I don't think playing to Neuralink's PR orchestra helps readers when you state "the patient... played chess using his mind after being implanted with the company's brain-computer interface..." The patient could play chess before the implant operation - and, yes, he'd definitely have to use his mind. The implant only estimated where his visual attention was with respect to a fixed screen image, and then an external computer directed a cursor to that point. This only achieves the same effect as non-invasive eyeball tracking. There is an immense amount of work still to do - and proper multi-patient trials over several years - to gather enough evidence to convince regulators and achieve mainstream medical acceptance. Successful health outcomes relate to patient mobility, occupational and self-care improvement, not how cool the tech is from exaggeration and distortion of coarse neural correlates.
You’re totally right—Sharut did highlight limitations, but we definitely could have done better on avoiding the imprecise / PR-y wording. Thanks for reading.
Publicity and commentary noise eventually fades away to leave a rock/pebble/grain of evidence (pointing either way). You guys are great at elucidating the engineering & science. So use that lens – and keep it polished!
I don't think playing to Neuralink's PR orchestra helps readers when you state "the patient... played chess using his mind after being implanted with the company's brain-computer interface..." The patient could play chess before the implant operation - and, yes, he'd definitely have to use his mind. The implant only estimated where his visual attention was with respect to a fixed screen image, and then an external computer directed a cursor to that point. This only achieves the same effect as non-invasive eyeball tracking. There is an immense amount of work still to do - and proper multi-patient trials over several years - to gather enough evidence to convince regulators and achieve mainstream medical acceptance. Successful health outcomes relate to patient mobility, occupational and self-care improvement, not how cool the tech is from exaggeration and distortion of coarse neural correlates.
You’re totally right—Sharut did highlight limitations, but we definitely could have done better on avoiding the imprecise / PR-y wording. Thanks for reading.
Publicity and commentary noise eventually fades away to leave a rock/pebble/grain of evidence (pointing either way). You guys are great at elucidating the engineering & science. So use that lens – and keep it polished!
We’ll do our best—again, thanks for the feedback!