Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s Neuralink competitor is expecting its first brain chip this year
https://www.theverge.com/news/673938/gabe-newell-valve-founder-brain-computer-interface-first-chip-starfishOpen linkView original on lemm.ee577
Comments271https://www.theverge.com/news/673938/gabe-newell-valve-founder-brain-computer-interface-first-chip-starfishOpen linkView original on lemm.ee
Will we also get a control valve back on our heads?
Yes, but it belongs to Gaben. Don't touch it.
I know the internet lives the guy but no. Just no.
Some people are starting to wake up to the fact that the guy is just another libertarian billionaire, he just happens to be in charge of a company that made a product people love enough to give them monopolistic powers.
Edit: these people aren't in this thread
Edit 2: first edit was from when the votes on that comment were at -8, happy to see that for once one of my comments on this subject ends up in the positives
You’re not wrong, the downvoters are just sad because you are right. Just takes one personality shift from Gabe to turn him from beloved figurehead to shitty billionaire and being reminded of that sucks.
"one personality shift"
That's everyone dude. "Bernie Sanders is one personality shift away from being a Maga tech bro."
Entirely correct. That’s why we shouldn’t put anyone on a pedestal.
He's also one body shift away from being a giant dragon with adamantium scales...
They're right next to each other on the monster table.
Eat the Meat!
Sanders doesn't have control over (probably) thousands of the games you "own" or, if we're honest, the PC gaming market as a whole.
If you just pay attention more than the average person you quickly realize that he's already a shitty billionaire.
Steam underage gambling profits him directly.
He owns a yacht collection while his clients can't afford to own the place they live in. How's that for an environmental impact?
His reaction to George Floyd's murder wasn't that Valve should release a statement as he considered that problematic (source), instead he gave each employee 10k to spend however they felt like. Where I used to work we used to call that a "shut the fuck up". Employees are complaining about something? Here's 10k each for them to shut the fuck up. Hell, they could spend that money to finance far right groups if they wanted, Newell didn't care!
Women employees with managerial positions at Valve? What women employees?
Valve takes a 30% cut but Newell is a billionaire, which means they could afford to take a much smaller cut, he could have hundreds of millions instead and the devs could have more money in their pockets.
I always get shat on for saying they do unregulated gambling, including to minors
People be really defending Valve
I think being on a tech community instead of the gaming ones helps
Eh, probably. They always state how competitors do this and that, and all the good Valve brought with Steam.
Which is true, but they’re blinded by this. Google also brought a lot of good, and bad.
They defend Microsoft and Windows for the same reason. It’s their beloved gaming platform
Pretty sure Musk has had a significant shift. Not saying he started out as a nice normal guy, but something cracked for sure.
We also spend dramatically more now as well and are on an unsustainable path according to the Fed.
People want more spending and less taxes though, as its human nature.
I think despite the claims that Gabe is a Libertarian, first spread by some blogger named Yanis V(?), are floating around the internet: he rarely makes a political statement but did endorse Joe Biden over Trump lending to the idea that he is NOT some sort of anarcho-syndicalist Republican-lite.
It's been known for quite a while now. Even reddit gets annoyed with the guy.
I even got to downvote that back then!
I'm not even sure if it's love. When something is all you've known, you just view everything else as strange and inferior. When you have so many games and have had so many experiences on Steam, the cognitive dissonance of accepting that Valve is quite problematic could be hard to bear. Knowing that everybody around you praises Steam, with many turning to rage or even harassment when they see competitors like Epic, the fear of being ostracized and ending up in the same position as those competitors is also a strong factor at play.
As someone losing control of their hands and enjoys playing video games, I very much look forward to this technology not only being available via Elon Musk.
The use of the fingers is covered under our monthly plan of $49.99
If you would like thumbs included, that is covered under our premium plan of $499.99 a day.
And I see that but a game developer is not the right type of business to develop these kind of extremely intrusive and potentially dangerous accessibility devices. We need much stricter guidelines and oversight for this kind of tech before they essentially become a remote control for parts of our brain.
Suddenly this makes way more sense
I can hear this picture
TIL Valve is into brain chips.
The Valve Deckard was a little more ambitious than had been originally anticipated.
To be fair, I think it's specifically Gabe who's been obsessed with brain computer interfaces for the past many years. Obviously it's his company, so Valve by extension participates.
Makes sense, as you get older you get more and more disgusted by the weakness of your flesh, and tend to crave the certainty of steel.
As far as I can see the company behind it (Starfish Neuroscience) is not affiliated with Valve in any way? (Aside from having the same CEO)
And Newell is Valve because it's his private company
It's exactly like AI. Could the technology be useful were it to be used in service of goals that would serve humanity? Absolutely. Will it be used by billionaires in a way that will be harmful to most people in order to further entrench their power? Most definitely.
"Someone might abuse it" is a reasonable concern. "Therefore nobody should be allowed to use it" is not a reasonable answer to that concern, IMO. We'd never have anything with that approach.
