• KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The most immediate use case for a crude neural interface that managed to not trigger rejection and healing/scarring mechanisms would be things like restoring sight (this has been done experimentally, effectively giving people a low res greyscale sort of sight from a camera - note I was seeing stuff about this a good 10-15 years ago so it may be better now, actually) or interfacing with advanced prosthetics for people with spinal cord injuries (another thing that’s been managed experimentally, with exoskeleton braces for their legs that allow limited mobility - note I saw videos of this in action 5-8 years ago, so this may be further along than that now). That sort of thing is basically the limit of the technology at this point, which is honestly amazing but is still a far cry from the sci-fi dream of being able to integrate AR interfaces directly into one’s senses or do full dive immersive VR shit.

      Neuralink is far behind on even those fairly limited medical applications from what I’ve heard, and is basically just a grift by the engineers to pretend they’re working while cashing paychecks from the dumbest man on earth.

      • combat_brandonism [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        (this has been done experimentally, effectively giving people a low res greyscale sort of sight from a camera - note I was seeing stuff about this a good 10-15 years ago so it may be better now, actually)

        it’s worse, the for-profit company spun up to privatize the gains of that public research went bankrupt and put their patients into a cyberpunk hell of having to crowdsource parts and repairs for their cybernetic eyes

          • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Yet in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, he heard troubling rumors about the company and called his Second Sight vision-rehab therapist. “She said, ‘Well, funny you should call. We all just got laid off,’ ” he remembers. “She said, ‘By the way, you’re not getting your upgrades.’ ”

            WHAT THE FUCK

            WE HAVE BIONIC EYES BUT NO ONE IS MAKING THEM ANYMORE?? THEY “”““MOVED ON””“” TO OTHER TECHNOLOGY AND JUST GHOSTED HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE WHO ARE WALKING AROUND WITH UNMAINTAINED BIONIC IMPLANTS?? WE HAVE BIONIC FUCKING EYES AND MUSK WANTS TO FUND HIS MONKEY BRAIN TORTURE IMPLANTS INSTEAD???

            amerikkka-clap agony-mescaline amerikkka-clap

            The market works, folks!

            • Abraxiel@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              “Sorry, the abstract utility of you paying to have vision was judged to be less than that of our investors buying more rental properties.”

      • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t know that. Thanks.

        So Neuralink has not pit forward any concrete plans or expectations? I could respect the grift if they were not killing monkeys for it.

        • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          AFAIK they’ve been very vague about their plans in general, and what’s come out about the experiments they were doing points to them being the sorts of things that I was seeing in documentaries 15 years ago and that they’re just trying to look like they’re doing something by replicating old experimental research.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I don’t even know what their value proposition is

      soypoint-1 JUST LIKE THE CYBERPUNKERINOS soypoint-2

      That’s it. That’s the value proposition.