Neuralink is a wizard hat | Tim Urban and Lex Fridman
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Tim Urban: Elon Musk, ...
Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
- Audible: audible.com/lex to get $9.95 a month for 6 months
- Paperspace: gradient.run/lex to get $15 credit
- Coinbase: coinbase.com/lex to get $5 in free Bitcoin
- InsideTracker: insidetracker.... and use code Lex25 to get 25% off
- NetSuite: netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour
GUEST BIO:
Tim Urban is the author and illustrator of the popular blog 'Wait But Why'.
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: lexfridman.com...
Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: lexfridman.com...
Full episodes playlist: • Lex Fridman Podcast
Clips playlist: • Lex Fridman Podcast Clips
SOCIAL:
- Twitter: / lexfridman
- LinkedIn: / lexfridman
- Facebook: / lexfridman
- Instagram: / lexfridman
- Medium: / lexfridman
- Reddit: / lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: / lexfridman
After being in a wheelchair for twenty years I hope and pray something like this changes humanity. I wouldn’t wish what I live with on anyone.
Amen brother. Hoping for the best for you and me both!
Tweet at Elon, maybe he'll hook you up
I’m with you man, i hope it’s applications applies to persistent pain, I don’t take pills, I never will, I just want to feel normal like you man, i hope we will see the day and be the pioneers of the devices that help many future generations. I want this so badly, I’m praying for us brother
As a neuroscientist and neural engineer, I absolutely hate the analogy of "super brain" and using the example of "low bandwidth of speech". "Speech" is only one part of communication, another major part is "organizing thoughts", which is pre-requisite for any information to be transmitted. And there's also the part about understanding the information being transmitted, whether it's through speech or electrical stimulations.
Having a BMI does not help with the "thought organizing" step, which is often the limiting step of communication in the first place -- speech can be really really fast if one already knows what he wants to convey.
Transmitting "thoughts" into someone's brain directly is possible but highly improbable. For example, how would one produce stimulation patterns for the sematic concept "computer"? The concept is stored in a distributed fashion in the brain's synapses, and this would differ for individuals. Practically it would require one to know how each concept being transmitted is encoded in the receiver's brain regions.
A much easier way is to stimulate the auditory cortex with the sounds of a word. And similarly, record from the speech motor cortex for silent speech. But then, that's not any better than existing, normal human speech.
BMI has soooo many uses, helping with paralysis and even memory prosthesis. But "solving the low bandwidth" problem of speech is a load of shit.
Maybe a future AI could use a direct brain link to better understand us? I agree with you about the difficulty.
Neuralink's founders, actual engineers and scientists (so, NOT Musk), always stated that they were trying to develop a medical devices aimed at helping with certain handicaps. All the "playing video games with your mind" and other brain function enhancement bullshit were just brought by Musk as a PR stunt, as he always does.
@@arnaudray4446 A PR stunt to get engineers? Or a PR stunt to be contrasted with sociopath Peter Thiel and Christian Angermayer’s Blackrock Neurotech which actually exists today? Through thought alone, text typed at 90 characters per minute, and moving a prosthetic arm and wheelchair tech just received breakthrough designation status.
Yeah, if their goal is to have a "super brain", what needs to happen is a radical transformation of the human brain itself. Not more stimulation to it. More stimulation doesn't equal more bandwidth or faster or lossless communication.
Also, the interviewee doesn't understand language. If we want to communicate where there's less misinterpretation, use jargon or use math. If you want to communicate more information in a shorter time, again use more specialized words and well constructed sentences. Verbal or written communication as it is, is sufficient to communicate. If that's still not fast enough, don't expect the human brain as it is to construct coherent ultrafast language. Sorry, even kids have limits. You don't see two kids rapping at super fast Eminem speeds to each other, do you?
What if instead of well formed coherent thoughts were transmitted between two individuals, unconscious and subconscious messy incoherent transmissions were transmitted. I wonder if the two individuals connected together could form a coherent thought together. Again, maybe the human brain isn't capable of that, but maybe with right mixture of the right signals in the right order, a combined coherent thought could be outputted. It would be interesting to try that. There would be no conscious ownership of the thought by either individual since this mixture and processing happened below consciousness. I guess since we think of consciousness as thoughts, maybe a new conscious would be present.
