Elon Musk apparently believes that Neuralink, a computer chip that can be implanted in the brains of animals and people, will make language learning and even language obsolete. Here are my thoughts.
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This is both fascinating and creepy but hopefully it will happen in the distant future. Who knows!
Just for fun, ChatGPT summary:
In this video excerpt, Steve Kaufmann discusses Elon Musk’s Neuralink and its potential impact on language learning. Neuralink is a brain implant that can connect with a person’s brain and predict their intentions based on signals among neurons. This technology has been tested on animals, such as pigs and monkeys, and has been used to control a game of pong via a computer. Kaufmann’s opinion on Neuralink is preliminary, and he is interested in hearing from those who know more about it.
- What are some potential applications for Neuralink beyond language learning?
- How does Neuralink work, and what are its ethical implications?
- What other technologies are being developed that could potentially change the way we learn languages?
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Part of using words is you can choose your words. That’s very, very important.
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I would rather end up like that French guy who ended up with locked in syndrome over using Neuralink.
The only think I would tolerate is something like the secondary SAO headset and even then the code would have to be Open Source with all the hardware being made locally by a employee owned workers cooperative. No way am I going to trust a for PROFIT corp. with creating something like this. A lot of political divergents would be murdered if they couldn’t be thought “corrected”.
As far as the ideal of this concept I would still prefer to learn it myself, in that language, not with translator microbes like “Farscape”.
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It is the same with any sort of mandatory medications or digitalisations. The problem is not the technology but who is behind it and how they use it. Nonprofit, transparency and Open Source as you said could be the real evolution to give people trust on using those technologies. But this is not gonna happen in the short period of time.
It has to be worker owned like Mondragon and on the ground. The truest Transparency is Open Source, local and sold at the site of manufacturer because you have to make sure the BIOS/UEFI isn’t tampered with. Also an obvious gimme is that the site’s manufacturing end should be Intranet, no WiFi/BT motherboards for whatever PC’s are used for the work itself on the R&D side. Call me paranoid but you can’t be paranoid enough if you’re making good process on this.
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At least for the language part: We’re already at the point where machines can translate both written and spoken text in almost any language to any other language. The issue is less the lack of chips in our brains and more that the translations are often wrong because computers lack of ability to think as humans do. A better interface that connects to our brains directly doesn’t really change that, it only changes the input method.