There's a lot to be said for the scale of damage that can be done with something, especially relative to the effort needed to do that damage.
These days tech companies are doing enormous damage to people's brains (saturating our dopamine receptors to the point that many people have depression and executive dysfunction) to turn us all into consumption machines that can only find happiness by consuming content and buying commercial products and services.
Imagine how much more harm they'll do when they have direct access to our neurons, without even LED pixels as a buffer in between.
So regulate the uses of the technology. Don't ban it outright.
Those companies are doing their manipulation currently by using the Internet and social media, should the Internet and social media be banned outright? We're using social media to discuss this right now, that discussion should be suppressed?
Technology and social media are entirely under regulated with basically no privacy restrictions. Look what DOGE has done to the entire American Federal agencies.. "Read-Only"-- As If. They just pirated all our information.
You can say that about literally any consumer product, however.
At least some of the people developing this stuff think they're going to be able to partner AI and neural links. I think the desire is they think about the solution to a problem and then they don't have to do the work of creating it. It will just exist magically because the AI will do it.
It's egotistical bollocks that comes from believing your ideas are always right, and that a back of the napkin idea is the same as a fully engineered solution.
Like everything else, it will be come enshittified and we will be living in the Johnny Mneumonic world.
It could become the standard in time, like smartphones. I can easily see it becoming the norm, making it more expensive and difficult to use a normal smartphone instead of some brain implant, much like how "dumbphones" are coming back as overpriced and gimmicky. Maybe they pullsomething similar to the "green bubble" like apple did, alienating people without implants.
This is a very important concern. Tech companies already exert entirely too much power over society through smart phones and their accompanying apps. The damage they would do with direct access to your neurons is incalculable.
The only thing that comforts me is that I firmly expect that society as we know it will entirely collapse before this technology can really be capitalized. It's not a very comforting expectation, but it somehow bothers me less than the idea of techno-fascist corporate feudal states taking control of everyone's thoughts.
It is sort of funny how the idea that humanity would wipe itself out used to be a worst case scenario and now it is one of the more comforting options.
I am siding with the zombies in that apocalypse.
If I lived in, say, Iain Banks's post-scarcity anarcho-communist utopia The Culture, I'd get a neural lace in a heartbeat. But living in this capitalist dystopia that most of us does, I don't trust corporations to not use this sort of technology for domination over the populace.
For perspectives on how it might go (general vibes, not the same technology) I recommend HYPER-REALITY (6 mins short film) or David Brin's Existence novel.
Continuum is a tidy lil show addressing this, too. Actually, not so tidy, a bit of a mess. But still entertaining and intriguing at times.
thanks, I'll check it out!
Not "The Matrix" -- we will just serve as batteries for someone's AI or Crypto farm while having/living in lucid dreams?
Tbh the Matrix never made sense from that angle, metabolism uses more energy than it generates. I think the original script said humans being farmed for their brain processing power, not body heat, which would have made marginally more sense. (Also why not just keep people in a coma in either case; anyway I'll stop poking at Matrix plot holes 😂)
I've read Consider Phlebas, due to either your or another lemmings' recommendation and it's very '80s sci fi in writing style. I felt it required a bit too much attention for a good audio book at work, but wasn't really interesting enough to pick up the physical book. Player of Games is supposed to be very different, is it worth giving it a shot or is Iain Banks' writing just not to my taste?
Tbh I think Consider Phlebas is one of the weakest Culture novels, so I'd absolutely give Player of Games a shot! I started with that one, and it does a much better job at showing The Culture's society than the mere outside glances we get from Phlebas.
With the possible exception of Phlebas, I recommend going through the series in publication order. But feel free to skip Inversions and State of the Art, imho they both mostly suck 😅 The rest of the books are great :)
Another problem is abandonment. When the company goes under or the device becomes outdated and they no longer want to support it the device can't be easily removed. If the device was fixing a disability, the person's disability will be reinstated.
I suspect we will end up in a situation where you have a "mount" that is connected to your brain. The mount is able to be serviced by any company in the field, because it is standard. From there, you have the actual chips which are going to be relatively easy to install and remove, eventually you might even be able to do so at your house. This allows competition while allowing being consumer friendly.
As for the disability side of things, it just means that when your chip is no longer serviced you easily swap it for another companies whose are.
My piercings are against God but technoligarchs think they will convince those people brain chips you can swap out on the fly are okay. lol
Anyways I’ll take one brain chip here in like 5 years.
I'm not trying to convince anyone. I well aware of where the tech will be in 30 years and I am getting one. If anyone else has a problem with it, they can wait until then to do their surprise pikachu face when the tech ends up being awesome, exactly how AI is going. LLMs are basically useless, but outside of those AI even in it's modern incarnation is wildly inpressive, and will only get moreso.
10 years ago no one believed me when i told them about the LLMs we currently have. It was around that time I realised that the public makes sweeping generalizations about tech when 99% of them don't understand the tech, the math, or even that something being present in nature means its replicable, because nature can replicate it(and therefore so can humans). That last one seems to be a huge disconnect in peoples cognitive abilites.