@@johnahooker the things you listed have been around for two decades. Blackrock was one of the first FDA approved human implants and have been involved in a lot of these breakthroughs. It's great they are getting more investments to advance their technologies (without the weird PR stories like Tim Urban). Nothing psychopathic about it
Can’t wait for unskippable mind ads
Bro this sounds like a nightmare
That's a very common way of thinking
Urban misunderstands his own thoughts. He thinks thoughts aren't lossy. They are. You can't just beam the bridge you are thinking to make onto the screen because you aren't thinking of a holistic thing but of fractions.
Here's a simple example:
Think of a flamingo.
You can see it perfectly right?
Zoom in, pan around, make sure you've really thought it through.
You have it? You are confident you looked over it's whole body?
Ok, so now I'm going to ask some questions about what you saw.
Which way did the knees bend?
What shape is the wing?
What colors are on the beak, and where does it transition into pink?
How does it transition to feathers from the beak?
What type of skin is around the eye?
What color and texture is the skin on its legs?
What shape is the tail?
What color are the eyes?
How big are the irises and pupils?
Where is the seam for the opening of the top/bottom parts of the beak?
Now, it doesn't matter whether or not you flamingo was anatomically correct. What you should have realized was that several pieces I mentioned were NEVER rendered by you brain at all. You glossed over them with some vaguely colored haze because 1 flamingo body has far too many details for your brain to render or even keep in a low-res focus.
Don't believe me? We can keep going.
How long were the wing feathers compared to the torso feathers? What shape was each type of feather? Yet, i bet you can tell me color difference and texture difference with great accuracy.
Probe your mind and actually be analytical about your thoughts and you will see there are pieces you maintain in great detail and then a LOT of vague blur.
The same is true of language. It isn't that your thoughts are perfect and your speech is lossy. When they ask you about tth movie, all you have is vague chemistry. As you scan through the movie in your mind, all you have are lossy highlights and a vague impression of how it made you feel and a few things it made you think.
Is speech more lossy? Maybe a little... but mostly it is just more time consuming.
Yeah I think this is easily missed. What even would it mean to somehow transfer your opinion of a movie into someone else's head? I know this is futuristic speculation and that we will have more knowledge about these things some decades from now, but sometimes it feels as much like a philosophical issue as a technical one.
What is an opinion, what does it consist of? Feelings that can't be put into words? How will we know when we're able to extract your feelings about a movie? Ask you to think about Furious 9, scan your brain's configuration, then have you think of something else but thn suddenly inject the previously scanned configuration, and ask if what you feel now is your opinion of that movie? This sounds all kinds of messy, but now you also have to consider... No two brains are exactly the same. It's not like brains are mass produced computers all with the same configuration. Your brain my simply not be physically capable of producing the conscious feelings that mine produces when I think of Shrek.
But as with the flamingo, when you try to think of your opnion, there may just not be as much conscious content there as you let yourself believe. In fact, trying to use words to describe such feelings may actually be a way of elaborating and embellishing a concept that on a neural/introspective level is quite basic... Perhaps words actually give many opinions more form, not less.
@@olaf3140 you deserve a trophy for best YT reply ever!
So rarely when I comment something long and nuanced does someone reply eloquently clearly demonstrating that they completely understood my point, let alone add additional salient points.
I just wanted to express my gratitude :-)
Both you and @Olaf make wonderful points. These types of things are talked about right now as if they are just as easy as flipping a switch, but the amount of nuance necessary for decoding signals from one brain and moving them to another is staggering when you're talking about an actual brain implant.
There is another thing here as well. The person receiving the message. Have they actually seen said thing that they are "receiving" from the other's visual cortex? If you have never seen a flamingo in your life, how could you possibly know that it is what you are looking at in your minds eye (this is assuming that anyone can get the visual mapping correct)? It would then need to be accompanied by either words, hearing, smells, touch, and situational experience of that flamingo, which are completely out of the scope of the visual cortex. You could understand more about a flamingo simply by watching a documentary for 15 minutes. It makes the argument of "convenience" weak for the neuralink.
