Monkey plays computer game with his mind...

[wheresmymojo]

I knew this kind of thing was in development but Elon Musk has actually released a video today of a monkey with two implants in its brain that allows it to interface its brain with a computer (to play a computer game with its mind).

These kind of things blow my mind - on the one hand there are so many amazing things this kind of technology could solve or help with, and on the other it's all very Black Mirror.

Interested to know other people's thoughts - will being able to interface brain's directly with tech turn out to be more positive or negative?

Could there be a day where we can work from our beds without opening our eyes as we write a technical manual straight from our mind?

Will we stop speaking altogether and sit in chairs communicating through 'mind emails'?

It's pretty trippy!

Elon Musk's brain implant firm teaches monkey to play Pong with its mind
news.sky.com/story/elon-musks-brain-implant-firm-teaches-monkey-to-play-pong-with-its-mind-12270146

Apparently there are already monkeys who drive wheelchairs with their brains and can feed themselves with an electronic spoon.

It would be awesome if I could clean the house with my brain and no actual movement. I feel like the completion of household chores is waaaay too manual for our current technology levels even without brain interfaces.

I reckon if men did more housework we'd have a lot of that shit more automated by now and could be doing better things with our time.

I find this frightening. If computers are linked to our brains to a greater extent (which presumably is the aim) then in the wrong hands privacy and humanity could be things of the past. I hesitate to say ban the research completely, because possible medical developments could benefit a lot of people in the future. But it would need to be very carefully controlled.

Poor monkey. Must be frightening and painful. I don't know that this is what I'd be researching if I had Musk's level of funding.

It's a no from me. I won't even have a bloody Alexa in the house so knowing that something like this exists makes my skin crawl. I've had to stop watching black mirror because it all just got too plausible. No monkeys with brain implants, no artificial wombs, no creepily attempting to download your wife's personality to an AI, none of that, or any of the other. A big fat no to it all.

What scares me is that private companies now have such incredible levels of wealth that they're now able to run vast programmes of work advancing this kind of technology with no ethical or legal oversight.

I very much doubt that there are any laws limiting what tech advancements can be made in this area as the Govts aren't even fully aware of what they're doing and so don't have laws to govern it yet.

Also humans be humans so will we end up in a situation of two classes.

The rich who can afford to download instantaneous knowledge on any topic and control anything with their minds.

And then the 'old school humans' who don't have those superpowers because they can't afford them. So what happens to them? Are they totally redundant because they have no value to the other class? Do they become 'grunts' who do menial tasks where feeding them and disposing of them for any illness is cheaper than a robot?

And apparently I've just seen one company has already been able to 'upload' knowledge learned by one rat and 'download' it to another rat in a different city who then learned it immediately

@ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings

It's a no from me. I won't even have a bloody Alexa in the house so knowing that something like this exists makes my skin crawl. I've had to stop watching black mirror because it all just got too plausible. No monkeys with brain implants, no artificial wombs, no creepily attempting to download your wife's personality to an AI, none of that, or any of the other. A big fat no to it all.

I thought this was in development so people with locked in symdrone and other similar conditions could communicate. I understand peoples' concerns but this does seem like a positive development for these individuals.

Ah OK that makes sense Woodpecker22. I guess developing this kind of tech for medical needs is a positive thing, but its hard to keep these things in their original box. Probably I've just been reading too many futuristic dystopia novels haha.