The first Neuralink implant in a human malfunctioned after several threads recording neural activity retracted from the brain, the Elon Musk-owned startup revealed Wednesday.
The threads retracted in the weeks following the surgery in late January that placed the Neuralink hardware in 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh’s brain, the company said in a blog post.
This reduced the number of effective electrodes and the ability of Arbaugh, a quadriplegic, to control a computer cursor with his brain.
“In response to this change, we modified the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural population signals, improved the techniques to translate these signals into cursor movements, and enhanced the user interface,” Neuralink said in the blog post.
The company said the adjustments resulted in a “rapid and sustained improvement” in bits-per-second, a measure of speed and accuracy of cursor control, surpassing Arbaugh’s initial performance.
While the problem doesn’t appear to pose a risk to Arbaugh’s safety, Neuralink reportedly floated the idea of removing his implant, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The company has also told the Food and Drug Administration that it believes it has a solution for the issue that occurred with Arbaugh’s implant, the Journal reported.
The implant was placed just more than 100 days ago. In the blog post, the company touted Arbaugh’s ability to play online computer games, browse the internet, livestream and use other applications “all by controlling a cursor with his mind.”
I can tell you only speak one language, or maybe another Latin based language in addition to English. If you’d learned something like Mandarin, you’d understand how complex, regional, and historical language is. It’s based on layers and shifts constantly. Sometimes, that’s specifically because people don’t want to be understood by everyone.
I really recommend reading academic books about this topic if you are curious. My favorite is Neurolinguistics and Linguistic Aphasiology, by David Caplan. You may also enjoy Chomsky’s works because he talks about commonalities in language or universal language.
There’s no need to formally codify those hand gestures, because we innately already understand and make them. Making eating motions (which may look different depending on regional utensils) is pretty universal right? But it looks different in different places.
I am familiar with the regionality of language. I don’t understand your point, you’re simultaneously saying that you can’t have universal understanding, but we have gestures we instantly understand instantly so there’s no need to codify them, but they look different.
I think you’re wildly overestimating the scope of my proposal.
You are simply moving goalposts. My point is that I disagree with your idea of making sign language universal or formally making even a rudimentary universal sign language. I think that would be impossible if you understand language itself. I gave you resources so you could educate yourself about why.
Yes, the sign for eating would look different in China vs Ethiopia vs the US. So what sign are you going to have it be to imitate eating in your formal language? Do you see how this can perpetuate colonization?
My goalposts are in precisely the place they started: a collection of basic international gestures to facilitate the most basic communication. Where are you jumping to colonization? Where did I say that my cultural group gets to decide what the signs are? You’re, again, wildly overestimating the scope of my proposal and jumping to ridiculous, unsubstantiated conclusions.
You get a group of signers from around the world to develop an international pidgin (like they already do informally at international gatherings) and come to consensus based on commonality. When the majority agree on a sign, use it. Where there’s little agreement, choose a new sign. No finger spelling, no complex abstract concepts, just a formalization of gestures most people could probably figure out anyway. I fail to see how that perpetuates colonization unless that’s what you’re setting out to do with your methodology.