How is it more convenient to get surgery so that I don't have to spend a couple minutes watching a video on my phone? Is it really worth, not having to carry my phone in my pocket, or practice patience so I can get home to my laptop and look it up? Is it worth changing the way my brain is wired, not to mention adding a gaping hole in the privacy and security of my own mind, just so that I can be slightly more lazy about not having to buy a phone? What happens when they upgrade the hardware? If they're anything like Apple, I'd be in surgery at least once a year.
This could be solved with the help of AI by having it access our neurotransmitters. Of course it has to be much much more nuanced than any AI we've built so far, but this is an engineering problem which in theory could be solved.
The extent of Neuralink impact if it gets implemented is quite scary.
@@natecodesai I think the argument of convenience is tied to an assumption of exponential tech growth.
Just as it was more convenient for NASA to have a mathematician calculate trajectories for the Apollo missions than to use their massive and costly computers, whereas now kids can simulate with great accuracy on a handheld device running space sim games.
But your points are well taken and agreed with. We cannot assume exponential growth. Not only is the tech unproven in the first place (only rudimentary sends have been tested: 0 receives), but additionally the tech could be bottlenecked on the biological side. So any such assumption is just a thought exercise at the moment until more proofs of concept are done.
Coming from a neuroscientist: don’t get your hopes up. We are so far from the kind of stuff he is describing. Even playing music “to our brain” by stimulating auditory cortex won’t happen anytime soon without some major unforeseen advances. Tim Urban has no idea what he’s talking about in this context.
Yeah I could tell. Plus, what happens WHEN there's a bug and music is playing at maximum volume in your head and you can't turn it off - or some other such harrowing Black Mirror scenario?
can you elaborate more on the difficulties involved in inputing signals like sound and image to the brain?
We must develop a process to read the brain accurately, shrink that process to make it commercially viable, then gather a lot of data. (15yrs? 2035?)
We then need to build some kind of process to write data to the specific parts of the brain we wish, without screwing the brain up. (15+ Yrs -> Forever... 2050?)
We then need to shrink that process down to commercially viable levels. And then we need to read/write to a lot of brains to build a lot of data. (HAH! What? 30 yrs? 2080?)
And then with a lot of practice doing that, we should be able to build more complex interfaces. I'm assuming helping disabled people would be the primary focus for 99% of this for most of the next few decades of BMI development.
So, 2100 for the first true 2-way "iPhone" Brain-Machine Interface, perhaps?
I think it won't be much of a wait however if we're able to do something like reverse ageing. Within the next 50 years that seems possible. So, for many people under then age of 40, 2100 may be within your lifetime.
Also, Super intelligent AI is entirely unpredictable. So, who knows what happens if that arises before 2100.
"Tim Urban has no idea what he’s talking about in this context." You may be a neuroscientist but it doesnt seem that listening is your strong suit. Nowhere in this clip does Tim say this technology is 10, 50, or even 100 years away. He's simply talking about the long term goals of this technology.
@@lostinbravado Where are you getting these timelines? I can give you the exact same timeline but on a scale of 20-30 years instead of a century. See, this is not constructive at all. I’m looking for break downs of specific problems in inputing audio or video to the brain that presents an insurmountable challenge in the near future.
I already hear songs in my head… 😆
It's tinnitus, mate
Also this could be a way for AI to experience feelings beyond human language. A shared experience.
Does AI experience feelings now with human language? I guess you interpret Alexa's human language responses as if she's having feelings. I don't think she feels anything.
Machines don't have feelings, learned that from the Teerminator.
@@after_midnight9592 ai can simulate consciousness
@@stant7122 AI can simulate consciousness
AI’s are going to be having sex in our brains. Hot.
There will be ads, so many intrusive ads
My first song to listen will be : “ In your head, in your head, in your head .... they are cryiiiing”
Headline 2035: Neuralink hacked, man kills self over aplified Miley Cryus song (that no one else could hear) playing on max volume/repeat in his head.
That was the first thing I thought of. This guy is kind of a fool.
