the first electric car was invented in 1828, and the electric motor isn't that complicated of a device. Reusable rockets are a little more complicated, but fantasies about plugging the human brain into a computer are to those inventions what a sandcorn is to the sahara desert.

Musk has the habit of taking some established technology like solarpanels or pneumatic tubes and then repackage them in ways that get futurology type people all exited, but that doesn't explain how he's going to hook us into the matrix.

And yet, until Tesla came about we didn't have that many electric cars running around, nor did we have many companies investing heavily to change the status quo of gas cars. The same goes to reusable rockets. As many other people said in this thread, Musk is a PR nightmare and is a very peculiar public person when it comes to his tweets and such, but I wouldn't put it past him to actually find the talent and bankroll this until they achieve their objective.

There's no doubt that Musk has a knack for high risk entrepreneurship and he definitely very well how to repackage and promote things, but Neuralink wants to invent devices that come straight out of the science fiction realm.

Not only do we not have the AI required for natural language processing of the sort Elon is after, we also don't really have the neuroscience that explains how information is stored in the brain or let alone how we "write" to it. That's a different beast.

Sure, I didn't want to imply that they won't make money on this. Just trying to give a bit of perspective versus their marketing :) No matter what I think of the feasibility, a Musk-backed commercial player in the field will likely stir something up. With the pace of progress in the field over the last decades, that might just be a good thing.

I'm certainly not saying that what he's doing is all good either.

The idea that this is going to be controlled with anything other than a direct connection to an air-gapped computer scares the shit out of me.

> Sure, it's not like a Musk company ever broke the mold before.

Well to be fair they really haven't much, as far as technological advancements are concerned.

Reusable rockets weren't used before not because we didn't know how to do it, but because it doesn't seem to be economical. The judge is still out on whether SpaceX will actually be able to reuse the first stages in a way that's even remotely useful.

And there's even less innovation involved in Tesla cars. The only new thing they bring to the table is Autopilot, which arguably is a huge accomplishment, but not one that's "breaking the mold" in the hypercompetitive autonomous car space right now, and hasn't really delivered on its promises either.

What Neuralink proposes is so far ahead in terms of what we even glimpse to be technologically possible I have trouble thinking it's not basically his pet project that is guaranteed to receive press and funding just because the topic is sexy and it has Musk's name of it. If we are ever to get as far as NL implies, it will take more than a single consumer electronics company.

tl;dr I'll believe it when I see it.

People who are not impressed by the innovations of Musk’s companies generally aren’t involved in those fields.

I had a NASA fellow (guidance, navigation, etc, so a relevant field) who literally told me landing on a barge is impossible, just months before they accomplished it.

I personally think this will take decades. And the implications of it for humanity if it works are probably greater than anything else Elon is working on.