Elon Musk says no primates died as a result of Neuralink’s implants. A WIRED investigation now reveals the grisly specifics of their deaths as US authorities have been asked to investigate Musk’s claims.
Elon Musk says no primates died as a result of Neuralink’s implants. A WIRED investigation now reveals the grisly specifics of their deaths as US authorities have been asked to investigate Musk’s claims.
The title sounds clickbaity, so tl;dr for those looking for a summary: it’s probably clickbaity because they don’t want to be seen as making a direct accusation they could be sued for. The monkeys suffered in various ways during the trials (all of which are detailed in the article, including but not limited to bloody discharge, loss of motor control, brain infections, edema, etc) and had to be euthanized. Musk claims they were all terminally ill anyway and none of the deaths were from the implant, but this seems to be a blatant lie.
And now he wants human volunteers. Isn’t that fun.
If it’s safe why isn’t he volunteering?
While I haven’t read up in detail on it, from what I’ve osmosed from headlines and blurbs, I believe the Neuralink program is aimed at healing specific issues such as blindness? He probably wouldn’t qualify even if he wanted to.
(Of course, he doesn’t want to, because he knows perfectly well he’s selling a dangerous lie, but we can’t really get after him based on “why isn’t he volunteering” I think.)
I’m trying to imagine the kind of test program that could control for test subjects that were already terminally ill and coming up with ‘wtf’ as the only answer