@@clapdrix72 bruh
I have so many questions around it.
You guys answered 1 of them.
Thanks guys.
It troubles me that we as a society would want this. None of the things he listed as benefits seem like benefits at all, even if they were possible. Why would anyone want to enable other people to see their thoughts? Why would anyone want to see what other people really think!? The implications are horrifying!
I have a spinal cord injury so I really want this, but I only want it to fix my paralysis. I don't want any of this super brain shit
If I had a super brain i could help solve some of humanities biggest problems. But I’m sure most would just want it for selfish means. I’m not even sure biology allows us to do things for selfless means. Maybe we’re doomed maybe not.
@@JoshuaValentine I disagree. Next time you go out for drinks with your friends ask them, if something like neuralink became available to the public would they get it. I would bet an overwhelming majority would say yes. I would also bet that the more you ask people in younger and younger demographics the more yes’s you will get.
@@JoshuaValentine I guess time will tell but I have had some very shocking conversations with people over the years about topics like this thinking I knew what the common answer would be and found out I was wrong. At the end of the day look at the amount of people that knowingly poison or expose themselves to harmful things and then apply to something like this. Technology like this will be used to push the virtual reality vision into high gear which I can only imagine whomever reaches that point first will be the next wealthiest man or woman.
@@JoshuaValentine people don’t like it in general because of how clunky they are not to mention our current state of VR gives people motion sickness. With neuralink we would actually be able to push towards actual immersion where as of right now you put on a POS box strapped to your head and move with controllers in your hand. I truly think you are underestimating the leap in consumer based technology that will come from this.
Fantastic guest!! Very interesting speaker. He’s easy to follow and gets right to the point.
We live in a society where some people can't afford health care, homes, and other basic stuff and they are speaking about how eventually everyone should be able to afford neuralink, how about sorting the basic problems first 😂
How would you do it?
@@1dering11 like many countries in Europe do.
@@DzaMiQ how?
@@1dering11 tldr (its a topic for a long discussion)... Redistribute wealth more efficiently. How so? We have a lot of examples in Europe.
And 95% of those people have a smart phone, which is the target cost for nuralink
So, basically a stepping stone towards a nice Borg-ish collective.Got it.
Resistance is futile.
Humanity is most certainly not in a place where such technology can be used for good.
@@suedeB05 So too is your reply. Fart💨
This honestly sounds like a disaster for humanity.
Nothing could go wrong either, that's what's so perfect!! ;)
Thought deeply about Neuralink....once the process is streamlined I would volunteer if it can solve my disability caused by cerebral stroke a decade back...it will be a boon for individuals like me .... presently I am marooned in the society of billions.
"In a time not distant, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired. The perfection of this means of reading thought will create a revolution for the better in all our social relations." Nikola Tesla
It's not a question of whether the tech can be great for some people. It's a question of the standard application, which means it will become a standard, which means no one will be able to escape the downside. Technology science is neutral; its application is prejudiced in the extreme. Of all people, Tesla would have been aware of this, as well.
@@dvdly how is it prejudice at the extreme?
@@lingzhao5719 By "prejudiced in the extreme" in relation to technology I mean that it is people motivated by financial reward who apply its use, i.e. people prejudiced toward their own financial gain with no motivation toward an application of the science for the general benefit of society. It's why, for example, the world wide web, which has the positive application of connecting people around the world in open communication is nevertheless prejudiced by the financial motivations of social media, whose only goal is addicting people to their product even if it means fueling hatred and social division.
I have epilepsy. I can’t have an operation to help me. I’d love something that can dampen the neurones down as they begin to fire up in a rapid manner. This would stop my seizures before I know they are happening. For people like myself, it could change our lives. No more medication that makes every day crap.
How come that not EVERYBODY understand that it's a terrible madness.
The hardware and processing involved in a person's hearing is probably so unimaginably "squishy" that direct input of sounds into brains may not be nearly as straightforward as getting the signals to the right places. On the other hand, AI could well make mince-meat of the hurdles.
Part 1 of this series introduces you to the people from the August 2020 press conference, and those who founded NeuraLink from the beginning. This episode is pretty much prerequisite reading before going into Part 2, and gives you an understanding of why NeuraLink has been a revolving door.