Edit: also anyone who tells you anything about your piercings in a disrespectful light can go suck an egg, they don't live in your body. I realize im autistic but the fact that people try that shit and then other people are susceptable to that sort of societal pressure is wild to me. I do what I want, when I want, however I want. People call me weird and I openly ridicule them for thinking their opinion holds any sway over me. You try to shame me, and I will shame you for your massively inflated ego that you think has power over me.
I think a generic plug would be great but look at how fragmented USB specifications are. Add that to biology and it's a whole other level of difficulty.
Brain implants have great potential but the abandonment issue is a problem that exists now that we have to solve for. It's also not really a tech issue but a societal one on affordability and accountability of medical research. Imagine if a company held the patents for the brain device and just closed down without selling or leasing the patent. People with that device would have no support unless a government body forced the release of the patent. This has already happened multiple times to people in clinical trials and scaling up deployment with multiple versions will make the situation worse.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2818077
I don't really have a take on your personal desires. I do think if anyone can afford one they should make sure it's not just the up front cost but also the long term costs to be considered. Like buying an expensive car, it's not if you can afford to purchase it but if you can afford to wreck it.
Like "Unauthorized Toast"... with all the DRM laws, we could get arrested and charged with a felony for trying to repair ourselves.
At some point in humanity's future, I assume that it will be a thing and be widespread. Just too many potential benefits to having high-bandwidth links to the brain not to eventually do it.
But it's a path with a lot of hurdles along the way, and risks.
The CRISPR technology is more advanced than brain implants.
If I can read your thoughts, it can change them. I guess it depends on the level of sophistication but it opens up the ONE place in the entire world that is completely yours.
The one place i cant leave, id love to not have my shit fucked up anymore.
Imagine the guy at BMW who invented subscriptions for heated seats teaming up with the guy at nvidia who does drivers and youll understand why I wouldnt
That's the challenge with technical advances. It's not just solving the technical problem, it's also solving the societal problem.
If you look back into history, Automated elevators was a major panic until people got comfortable with the idea.
If it prevents or mitigates Alzheimer's, or other degenerative brain diseases, it's a good development.
How the hell is this not the Onion?
isn't the verge the same as the onion?
Nah, the verge is less credible
I was sure it must be. Is it not? Gosh.
I think we all know where this is going.
Yeah, no, I’m not putting anything in my brain that isn’t open-source from end to end. And even then probably nah.
the only way, and I mean the ONLY way I'll put hardware in my brain is if I have resurrection level support like in Altered Carbon.
the fear of losing my outward identity over the ability to live forever is worth losing.
You still won't be able to live forever.
I wonder how often you have to back up in case you need a reboot.
Why so pessimistic? With any luck brainchips will mean the end of annoying adverts once and for all. You'll just feel an unexpected desire to acquire certain products. And maybe crippling headaches or a nauseating feeling of unease if you ignore these urges
These guys would beg to differ:
https://thedebrief.org/neuralinks-first-human-trials-mark-one-year-of-control-through-telepathy/
this isn't for you, you're not a paraplegic, are you?
The article does not mention paraplegia.
Why does it have to? All current bci's are designed for the disabled, why would this one be an exception?
So rich people can make money on the hype and sale of a new product to the masses?
you know, like literally everything?
that's where regulators step in, do you honestly believe elon musk would not be implanting healthy people with neuralinks if regulators would allow? They won't, this is tech for people whose lives are so awful that not having one is worse than the things that may go wrong, for a very, very long time.
I didn't think an old nazi with 32 felonies would be the leader of the free world, I've been surprised a few times in my life but nothing really does it anymore.
Can you say your statement could hold up against 50 years of future trends? Transhumanism? Fanatics who want it so bad that they make it law?
For that matter, who's regulating Ai right now?
No, it won't hold up for 50 years, but if you don't want one don't get it?
He’ll only be able to make the first prototype, and then a second. He will never make it to 3.
By then he should be able to pass the tech off to a smaller, independent contractor like Gearbox (please don't; I don't want Randy in my brain) or Obsidian.
He’ll make a few versions:
Will never make it to 3 though.
Coastal vacation 💀
They should make a big facility to test the implants
You'd need people to solve puzzles to really put the implant through its paces. Something involving blocks should be sufficiently simple to play around with while having lots of variation.
Yperating System?
Yeah no thanks
Not advocating for our against but 2 thoughts here:
1: Gabe isn't Musk. Yes money etc but don't immediately jump there without other malfeasance please. Caution absolutely but don't ascribe one rich assholes shit to another.
2: He probably has hard data on accessibility... Possibly more than nearly anyone else. There's a HUGE portion of the population that can't use "traditional" controllers or other input devices. And that's not even going into the medical realm.
Could game Gabe be starting his villain phase? Sure! But until more negative details come out I'm just hoping this is investments he'd use toward a new steam controller.
Yeah, if we were putting billionaires against the wall, GabeN would probably be near the end of the line.
