Bluetooth (BT) is simply a wireless standard for exchanging data between devices over short distances. It is very widespread, reliable enough and easy to develop and integrate. It's an understandable and common choice in the medical devices field.
In a more developed, market society, you typically have several commoditized, replaceable products and most tend to leverage BT. The idea of replaceableness belongs to the product itself, but what we see in common for all of them is BT connectivity, so we tend to perceive BT as an identifier of replaceableness as well.
Neuralink very casually and tongue-in-cheek BT "paired" to the monkey, reinforcing the idea of replaceability and commoditization of the monkey.
Many people have empathy for animals and monkeys are seen as precursors to humans. It's very easy to see how treating a pre-human species like a replaceable product, leaves humans themselves creeped out and feeling like in the future they may also be treated like a replaceable product.
Neuralink needs an ethicist in a high exec position or board and a better PR manager. They should have done some of these to reduce that perception mess:
- allude to the use of BT in serious medical applications before "pairing" with the monkey
- reduce or change the common BT terms like pairing
- use a computer rather than a smartphone
- don't mention BT, just say wirelessly connected
- don't use a Bond-villain smooth British voice
By talking about it as a PR problem, I don't mean to say that is the root cause, it is just what we can see at the surface.
Do they really care about ethics? Is it execs, engineers, video directors, everyone, no one? Do they care, but are just bad at PR? Do they not care, and this video is a reflection of that? This is what matters, for all those people to genuinely care about ethics.
Can they still genuinely care though, after becoming a corporation? Can bringing shareholder value align with ethics?
One botched video is simply one data point in the public trying to understand Neuralink's genuine stance on ethics.
Only people with close contact to Neuralink will really know. We are all hyper connected, but sadly, only superficially.
In a more developed, market society, you typically have several commoditized, replaceable products and most tend to leverage BT. The idea of replaceableness belongs to the product itself, but what we see in common for all of them is BT connectivity, so we tend to perceive BT as an identifier of replaceableness as well.
Neuralink very casually and tongue-in-cheek BT "paired" to the monkey, reinforcing the idea of replaceability and commoditization of the monkey.
Many people have empathy for animals and monkeys are seen as precursors to humans. It's very easy to see how treating a pre-human species like a replaceable product, leaves humans themselves creeped out and feeling like in the future they may also be treated like a replaceable product.
Neuralink needs an ethicist in a high exec position or board and a better PR manager. They should have done some of these to reduce that perception mess: - allude to the use of BT in serious medical applications before "pairing" with the monkey - reduce or change the common BT terms like pairing - use a computer rather than a smartphone - don't mention BT, just say wirelessly connected - don't use a Bond-villain smooth British voice
By talking about it as a PR problem, I don't mean to say that is the root cause, it is just what we can see at the surface.
Do they really care about ethics? Is it execs, engineers, video directors, everyone, no one? Do they care, but are just bad at PR? Do they not care, and this video is a reflection of that? This is what matters, for all those people to genuinely care about ethics.
Can they still genuinely care though, after becoming a corporation? Can bringing shareholder value align with ethics?
One botched video is simply one data point in the public trying to understand Neuralink's genuine stance on ethics.
Only people with close contact to Neuralink will really know. We are all hyper connected, but sadly, only superficially.