Elon Musk's company confirms monkeys died in brain chip testing project, denies animal cruelty

[Eric]

Disgusting. There is no justification for this, sick bastards.

Elon Musk's company confirms monkeys died in brain chip testing project, denies animal cruelty

Last year, Neuralink claimed monkeys with the brain chip implants can play Pong -- a computer game - using just their minds.

abc7chicago.com

Jeremy Beckham, research advocacy coordinator with the Physicians Committee, said in the press release that documents used by the committee in its letter to the USDA "reveal that monkeys had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die."

 

[Zoidberg]

I can think of many things I'd rather drive into my brain before I get an implant controlled by Elon Musk.

 

[User.45]

Disgusting. There is no justification for this, sick bastards.

Elon Musk's company confirms monkeys died in brain chip testing project, denies animal cruelty

Last year, Neuralink claimed monkeys with the brain chip implants can play Pong -- a computer game - using just their minds.

abc7chicago.com

Jeremy Beckham, research advocacy coordinator with the Physicians Committee, said in the press release that documents used by the committee in its letter to the USDA "reveal that monkeys had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die."

I'd be cautious about headlines like this, esp without proper sourcing which is missing here. I do think that Musk will increasingly become a hinderance for his companies on the long run as his personality becomes more and more distorted by money and power.

As I mentioned in the "Meta" topic:

...a direct brain-machine interface which is again pretty problematic and not on the computer tech side. The self-organizing capacity of real neural networks is absolutely shocking. Visual cortex prosthetics can interface with the brain and the brain can "just learn" how to control/process these. The real challenge is the risk of having a brain implant long-term that doesn't bleed, doesn't move and puncture the surrounding brain tissue, doesn't cut off the microcirculation causing strokes (infarcts), doesn't let toxins in (the blood-brain barrier is critical), doesn't cause local irritation that would cause seizures, doesn't get infected (in the context of bacteremia implants tend to serve as a breeding ground for bacteria), and does all of these for decades and decades. IMHO, these are the barriers and issues that a Musk-like person is ill-prepared to actually overcome. Getting the implants in is the easy(er) stuff...

These poor monkeys are bound to experience all the issues I've listed above. The "brain glue" is probably used to quickly close the blood-brain barrier adjacent to the electrodes.