There was a time the same was true for Elon Musk, before he suddenly decided to jump the queue. I really hope Gabe isn't going down that path.
Gabe spends a lot of time at sea since the pandemic, and kinda comes off like he has some soft libertarian vibes about self sufficiency and governance.
For me? He's human and rich. It's reason enough to be suspicious.
Would I get it? I won't be first, that's all I know.
Surely using the word tankie as an insult, without understanding what it is nominates yourself for the wall.
Tankies want to advertise technocrasses not punish them.
You don't get to be a billionaire without some malfeasance.
And even if you don't assume actively malicious intent like you should with Musk, there's a lot of potential danger with technology like this, and if you don't stand a lot to gain, and have reasonable controls against things going wrong, it's probably not a good idea to be an early adopter. It's just like a pacemaker, there are a narrow segment of people who should want to test a new model/concept for them.
Absolutely agree at every part.
My desire would be strong regulation via a real agency (not current US), or alternatively ONLY work via non-intrusive means on the scalp.
let's not circlejerk and have a soft spot for a billionaire just because you like video games. why give gaben the benefit of the doubt just because you think steam is a good product? if they're a billionaire doing this, we can assume this is a money making venture.
if you're a billionaire, you're already way into your villain phase. he's not musk, but he's one of them. you don't make a billion dollars. you take a billion dollars.
So, you are reading things I didn't write. I'm not defending him about steam games etc... The only good will here about any of it is the work toward better Linux life.
I agree billionaires shouldn't exist.
I don't like steam.
I don't really do much gaming... And it's worth stuff from GOG.
Chill out. I'm not the fanboi you are looking for.
I'm only saying perhaps he sees $$$ in a venture that is rife with much worse people doing far worse to vulnerable people.
On the off chance better access comes about from rich assholes eating each other, I'm game to at least watch.
I'm willing to say more positive things about him. His dedication to Linux is great of course, but I've also heard that people working for him get a lot of freedom to choose what to work on. And no crunch. In the games industry, that's pretty good.
So yeah, he seems to me to be one of the better among the tech billionaires. But in the end, he's still a billionaire, and he's god that ridiculous fleet of super yachts.
First step to getting away with shithead behavior is convincing a group, any group (but preferrably one marginalized), that you're representing them.
Idk, there are tons of good things that have happened from rich people doing stuff. Hell, that's the reason medicine progressed — if nobles weren't terrified of dying, who knows how long it would have taken to figure out that bloodletting with leeches doesn't work?
I don't think I need to point out all the bad things that have happened because of the rich.
Not saying represent by any stretch.
If I need X thing to survive, I'd rather get it from a pure and innocent source... If that's not possible, I'd rather it from the dude with too many boats who charges too much money than the one actively gloating about destroying lives literally and on a much higher scale.
Yes I know lesser evil etc... This isn't a philosophy course and I don't need what they're selling. But many do potentially and I'd rather minimize damage than just let the absolute worst be the default.
I respect that, I just try to provide context. It's often misinterpreted, and I do succumb to emotional responses — but my goal is to make sure those that are justified approach their goals with a clear mind.
I'm not advocating for the rich. I just want people to make the right decisions when it inevitably comes to the point where we need to decide what to do with the rich. I don't think we should treat GabeN with any more respect than we owe the poorest person, is all.
I'm not. your post is literally saying we should be nicer to him because he's not Elon. you're saying we should be easy on him because he might be doing some good. I'm saying we shouldn't.
No. "Don't immediately assume he's doing the same exact evil" is not the same as "be nicer".
At the least, it's "assume other bad motives perhaps".
My thought is this is just another way to milk money from others. That simple. Not "let's bribe govts".
If it's assumed he's doing the exact same as Musk, then we either prepare to undo the damage incorrectly, or waste time looking at the wrong stooge.
you're quoting yourself but you never said that. you said maybe Gabe could be entering his villain phase, as if he's not there yet. thus implying you meant he's not a villain, so we shouldn't assume the worse. I get what you say now, but you did not say what you meant in your original comment.
Billionaires either inherit their money or get it by being an asshole. Being nice doesn’t make people billionaires.
There are a few exceptions. JK Rowlings became a billionaire simply by writing some really popular books, and even stopped being a billionaire by giving much of her wealth away. As far as I can tell, she didn't become an asshole until later.
I bet she was always an asshole, she just hid it from the general public.
nah. you need to be pretty fucking terrible to build a business where your share of it is worth a billion dollars. you do so by cheating your customers, employees, and competition. valve is no exception.
there are plenty of companies out there that pay their employees decently, make good products, and compete fairly. those companies usually aren't worth that much and their leaders aren't making a billion dollars from it. you're right that the tax policies are shit, but it's not like you ever accidentally become a billionaire. you do so by cheating the tax system too and screwing the general public.
and nobody said anything about killing people.
The billionaires today have an opportunity to eliminate world hunger yet they don't. Instead, they fly rocketships, sail on giant yachts and buy island compounds or towns in Texas. So yeah, No one at that RB club is going to win a Nobel Peace Prize. They all suck.
