Elon lied about the monkeys — and he shouldn’t be trusted to put his Neuralink chips in human brains.

“They are claiming they are going to put a safe device on the market, and that’s why you should invest,” Ryan Merkley at the Physicians Committee, told Wired. “And we see his lie as a way to whitewash what happened in these exploratory studies.”

Really heartbreaking reading what happened to the monkeys.

People quite rightly think of Elizabeth Holmes as a fraud for making false medical claims about what the Theranos machines could do. So why aren’t Elon’s claims at Neuralink being held to the same level of scrutiny?

https://futurism.com/neoscope/terrible-things-monkeys-neuralink-implants

@technology #Elon #Neuralink #ElonMusk

    • lemmylommy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Or desperate. Forget the investors, Elon lied to those who saw it as a last ditch effort to beat their diseases.

      • Holyginz@lemmy.world
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        Ah damn I didn’t think of that. I feel for them, but elon is the last person they should trust for that. I don’t honestly know who they should trust these days. But techbros aren’t one of them.

        • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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          As a general rule of thumb, you should trust that a tech bro will con you by taking a normal idea and throwing around a bunch techno jargon to make it seem like cutting edge technology.

    • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Yup. You have to be a special kind of trusting to allow a company to modify your brain.

      Banal attempts at mind control, crude as they are, are bad enough already.

      • Holyginz@lemmy.world
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        Honestly, interface chips in our brains would be a logical step at some point in the future. But hell would need to freeze, then thaw, then freeze over again before I trust anything of elons being inserted in my brain.

      • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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        It’s easy to say as someone with a healthy brain. A blind, deaf or a paralyzed person might feel different once there truly is a way to get your sight back with this technology.

        • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          I don’t have a healthy brain? Could be better could be worse but no fucking way would I let a private company with a shady safety record run by an insane megalomaniac fuck with it.

          Anything that’s plugging into your brain just can’t be controlled by a small group of people with the sole motive of line goes up. Open research and public ownership are required. The consequences are just too terrible otherwise.

        • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
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          “Truly” is the whole catch here. The problem is that Elon could very well prey on the people who have no other options. We are far from having evidence that it truly works.

          This is definitely one of those procedures that should need solid proof to be legal. It would be tragic for these people to die over some guy’s “trust me bro”.

      • _number8_@lemmy.world
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        i don’t particularly wish torture on anyone but if any of his techbro dipshit followers want to sign up…

    • Jlafs@lemmy.world
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      Maybe they need the brains of their patients to have fewer wrinkles and have been playing 5D chess this whole time to ensure that happens

  • Lmaydev@programming.dev
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    Let’s not pretend Musk has fucking clue what’s going on or the science behind it.

    He isn’t down in trenches making discoveries. That’s just the image he presents.

    He buys companies and lets the actually competent people do the work while claiming credit.

    He’s been doing it since PayPal.

    He’s not a genius, he just has enough money to get actual geniuses to work for him.

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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      Someone put it well, if insensitively, about Sam Bankman Fried (FTX etc):

      Not actually smart but just LARP-ing the “Aspy genius” persona.

      However accurate that take is or offensive, I think it captures something about how nerd culture has gone mainstream and how it’s perceived.

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        ‘nerd’ has disappeared as an insult now that we’re all on the computer all the time

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            I think that’s pretty romanticised.

            Assuming they leave their home town many end up in sales or similar making really good money.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      He buys companies and lets the actually competent people do the work while claiming credit.

      Sometimes he actively interferes with those competent people too.

    • Piers@beehaw.org
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      He buys companies and lets the actually competent people do the work while claiming credit.

      No he doesn’t. He meddles and interferes constantly and convinces himself that he’s adding value by doing so. That’s why Neuralink is dangerous. Meta or Alphabet or Microsoft or whoever can be trusted to let the scientists and the legal team ensure there’s very little risk of everything blowing up in their face horribly. Elon’s little empire is constantly on the verge of an absolute disaster. I would not be remotely surprised if Neuralink messes everything up so much that it sets back brain implants and BCI’s in general by decades. Purely because Elon can’t just supply the people at his businesses with the tools they need then get out of their way.

      • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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        I’m hoping this becomes another Chernobyl type incident where instead of people being against nuclear energy, it’s people against brain implants over the fear of how dangerous they are. At least for the implants that are not made specifically as medical devices that help instead of dumb people down with forced ads and memes.

      • Lmaydev@programming.dev
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        It was formed by merging his company X with Confinity. All he did was profit off it but many people seem to think he created it.

  • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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    Remember that time Elon said he totally was not going to ban a single specific person when he bought Twitter and then turned around and did exactly that just a few days later?

    • 🎓 Dr. Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱@qoto.org
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      @raymccarthy

      Why? We already have brain interface links that do similar damage to neuralink, this isnt unusual or unexpected. In its current form it is rightfully used on terminal patients with locked-in syndom. In other words, people before it damaged their brain in a meaningful way and whom cant be further paralyzed.

      It would give these people a chance at someinteraction with the real world… What happened with the monkeys was about in line with other neural interfaces, its a consequence of the limits of the tech not negligence.

      @ajsadauskas @technology

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    Headline:

    TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED TO MONKEYS AFTER GETTING NEURALINK IMPLANTS, ACCORDING TO VETERINARY RECORDS

    What are these terrible things?

    Up to a dozen monkeys suffered grisly fates after receiving a Neuralink implant, including brain swelling and partial paralysis.

    First is the case of the monkey “Animal 20.” In December 2019, an internal part of the brain implant being inserted into the primate “broke off” during surgery. Later that night, the monkey scratched at the implant site, drawing blood, and yanked on the implant, partially dislodging it. Follow-up surgery discovered that the wound was infected, but that the placement of the implant prevented treatment. The monkey was euthanized the next month.

    Before that, a female monkey designated “Animal 15” began to press her head against the ground after receiving the brain implant, pick at the site until it bled, and eventually lost coordination, shivering when personnel entered the room. Scientists discovered she had brain bleeding, and in March 2019, she too was euthanized.

    The following year, a primate called “Animal 22” was put down in March 2020 after its brain implant became so loose that the screws attaching it to the skull “could easily be lifted out,” according to a necropsy report.

    “The failure of this implant can be considered purely mechanical and not exacerbated by infection,” the necropsy states.

    As Wired notes, that statement alone seemingly contradicts Musk’s claims that no monkeys directly died from Neuralink brain implants.

    And so would the account of an ex-Neuralink employee, who told Wired that Musk’s claims that the monkeys were already terminally ill are “ridiculous,” even a “straight-up fabrication.”

    “We had these monkeys for a year or so before any surgery was performed,” the ex-employee said.

    The testimony of an anonymous scientist conducting research at CNPRC seems to corroborate the ex-employee’s allegations.

    “These are pretty young monkeys,” they told the magazine. “It’s hard to imagine these monkeys, who were not adults, were terminal for some reason.”

    • worldsayshi@lemmy.world
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      Not only are monkeys as intelligent as small kids. All monkey species are at least a thousand times as rare as humans.

      These experiments sound like they’ve been done by people who don’t know what they’re doing?

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        Unfortunately, these experiments are being performed by people who know EXACTLY what they’re doing. We’re not in the 1940s any more. Fucking hell. If I had the personal power, I’d gladly rain holy hellfire upon these wholly inexcusable, inexorable, inexcrimentinable human fecal chunks.

    • TehPers@beehaw.org
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      What the hell. I feel bad for reading that, holy crap. That’s some nightmare fuel.

  • MiddledAgedGuy@beehaw.org
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    Whenever I see these Musk posts, I always think the title can usually be reduced to 3 or 4 words. In this case, “Elon shouldn’t be trusted”.

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    I feel like this is all a given. How they’re legally able to proceed with human testing is just baffling to me.

  • Auzy@beehaw.org
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    Rather than admit his crappy submarine wouldn’t work after an expert diver told him, he called them a pedophile.

    You’d be insane to listen to a guy who publicly refuses to listen to advice

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    Elon is already dreaming up ways to blame his human test subjects for his failures after they die horrifically from infections, brain bleeds, seizures, and psychosis.