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Comment by b_tterc_p | Hacker News Reader

A lot of commenters seem fearful of this tech. But I don’t see a problem is it is strictly read only and not connected to the internet. There are ways to make this bad, but it’s not fundamentally bad.

One thing I was surprised to learn recently was that mentally controlled prosthetics are simply machine learning algorithms trained to interpret the electrical signals and produce physical outcomes. In hindsight that seems obvious but before that I had assumed something more complicated. I think a lot of great stuff could come from this. Especially art. Either generating things that the device observes you find enjoyable or generating music you’re mentally composing could be awesome. Imagery could be great.

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The neural links are intended to be bi-directional. While they can't 'write' to the brain, they could provide sensory inputs or thoughts to the user. That seems a little more risky than read-only. (I don't know what I'm talking about though.)

It's about as bad as any other technology. I bet therapy gets a lot easier when I can write my anxiety reduction function for myself.

A malicious firmware update that commands the prosthetic to punch you in the face on an infinite loop will still be a threat. Updates will likely be necessary for a while as the ML stuff gets tuned, though it's not impossible to get the other parts of the controlling software correct the first time and make those read-only.

Also I expect the medical device manufacturers will most likely join this market eventually and they have a less-than-stellar record of security with their devices. Some company is going to connect it to the internet and regulation will be too glacially slow to stop it.

That fear feels overblown to me. This isn’t some autonomous vehicle, it’s a learned mapping of electrical signals to specific motions. I don’t see a need for over the air firmware updates. And the model can’t generalize because everyone’s brain works differently so you’ll need to retrain every single time.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear but that technology already exists and is in use. It’s much easier to do prosthetics because you can just hook it up to the nerves on former limb stub.

I'm thinking when it becomes more widely available. Companies will inevitably try to reduce costs and that likely means firmware updates that aren't delivered by technicians (OTA or downloaded and installed by users).

>I don’t see a need for over the air firmware updates.

There isn't a need, but if the same thing happens here that happened everywhere else in the tech industry, there will be a motivation for over-the-air firmware updates. If the average person won't install adblock because they don't realize the end result of ad network tracking, why would they object to a prosthetic that records their every move? Time and time again, the public has shown that they have no practical aversion to being creeped on and abused in ways that don't immediately translate to pain or lost money.

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