It's worth remembering that there was a time when the highest US tax bracket was taxed at 90%, and that didn't stop the US's longest period of sustained economic growth.
Ridiculously high tax rates for ridiculously high incomes have been done before and are entirely feasible.
tax all wealth above the nth percentile of the populations wealth
Careful now you are scaring tankies because they can't go long without their delusions of getting to massacre everyone who disagrees with them.
HL3 is going to be launched with Valve's brain chip.
They don't even have to make the game. The chip will convince you that you have already played the game and it's the best game ever.
The headcrabs feel like headcrabs!
If it solves my tinnitus, I'm all for it.
What's that about ? my tongue rests comfortably at the bottom of my mouth, as I assume most tongues do (in their respective mouths)
Tinnitus is something very hard to ignore.
Well, for me it depends on the day. Sometimes my Tinnitus isn't that loud and sometimes he is screaming.
I understand. What does it for me is the jaw. It seems like my jaw has no rest pose, and if I deliberately conscientise this fact, it becomes an annoyance. But my tongue is fine
Look into Lenire. First FDA-approved treatment
The only condition under which I wouid ever consider getting a neural implant, is if the implant and its software is open source.
Any closed source thing you stick in your brain will ultimately doom you.
Besides that, there'd also actually have to be a purpose. As it stands now, cybernetics isn't advanced enough to turn me into a full cyborg, so probably never in my lifetime.
I don't think it's expected that the average person will be jumping at the opportunity to tinker with their neurons. The first line of people to get such implants will almost certainly be people with physical disabilities.
Regarding closed source ultimately being a net negative to your well being, I think you're absolutely right. Unfortunately with as niche as a product like this will be for some time, I worry any corporation willing to put forward the funding isn't going to be willing to open it up to such a degree.
While true regarding open source vs closed course. The risks are quite large for patients. For example, a few years ago there was a company called Second Sight that made artificial eyes so blind people could partially see again. Then the company discontinued the product and now they are stuck with an unsupported surgically implanted device that they rely heavily on but can break any time. It's pretty risky to have something implanted if you don't know if the company will be around in a decade or so.
All these brain chips will primarily, initially, be for crippled people. Maybe a controller chip to control prosthetic arms, or something to let a paraplegic person control a computer.
It's still fun to hear the man himself talking about a larger than life virtual reality.
The tech still scares me, I'm not even sure I'd be okay with EEG-like patches that work both ways (scifi, I know), not to mention brain surgery, for pure decadence. But the quality of life benefits really can be huge for many, and that really got my fantasy going, once I 'accepted' we figured out the limits and safeties of bodily autonomy.
"As part of your onboarding process, we're just going to implant your Company ID. That way, for your safety, we'll always know where you are. If you hear a buzzing sound, that means return to the office immediately. Reduced work speed will produce a mild reminder shock.
"Welcome to the Corporation."
Maybe they could use the implanted chip to wall off your non-work side when you enter your office so you're not distracted and fully focused on your job.
Then when you leave your work side gets blocked off so you can leave work at work. Automatic work/life balance.
Not sure if it was intentional but you just summarized the show Severance.
It was. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
Reminder shock is amazing LMAO
Headlines you didn't expect to read. Rather a Gabe chip than at Musk chip for sure
how about both of them fuck off and stop shoving their proprietary tech in our heads, just a thought
Valve did contribute quite a bit to OSS iirc
oh sorry just open up my asshole then
I'm not sure that that's the optimal route to the brain. I'm not a brain doctor though, for all I know suppository-style brain chips are the way to go.
Is there an open source equivalent then?
i don't know, but for any possible positive use for it, the only legal way must be open source, or else we're in deus ex territory.
i know fuckwits like elon cannot see past aesthetics so they think it's cool but brain chips are as close to the Torment Nexus as we can possibly get.
The reality of funding is probably going to mean that open source is off the table.
I'm with you, Elon Musk is a life lesson into why key services such as internet or brain computer interfaces should not be in the hands on the few. Path seems set unfortunately as too much money is on the table.
this is the same thing, publicly owned, publicly funded.
make no mistake, with all the tax cuts and incentives and wage theft involved, these are also already publicly funded.
That picture 😂
"Now, if you're part of Control Group Kepler-Seven, we implanted a tiny microchip about the size of a postcard into your skull. Most likely you've forgotten it's even there, but if it starts vibrating and beeping during this next test, let us know, because that means it's about to hit five hundred degrees, so we're gonna need to go ahead and get that out of you pretty fast." - Cave Johnson
Oh no. You either die the hero, or...
You live long enough to help paraplegics game?
Right? Is anyone else grateful knowing that we're building medical devices that can help us connect with fully disabled people like they're humans again?
The fact that most people would obviously never want to get a brain chip implant, combined with the fact that multiple billionaires are developing brain chip implants, indicates that there are plans in some circles to incentivize or coerce people into getting a brain chip implant at some point in the future.