NEURALINK Pt1 - Who Is NeuraLink?
th-cam.com/video/BvmA_gQ-95c/w-d-xo.html
NEURALINK Pt2 - What Is NeuraLink?
th-cam.com/video/9IB-kD0BoOQ/w-d-xo.html
ELON MUSK is like the BS of Climate Change and COVID restriction and only Fauci is right... Only , Elon does it so much better that you do not notice it.
What I'm curious about is privacy. What if you're trying to communicate brain-to-brain about headphone designs, and instead of just sending the designs, you also send to the other connected brains some images of last night's dinner? Or a dear childhood memory that you haven't been able to stop thinking about the past few days? This question touches on the element of mental control - if we have this tech, will be always be able to precisely share and control what we want to, or will there be some mental spillover? Food for thought
Surprise D pics will be the biggest hurdle they have to jump. Lol
That's what I've always wondered too
Add core reaction and correction…As a human, living through what we know about human behaviour, how will this tool be used for anything except malice and profit?
Fair enough, but one argument regarding the whole brainstorm thing: how long would it take to have brainstorms using just brains without any people attached to them? Sounds like the next logical step.
This will lead to the archeotech from Warhammer that eventually evolves to the Butcher’s Nails...
Tim, the idea of having OTHER PEOPLE'S distraction monkeys inserted directly into my brain -- THAT is what is truly TERRIFYING!
Dont loose the Momentum on the ufo topic
Come on, be real. This will just help the elites more
My anxiety disorder devoloped when I was 15 hopefully nueralink can halo one day
YES
Shared thinking sounds terrible. Right now we have the ability to filter our thoughts. We think about all kinds of things. Thoughts pop in to our heads all of the time. And then we filter those thoughts and we use speaking to present the version of some of the things that we are thinking to another person. But we filter out the things that we may not want the other person to know. I guess perhaps we could figure out how to do that also with shared thinking but my immediate response is that this would be the end of language and would lead to all kinds of weird interactions between people and their minds. We would lose the privacy of being able to have a thought just in our own head without anyone knowing about it.
Great stuff
When I think about how many useless, unrelated and “inappropriate” things are going on in my head simultaneously alongside what I’m supposed to be focusing on I can’t help but think the biggest hurdle being how to still allow people to self-censor unrelated emotions or thoughts.
remember planktons helmets?...
Nero link no need for study no need for exams. I know karate 😂
But does it levitate?
Future schools:
“Okay kids turn your neural links off I don’t want you kids cheating”
Of course this comes out right after negative publicity around Neurolink. Good job Elon PR team
Lex, for all he's got that speaks well for him, is so near Musk worship that it renders his entire project suspect.
@@dvdly what’s weird is the vitriol and venom for musk who although admittedly is primitive in his social etiquette, is one of the most indispensable minds on earth. The guy is an engineer himself. Or at the very least his physics degree enables him to at least be able to understand the practical, technological or scientific hurdles of his projects. When people are questioning why some of the worlds brightest minds admire Elon it’s perhaps because maybe just maybe the guy who started a rocket company and Tesla is actually hyper intelligent and at the very least more capable than every two bit loser in the TH-cam comments section.
@@dspirea QED. Well done!
@@dvdly eat dirt ;)
I don't think putting everyone's mind out in the open for everyone else to read is a good idea.
We have social media and that turned out to be a disaster.
Android phones are spyware, neuralink would be spyware by a factor of trillion, if all your thoughts and emotions are beamed around and stored online. And that's read-only, what about write access? Overwrite and delete memories? Learning a new skill just by downloading an app? Everyone's a surgeon all of a sudden.
Some lines should not be crossed.
What the fuck, so peanuts are actually beans?
If we get to that point we could probably hear sounds never heard before. Like super heavy bass without the possibility of getting hearing damage, would be cool listening to music without having to worry about what our ears can handle. "Brainstep music"
Or things like experiencing what it would have sounded like when one of the atomic bombs went off in Japan, and maybe the military or intelligence services would find a use for it too. For example if you can make people experience pain/discomfort without actually harming them physically, would be a very useful way to torture people, especially if everyone and their mother has to get one of those implants if they don't want to be left behind intellectually/technologically.
