks solution is to put way more satellites up so there's always more than one covering an area, this allows the satellites to do in orbit load balancing which in theory should negate the wait time.

 

I don't believe he has tested it on large scale simply because I don't see how he could have. Its one of those deploy and hope the theory is sound scenarios.

 

I should add, I'm not here to bash Starlink. Out of all Musks endeavours SL is probably the most significant. Even if it does suffer from latency issues it still has the potential to help people in really desolate places get connected to high speed (if also high latency) broadband.

[wanderingfool2]

While not exactly a new concept that video does show a decent improvement to tracking compared to other demonstrations of similar tech I've seen in the past.  I don't think pong is anything impressive, but the cursor game was a lot more telling of what the future tech could provide to those without the ability to move their limbs.

 

42 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

-snip-

Going to go out a limb and say you follow ThunderF00t or rather that you watched ThunderF00t's video? (He cherry picked data, and got some of the simple math wrong)  Either way, a few notes.  Pricing does not equal cost, as is very evident in the current chip shortage and the wild high prices for GPU's.  SpaceX simply has to price theirs lower than their competitors.  SpaceX is currently providing human rated vessels at a cheaper price than anyone else

 

Who cares what Elon Musk says, it's like listening to Intel or others about what tech will be like in 5 years.  It's an optimistic approach, and it's good to set loafty goals (to strive towards hitting them).  It's like settings your own goals in life/interviewing in the 5 years from now question, do you say "I want to be slowly progressing up the ladder"...you say a more optimistic approach.

 

I'm not praising Elon Musk, but you have to give credit where credit is due, he knows how to assemble a team of people to get his goals done (maybe not in the time he wants it), but he has made progression within the market.

[Sauron]

18 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

That's simply not true. I've never seen people get so mad at scientific innovation 

It's 100% true. Musk isn't a rocket scientist nor does he know how to design a car.

[BuckGup]

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

It's 100% true. Musk isn't a rocket scientist nor does he know how to design a car.

Dude your bias is clouding your view of reality. No one said you have to like elon musk or what he says but your claims are ridiculous. I suggest throughly researching the history of him through various sources and looking at what he's done over the years. I mean the dude started selling software at the age of 12 and lived out of an office building and showered at the YMCA while working on Zip2. 

[SolarNova]

Aye i seen this.

Impressive indeed that Neuralink.

 

but ..the question is ..Can it run Crysis ?

 

 

[Sauron]

Just now, BuckGup said:

Dude your bias is clouding your view of reality. No one said you have to like elon musk or what he says but your claims are ridiculous. I suggest throughly researching the history of him through various sources and looking at what he's done over the years. I mean the dude started selling software at the age of 12 and lived out of an office building and showered at the YMCA while working on Zip2. 

I see no counterpoint here. I don't see how his showering practices have anything to do with being a rocket scientists but you do you I guess.

[Bombastinator]

33 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

The issue with satellite broadband has always been congestion. My understanding of Starlink (and if I'm wrong I welcome being corrected) is that Musk intends to brute force it.

 

When there is lots of data flying around it causes extra delay since satellites have to bounce data around between themselves and more data means more wait time per bounce. Musks solution is to put way more satellites up so there's always more than one covering an area, this allows the satellites to do in orbit load balancing which in theory should negate the wait time.

 

I don't believe he has tested it on large scale simply because I don't see how he could have. Its one of those deploy and hope the theory is sound scenarios.

 

I should add, I'm not here to bash Starlink. Out of all Musks endeavours SL is probably the most significant. Even if it does suffer from latency issues it still has the potential to help people in really desolate places get connected to high speed (if also high latency) broadband.

Could be done if it’s satellite cluster goes over cities and there are enough people in a small enough space trying to connect.  It is still just testing after all.  This has always seemed to me to be more about rural connection than urban connection though.  Cables are still more efficient in urban environments.  It’s the rural stuff where there are a lot fewer connections per area that matter.  It seems to me to be more a “this might not work very well” than a “this is impossible and is clearly a scam” though which fits with star link claims.   The entire testing system isn’t even all up yet though so there is gonna be some time.

[Bombastinator]

34 minutes ago, Sauron said:

It's 100% true. Musk isn't a rocket scientist nor does he know how to design a car.

Well, no.  He’s a business executive. So was jobs. Or basically every other executive of every other company on the planet. (A single or few exceptions does not disprove the rule)  You seem to be linking him with authoritative behavior without consulting the people that ARE experts. We’ve seen that happen in American politics and it’s a big mess, but that doesn’t mean that is happening here.   Doesn’t NOT mean it too, but it’s not indicative.  

 

What I find odd about Musk is his lack of missteps.  Edison had more missteps than Musk has.  Edison had a reputation as an inventor but he was really just a businessman too.  Look at the interaction between him and Tesla for proof of this.  
Tesla WAS an actual inventor, but that didn’t go very well in the end.