Social Media Doesn't Have High Hopes For First Human Trials Of Elon Musk's Experimental 'Brain Chip' Technology Neuralink
Elon Musk, an entrepreneur who has struggled to solve traffic, exploded several rockets and put self-driving cars on the road that are "almost" as safe as cars driven by actual people, is reportedly looking for human volunteers to get one of his Neuralink "brain chips" implanted into their brain.
Neuralink, which is owned by Musk, recently posted a job opening for a "Clinical Trial Coordinator," which most believe is for the first human clinical trial studies on brain chips. Neuralink says the brain chips will be designed to help people power electronics with the power of their minds. In April 2021, the company showed the project off by demonstrating how a macaque with their brain chip could play Pong by simply looking at the screen — later spawning the Neuralink Monkey meme.
The technology could be a tremendous benefit for those without the use of their limbs, and Musk has promised some grand ambitions for human memory. "In the future, you'll be able to save and replay memories," Musk said in a Neuralink presentation. "You could potentially download them into a new body or into a robot body."
The news generated two types of predominant reactions on social media. The first was that, at least in cinema, brain chips tend not to go well. Comparisons to Black Mirror episodes that center around the ethical implications of brain chips flooded Twitter after the news started going viral.
The second major type of reaction was anticipation that the brain chips, much like some of Musk's other projects, are likely to underdeliver.
It looks like Neuralink aims to get its chips into brains by year's end, but the company does have a history of overpromising. In 2019, Musk said he believed he would get chips into brains by the end of 2020.
Share Pin
Iso
Can't wait until music publishers and the like can DRM strike my memories for having copyrighted material.
Phhase
Do you want cyberpunk dystopia? Because this is how you get cyberpunk dystopia.
Jon the Wizard
Anyone remember that one scene in Kingsman: The Secret Service where all the bad guy's guests' heads explode? I feel that's what this is going to end up doing to us.
ign0tonous
Our heads exploding would be the least of our worries when they could make our brains receive a small shock or something like that whenever we think anything they don't want us to think, essentially turning us into a society of servants for whoever's in power.
BreadCalled
You could've mocked many things about Elon, his stupid loop system that failed miserably, his really bad memes and hot takes on twitter, his SNL skits, whatever the fuck neuralink is, or even his cultish followers. But to go and say "launch rockets that tend to explode" is the most moronic thing I've heard so far.
katakis
>It seems like a grand ambition for someone whose rockets tend to explode.
Man, so many things to mock Musk about and you chose the one single venue that's actually working really damn good, doesn't have any major failures, and revitalizes the entire industry.
Good going, tech-illiterate intern.
Ass Railroad
I mean I was going to be that nerd when I saw that caption, but I might as well write it out.
The last few rockets to explode at SpaceX were the Starship landing tests, where exploding was kind of expected. It is an in development vehicle, and the stuff that blew up was considered prototypes. There have been some Falcon 9 landing losses, but landing is still considered a secondary objective for the F9, and a successful mission can still occur safely even if an F9 blows up at landing… as long as it doesn't blow up during or before launch its a success.
So the last regular non-prototype in service SpaceX rocket to blow up during launch was a Falcon 9 in 2020… but THAT was also planned since it was the Crew Dragon abort demo and the rocket blowing up due to pressure load was expected.
So the last Falcon 9 to blow up failing its mission completely was… AMOS-6 during a static fire in 2016. So its been six years since any launch/pre-launch Falcon 9 explosions, two years since a planned Falcon 9 explosion, and the rest of the explosions have either been during landing attempts on the F9 (which is not a mission critical phase and still has a 90% success rate) and on the Starship tests which is still considered a prototype vehicle.
ConspiracyNut
Somebody hasn't watched Toy Story.
dfdggrg
Hasn't watched Don't Look Up*