It’s risk/reward. If brain chips made me twice as productive or intelligent, I’d probably tolerate a lot more risk than if it was just a way to check my Instagram notifications without pulling out my phone.
Productive or intelligent for whose benefit? If it's so that you can perform better under wage labor conditions, that's coercion.
I am self-employed. So myself, I guess.
Well then hell yea, it's likely you won't be coerced into it's use. Though sticking to my original prediction, that means you won't be the demographic it gets marketed to or pushed upon.
I suspect you are all too right.
Medicine in the US is very expensive. There is a lot of money in helping with neurological conditions or paralysis.
What if you were going to die but you could live indefinitely if you got the implant? Would an incentive like that interest you?
So like the black mirror episode Common People
Why would a brain implant allow me to live indefinitely?
I would explain it to you - but you would need the brain implant to understand the context completely. Are you interested in getting the implant now?* :)
* (Post may or may not be sponsored by the brain implant company™)
No.
They've existed for awhile for people with certain disabilities and further advancements in the field would be great for the people who actually need them, but outside of that niche most people would likely not want to risk a highly invasive surgery and I don't think they actually care about them.
If they could make them small / sensitive enough to make them subdermal, without the risky brainsurgery, that would be an absolute gamechanger and would increase acceptance by a lot. if the process would be like getting a few piercings under local anesthesia, it would make servicing the hardware much less of a life and death decision, and i wouldn't mind getting something like that - especially if it's on the hackability scale of a steam deck lol
Last time I checked, the "brain implants" from Valve looked like this:
Thumbnail is lit af
Dan did it first!
"has long toyed with the idea that your brain should be more connected to your PC"
seems like billionaires' wet dream to be honest
But imagine how easy it would be to
track youserve you more personalised ads.We have all been "convinced" to carry tracking devices with us everywhere we go. Way cheaper than a brain implant.
Karen Sandler did a great talk on closed source software medical devices many years ago.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qW1h1s_ojpM
This even more the case if it's your brain! It probably won't work for decades, but we should get house in order long before it does.
Like https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete shown or https://www.vox.com/unexplainable/411102/neuroscience-technology-consumer-products-safety-maintenance more recently or the older 2010 paper "Predictors of Assistive Technology Abandonment" https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400435.1993.10132205 ?
Don't be negative, it's all good! /s
Right to repair, and openness, is absolute must for devices being put into peoples bodies. The fight seams to not even started yet. Most people are completely asleep to issues right now.
Valve bros dont need to worry about what happens in life after gaben, because I think gaben is going to ascend to cyberspace before the end.
Portal 2 was a road map
That's... Not a very promising roadmap...
Him and Kurzweil just hanging out on the same subnet.
So, to all the people freaking out and saying this is as bad as Musk and Neuralink:
https://starfishneuroscience.com/blog/ultra-low-power-miniature-electrophysiological-electronics/?header-bg=card-bg0
There is here zero mention of things like 'being able to take a phone call' or 'bluetooth your brain directly into a keyboard or mouse or other people's brains' as Musk was saying.
This seems very much intended to be aimed at legitimate medical conditions.
They didn't steal the PhD work of an actual pioneer in the development of medical brain implants via poaching a number of grad students who worked with him (which is what happened with Neuralink, btw), they are instead partnering with basically a nonprofit cooperative of the world's foremost experts on nanoelectronics development, who have an established track record of developing various medical devices.
...
If news comes out about GabeN electrocuting monkeys and pigs to either death, or insanity/brain damage so extreme it causes them to kill themselves to escape the pain (again, this literally happened at Neuralink), then I will absolutely do a 180 heel pivot and condemn the fuck out of that.
Just to be clear here, a BCI is probably the very last thing I would ever be an early adopter of as some kind of commercial, general use product. Seems absolutely insane given the rampant cybersecurity problems just basically everywhere all the time, not to mention I just don't like the idea of an actual chip in my actual brain, permanent holes in my skull.
Valve and GabeN are not some paragons of virtue, they basically invented (and still widely use and encourage) half of the monetization and dark pattern bullshit that is now everywhere in the entire games industry.
... But to me at least, this seems nowhere near as openly, comically, real world supervillain levels of evil as Elon and Neuralink.
So basically, pigs and monkeys will get to play HL3 before us? Unbelievable.
What?
#Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s Neuralink competitor is expecting its first brain chip this year
Thank you. That's much clearer
Not what I asked for... But it was what I needed... My cataracts are acting up again.
It’s wild how Lemmy gamers and others treat Steam as if it’s a noble corporation and Gabe is THEIR billionaire so he can’t possibly be bad. The fact that he’s a billionaire is proof that he underpaid and stole from everyone below him. There are no good billionaires, and Gabe is not your friend
I mean, it's hard to hate on someone who pays his people well, gives fun benefits, cultivates chill working culture and is overall simply a chill guy and whose big, fat marketshare comes from actually working for the customer.
