Watch a monkey equipped with Elon Musk’s Neuralink device play Pong with its brain

TechCrunch ^ | April 8, 2021 | Darrell Etherington

[BenLurkin]

Neuralink demonstrates how it used its sensor hardware and brain implant to record a baseline of activity from this macaque (named ‘Pager’) as it played a game on-screen where it had to move a token to different squares using a joystick with its hand. Using that baseline data, Neuralink was able to use machine learning to anticipate where Pager was going to be moving the physical controller, and was eventually able to predict it accurately before the move was actually made. Researchers then removed the paddle entirely, and eventually did the same thing with Pong, ultimately ending up at a place where Pager no longer was even moving its hand on the air on the nonexistent paddle, and was instead controlling the in-game action entirely with its mind via the Link hardware and embedded neural threads.

Musk separately tweeted that in fact, he expects the initial version of Neuralink’s product to be able to allow someone with paralysis that prevents standard modes of phone interaction to use one faster than people using their thumbs for input. He also added that future iterations of the product would be able to enable communication between Neuralinks in different parts of a patient’s body, transmitting between an in-brain node and neural pathways in legs, for instance, making it possible for “paraplegics to walk again.”

[TonyM]

I wonder if they could do this with Biden.

[DannyTN]

We know how this ends...

[polymuser]

Put four of them together and they can write a group news article for WaPo.

[polymuser]

“If it makes them play Pong with their brain, that can’t be good for them.”

I know, right?! What’s next, Leisure-suit Link? Kong beats Mario?

[Roccus]

This be some scary chit

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

I think you are 100% right. That seems to be happening right now

[dynachrome]

When they learn to play DukeNukem3D, look out!

[TBP]

OK.