I think the main concern with Neuralink isn't so much the technology/mission itself, it's Elon. We've seen with his other companies how he runs testing. Blow up rocket after rocket after rocket until it goes right. And even when it does go right, cause catastrophic damage to the launch pad, damage they were warned would happen. With earth Tesla Autopilots it was very finicky and absolutely should have gone through more in-house training rather than releasing it to the public, calling it a "beta" and hoping for the best.
We've seen his track record and have a perceived idea of how he prefers to advance technology. That's why a lot of people are very nervous about him putting a chip into people's brains.
If you’ve ever built anything you know that the only way anything gets built is with iteration. There are very few examples in history where something new got built and was a perfect finished product v1. The way we build new things is making something, testing it, measuring the outcome and then using the information to build v2.
Look at literally every product ever built, that’s how it was made. Rockets especially need this treatment, you have to blow up a lot of rockets to refine the process in any reasonable time frame.
It’s not just Elon’s methodology that’s all new things. How many iPhone prototypes do you think they created before they shipped the first one?
Neuralink is doing the same thing with lab animals, which by the way is an established practice used in all of science. The end result will be a cure for people who desperately need it and it will be within our lifetime if they are allowed to continue without regulatory roadblocks.
Yeah, but it is Musk doing it, so it is different!
It is funny, because so many other programs have had similar failures. How many people have Autopilot like things on their non-Tesla cars that they don't even use because they are uselessly bad? All of these things have been through iterations, including potentially dangerous public iterations.
All the poor naming criticisms of "FSD" and even "FSD Beta" are fair game though.
We've seen his track record and have a perceived idea of how he prefers to advance technology. That's why a lot of people are very nervous about him putting a chip into people's brains.