Yeah. He could probably pay better or give more of his wealth into the society. Hell, prolly even should. But the fact is that among anyone else with that title, Gabe looks like a goddamn saint.
He’s anti union, valve employees aren’t allowed to unionize. Also seems cool with making money off all the games made by studios who are also underpaying and over working employees
Anti union sucks. But about money - yeah, Steam is a game selling platform. If they tried to avoid selling games by studios underpaying their workers, they'd evolve into indie game selling platform. Most AAA studios underpay folk, do they not?
He could direct his company to stop targeting kids with addictive gambling mechanics and looking the other way regarding grey-market resellers.
Valve doesn't make money from keys on the grey market. Only on games bought through Steam, what do you want them to do?
Valve are the pioneers of lootboxes. No denying that.
Seriously?
First of all, admittedly, watched half of it. But also I don't see the point. Yeah, they have problems coming from their structure, but these seem kinda miniscule compared to any other game company. I mean come on, people looking up to more experienced colleagues for advice was shown there as a problem "because they have more to say". Or the bias in hiring...that even ex employees seem to understand that it simply happened due to their requirements about experience and such. The video was informative, but...pretty much shortly after mentioning what they aim for when hiring, one could easily foresee most of consequences.
Although damn, the pressure with these must feel enormous. And also...they really seem to say a lot of it up front so where's problem?
it's almost as if there may be room for something in between love and hate, black and white, good and evil
OMG GET OUT OF HERE
Is a killer a good person? Isn’t there a line to cross before you become bad? If you reached billionaire status you left the moral line far behind
that's a good way of thinking when you are 6.., by puberty you should have realized it's not that black and white
Well yeah, sometimes! It is very context dependent.
For example, my grandad was a killer. Fought Nazis in WW2.
But yet he might be one of the better billionaires in the pool of filth.
Nicest guy in prison
Given the state of the US justice system, that's not much of a gotcha.
Yes but to be fair it wouldn't be hard to find someone that felt that they were more exploited by Valve then by the likes of EA or Epic
The fact that he is a billionaire does not mean that lol. He’s a billionaire because his company gets a cut of every sale of games on his platform, and his platform is the industry standard/default platform for digital distribution. He could be paying his employees a million a year to be a janitor and he’d still be a billionaire, no “stealing” and not one being underpaid.
Stop defending billionaires, they don’t care about you. Great example he don’t care about us? He is anti union and refuses to let his employees unionize to ask for better conditions. They’re also raking in money on all these games that are also being made on the backs and labor of underpaid workers
I'm not "defending billionaires", I'm correcting misinformation and rubbish. Of course Gabe doesn't care about us, I never said he did.
Just because he is a billionaire doesn't mean that he exploited, underpaid, or stole from anyone. He's a billionaire because he created the only fish in a huge pond that everyone throws money into hand over fist. Like I said, he could be paying everyone there a million dollars a year and he'd still be a billionaire because he OWNS the company. It's not a publicly traded company, it's private. He owns it.
That's got nothing to do with him. He built a marketplace and tools for people to distribute and use in their games. The working conditions of people making the games that are then sold on his marketplace has nothing to do with him.
The fact that you wrote this with just vibes makes me love Gabe that much more. I'm finding that the best past in life is to reject whatever the fuck you all are selling since you're all so out of touch with reality.
It’s wild how many servile, billionaire lovers there are here today. It’s kinda pathetic
We could build Sword Art Online, but I think we all know that this technology will be used to beam ads directly into your head 24/7. You won't be able to sleep because of the penis enhancement ads.
Nah, it's GabeN.
Half Life: Alyx Episode 2 will be coming straight into your brain.
It's a new technology. The product will be bigger than Gabe or Valve and won't take long to become duplicated in function and form, then become commonplace.
Gabe is starting a fire, it may spread and do things against his or anyone's goodwill, Pandora's box.
I'm hoping if it's headed by Gabe's efforts it will be relatively clean. Guess only time will tell.
Props to him for trying it himself instead of having someone else do it and take all the risk
This is the new tech that will justify Half Life 3 they were talking about in the doc. It all makes sense now, the ultimate controller!
Who is controlled though?
We're going to get Borg before GTA VI
I’m only doing the brain chip thing if it can fully transplant me to a Matrix level of simulated reality and get me out of this current hellhole permanently.
I'd probably be a slow adopter tbh. Feel like you would wany such a chip to be quite trustworthy and reliabld. Proprietary software and hardware is not the most trustworthy thing in the world...
Usually I am an earlier adopter of tech because I'm interested in technology, and I have money to burn. But I don't need a brain chip, I'm weird enough already without having to debug my own head.
"Yes honey, I'm coming. Just one more thing to compile in my head"
Segmentation faultCan I run Linux on it? Or better yet Gentoo? "You having a headache?" "Just compiling the system. Lending some brain power"
three weeks after implant
"I was completely wrong about this technology! Valve Mindtap is the best thing ever!"
eyes stare 1000 yards into the distance while your true consciousness screams to be let out from the dark prison it has been trapped in
It would need to become a platform and standard unto itself.
