Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

I think that the negativity here is unfortunate. The reality is that it’s very hard to see a normal VC level return on the $100M+ Elon and friends have invested here. And don’t let anyone fool you - this is the fundamental reason the BCI field has moved slowly.

If Neuralink proceeds to a scenario where quadriplegic patients can get reliable (ie lifelong) control of their computers for less than $100k that will be a huge win for them for a cost that no one else was willing to pay.

To be clear, at that order of magnitude they might make back their investment, but it won’t be 10x or 100x, and the potential healthy-brain-connected-to-the-AI play is much less rooted in reality than Teslas all becoming taxis.

Worst case scenario is that Elon loses interest and pulls the plug and Mr Arbaugh loses continued tech support a la a google product. I think that’s the one question I wish the author had asked…

The unfortunate part is that your first thought went to return on investment rather than the humanitarian angle, which I think is the common perspective; optics and money.

Then there's the pessimists, like me, wondering how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up.

Things have costs so we should be ok with a society where the wealthy exploit poor and desperate people?

Exploiting? I’m lefty, but this dude volunteered for the procedure and was fully reimbursed. I’m having a really hard time seeing “exploited” on this one.

According to the left exploitation can occur when people choose and are paid for it.

For example demeaning work. Also much of slavery, indentured servitude in the past was chosen and fully reimbursed. Most classic lefties would say all work is exploitation under capitalism.

It's the idea of individualism mostly seen on the right wing and the modern/American democratic left that says that people make free and rational choices in an amoral economic model. When money sets the rules there is no exploitation. I think the reality isn't so black and white and people can make good and bad decisions.

So while I agree he probably wasn't exploited it doesn't mean that others in the same place doing the same things will not be.