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Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed

(fortune.com)
360 points danielmorozoff | 3 comments | 24 Aug 25 09:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ckemere ◴[27 Aug 25 03:19 UTC] No.45035120[source]▶
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…

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1. thinkingtoilet ◴[27 Aug 25 11:26 UTC] No.45038149[source]▶
After nearly two decades of flat out lying about Tesla's capabilities and then the last year of insane lies, I literally don't believe anything that comes out of any of his companies. Perhaps you do.
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2. MrResearcher ◴[27 Aug 25 15:20 UTC] No.45040931[source]▶
It's not really a lie, it's so-called "make-belief", which entrepreneurs exude in order to justify their own time and money investment, as well as spreading it to the army of employees. This sort of delusion is necessary for the inaugural period of concept development, until you prove whether the concept is viable or not. Some people call it vision. It is an entirely fictional concept, of course. Sometimes you stumble onto something working that gets traction. Then this lie turns into reality, and the entrepreneur is raised to the rank of prophets.

In other words, he doesn't do it out of malice. These are the rules of the game.

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3. 542354234235 ◴[28 Aug 25 14:44 UTC] No.45052824[source]▶
I have to disagree. The differnce in in degree. salemanship and fraud are two different things. Painting a rosy picture of something is difference than lying about specific capabilities. Giving your production capacity using the most ambitious numbers is different than saying you can produce numbers you factually can't in any scenario. Having a future roadmap that is a goal and may not be achieved is different than promising a capability in the near future, as if it is almost ready, when there is no capability coming is lying. That's like saying a Ponzi scheme is just another investment.