Musk has stuck a Neuralink device into a person’s head. His announcement isn’t particularly informative.
The first human received an implant from @Neuralink
yesterday and is recovering well.
Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.
…promising neuron spike detection
? Do you realize how meaningless that is? I’ve jammed steel pins into a cockroach’s butt and gotten “promising neuron spike detection”. I’ve stuck sharpened tungsten wires into a zebrafish’s hindbrain and gotten “promising neuron spike detection”. This is a trivial accomplishment. Living brains are big sparking balls of continuous electrical activity, it’d be stunning if you put a wire in one and couldn’t get some measure of current.
This being Elon Musk, he continues with promises for the future rather than giving any details on what his company has actually accomplished.
In follow-up tweets sent in between arguing about video games and bantering with far-right influencers, the businessman said the first Neuralink product was called Telepathy.
”It enables control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking,” he wrote. “Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs. Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal.”
Musk has a long history of bold promises but a spottier record of fulfilling them. In 2016, he wrongly predicted that within two years it would be possible for a Tesla to drive autonomously from New York to Los Angeles. That year he said his SpaceX rocket company would fly to Mars in 2018 – it still has not.
Don’t forget the Hyperloop!
So can we expect this patient to be making calls to the press with his mind? Musk is not going to say, but I will boldly predict that…no, they will not. I will further guarantee that it will do none of the things Tesla PR promises.