Which is to say, I'm not installing one until I can flash the firmware myself.
This will be for paralyzed people
It will be used for paralyzed people to give it a soft spin, but the goal really is a super soldier or many other applications in the military industrial complex. If it's not for blowing up people, it's for killing people or controlling people. It's not that technology is evil. It's that our economic system and our mode of production and who benefits. That's the problem. The rich are just basically building our prison.
Yeah, maybe just leave all that for people born in 2030.
Is this what were getting instead of half life 3?
Half life: Alyx required VR.
Half life 3 requires neural integration.
I can see and feel the headcrab like it's actually there.
yikes
HL3 brain dance confirmed.
Where is the
GithubGitea/forgejo/CodeBerg/etc repo? OSHW certification?Until then unfortunately it's "just" Gabe's fanboyism. Better learn from open academic research or OSHW projects.
A culture that obsoletes electronics every couple of years and enshittifies services every couple of other years cannot be seriously talking about MMIs/BCIs.
I didn't know they were doing brainchips. I trust Gabe with it way more than fElon, for sure.
The picture in the post is unhinged
It's fairly on brand for Valve, one of their banners was a guy with pipe valve stuck to his head.
More than stuck on
Ohh...eh.
2019 left me with the impression Starfish was wireless.
Sticking stuff into my brain isn't on my to-do list.
The startup here is making stuff for medical conditions, not games.
That's fine and might be beneficial medically one day, but I was under the impression Gabe was also interested in using this tech for VR/AR too eventually.
I think the general idea is that the ar/vr stuff would be non invasive
So this is how we're gonna get half life 3 huh
Finally, Half-Life 3
😬
Poor monkes 🐒
When Gabe or Musk are the first people to get the implant, I'll consider it... 10 to 15 years later.
That will be awesome for when my body dies, but I still want to be a brain in a jar playing MechWarrior.
In this heeadline: Neuralink's Competitor Recieves Prototype
in this thread: Gabe Crazy
Project deckard. Gamers are getting the chip to run games inside their brains.
As long as theres no wifi and its to solve medical issues, why not? Better than trusting a nazi.
not "no wifi". It's "no any kind of wireless connections" and even then I'll say no.
not "no wifi". It's "no any kind of wireless connections" and even then I'll say no.
Valve enabling Nazis on Steam is about as good as being a Nazi. If this is the first time you're hearing about the problem, search for "steam nazi" via your favorite search engine and you'll get some pretty good results among the first.
It also receives power wirelessly so probably going to be the only option.
“The non WiFi versions cost more and are not supported by most insurance.”
I want to get one of the first implants possible. VR headsets are so unsightly.
I like that vision of future (implants are cool, neural interfaces can be useful), but I'd also like our world to stop and think a bit at every stage.
Solve the global network (note how I'm not saying "global computer network", because I don't think so, ideally we'd still have global analog commutated channel network as the base level), web of hypertext documents, universal applications and personal computing problems sufficiently well first. Then go to brain implants.
It's like combat drones, using them with optical cables for communication is better than with radio, turns out. That's the current way.
Would be good if for computing we'd figure out ways better than war to remove delusions.
I wish I could close or move windows around with my brain. It would be so nice.
Black mirror did an episode on this
All you had to do was nothing.
All you had to do was NOTHING, Gabe!
nice thumbnail
Steam controller flash backs Pass
Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten, sie fliehen vorbei wie nächtliche Schatten. Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschießen, es bleibet dabei: die Gedanken sind frei.
What are the chances this won't be proprietary?
I just need to open my work laptop and watch it utterly fail at even the most basic tasks for me to be convinced our level of technology is no where near where it needs to be to start sticking electronics in people's heads.
There are many reasons why I would take this over others. Many of those reasons have been pointed out in this thread. However there are many reasons why I say no. One small reason that will happen every year among many is will it have wifi 9?
Wow Valve was on a great series of wins, this is a rare loss for them. Who wants this? Best case people will be sitting in meetings playing Half Life 3 in their brains. I don't really want that.
we're a long fucking way from helping any of those people with this stuff. this is for all the multimillionaires out there.
We are currently helping people with this sort of tech
which people, which tech, and where?
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/epilepsy-brain-implant-1.7245178
Here's one example. Google it yourself if you're interested in learning more.
that is DBS and it is very different from what this article in this topic talking about. DBS has been around for a long time, used for other purposes like parkinsons and essential tremor. I'm very familiar with it because i have a form of parkinsons.
And how would you presume we reach a level that could help them without starting somewhere? Do you think this kind of tech just pops up, fully formed?
You're looking at this with a very closed mind. This isnt (currently) being designed for people to just do normal computer stuff but in their brain. This technology has huge potential for improving prosthetics and treating neurological disorders.
I want shit like this. I want to be a cyborg. I do not want them to kill hundreds of apes for it though.
Reminder: billionaires are apes... (For legal reasons, this is a joke)
If it gets me closer to Half-Life 3, then pipe that shit into my brains