The first invasive brain chip that Neuralink embedded into a human brain has malfunctioned, with neuron-surveilling threads appearing to have become dislodged from the participant’s brain, the company revealed in a blog post Wednesday.
It’s unclear what caused the threads to become “retracted” from the brain, how many have retracted, or if the displaced threads pose a safety risk. Neuralink, the brain-computer interface startup run by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Ars. The company said in its blog post that the problem began in late February, but it has since been able to compensate for the lost data to some extent by modifying its algorithm.
Oh god I was worried they killed him horribly this is actually probably fine and almost an expected setback.
For a technology that could someday help a quadriplegic interact with the world fully and independently again I’m willing to tolerate some hitches. There’s a reason they didn’t pick some full on walkie talkie for their first human trial, and there’s a reason that kid looked motherucking hyped to have brand new technology that he’s the first human to even try installed directly into his fucking brain. The problem is abled people thinking this is fundamentally for them. Bby no, they’re trying to help people walk again, even if the legs are robots. You’re looking at the wrong risk-benefit profile.
The concept is wonderful. I do not trust Elon with that concept. I worry that many folks with high hopes of this helping them will just end up used and hurt.