Maybe the implant isn't connected to regions of the brain that causes/experiences pain, but hearing 1000 Hiroshima bombs go off for hours could be perceived as unconformable as well.
Or maybe torture (for intel) will be a thing of the past and we can just wait until the inner voice slips up. It is way easier to not say the info than it is to not think about the info at all. Especially when the topic is brought up.
Thats interesting! What is 'painfully loud' when you remove damage to the ear drums? Would it still be intolerable?
@@mattmitchell1646 I'd imagine that it's possible to create sounds so loud that you can only think about the sound and nothing else.
There exist people who consider suicide because their tinnitus is too extreme. If you have tinnitus your brain isn't even if purposefully trying to create the most uncomfortable sound possible. If we aren't bound to what ears can handle then purposefully designing such a sound could be effective.
I believe that we will either get for free or at cheap price for neuralink. As for knowledge packs, either commoners will able to get basic knowledge or only can use it as a portable pc/os/controller to control electronics gadgets that's all.
So the “Uni-Mind” WILL eventually exist…
Ladies and gentlemen, I now introduce you too, WetWare.
I feel like the tech is here too early. We're too stupid
Dont trust it at all.
I don't trust you
The Neurolink software must be opensourced in the sence that the source code is published in the open each time it's updated both on the device, app on the phone, and all servers associated with it. And no random add inserts lol
Neurahype
Way too "black mirror" for me... No thanks
Oppresss the world why a few make wizard hats
Harry Potter reference?
If we put music straight to our brains, what will happen evolutionary to our ears?, or pictures and eyes etc.
Sex partners will share sensory information
Language is canceled!!!
Elon and the Neuralink team have already killed plenty of monkeys just trying to figure this out, so no point in turning back now.
Ha
This would not be a wizard hat
In the UC Davis experiments, Neuralink killed 15 out of the 23 mice that were used to test their prototype.
Monkeys not mice. Neurotoxic Bioglue didn’t help.
@@johnahooker monkeys, yes. Crazy stuff.
@Culture is a program you obviously don’t know how scientific research works. If we would follow your advice we would still be dying from flesh wounds…
Didn’t hear to anything new
That’s some really interesting non explanation. Dude starts with calling it a wizard hat so what would you expect?
Talking to your cat ... just a thought. Why limit this to humans? We could finally understand animals and they might get a IQ Boost aswell...crazy stuff
This is sounding more like sleeve of wizard...it's fucked.
The Tomorrow people.
It's one thing to make something that serves mankind.
And if there's benefits that's great.
But without talking about UFOs and not addressing the elephant in the room.
My concern is there being humans on Earth with chips in their brains that I have to serve.
Neuralink is a joke.
I'm done
Well for me I would beam it up then all the suddon a hairy flacid phallus apears out of nowere becuse in the meeting I was thinking "DONT THINK THAT DONT THINK THAT!!!!!"
All fun and games til someone drops an EMP on the modified population. I bet the short circuiting of the device in the fragile human brain spells disaster. I'll stick with God's stock temple he blessed me with thanks.
Until AI or quantum computers get here all we can do is keep poking it with a stick
I play songs in my head all the time, without the need for elons bloody hat
when are you guys finding out that he is the most prolific scammer? | I can already hear the excuses "nevermind, he made us think" ^^
Edit:
oh, you want facts from me? only if you stay and have a discussion
Aaaagggghhhh! Where are the fact checkers? Haha. It's honestly dangerous how misleading this take is. Reading the comments makes me sad too because real people who wish for help are putting there hopes in this. There are so many problems with the fundamental assumptions underlying this opinion. Sensation, perception, thought, learning, electronics, and artificial intelligence are all misrepresented here.
You think an uneducated gender-studies fact checker at snopes has any idea about AI or brain implants?
Hard no
Good. It's a choice not forced.
You could speak in coded images, or learn to read hieroglyphics and speak in code in case someone is monitoring your thought images 😎
😂😂🦄🦄