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Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s Neuralink competitor is expecting its first brain chip this year
(www.theverge.com)
They should make a big facility to test the implants
this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Maybe have an AI overseer, they could name it Gladys
Yperating System?
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.
That will be awesome for when my body dies, but I still want to be a brain in a jar playing MechWarrior.
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.
"Alright, the implantation surgery was a success, now all we have to do is fire up the remote activation. Throwing the switch in three... two...
What are the chances this won't be proprietary?
"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 you~~ serve you more personalised ads.
Props to him for trying it himself instead of having someone else do it and take all the risk
Valve CEO Gabe Newell pretends to get a hole drilled into his head for a brain-computer interface.
Finally the logo makes sense
TIL Valve is into brain chips.
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.
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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
The Valve Deckard was a little more ambitious than had been originally anticipated.
Might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I don't really see a problem with brain implants. I wouldn't put anything my brain in a thousand years, but if someone's willing to accept the risks, why not? They have the potential to significantly improve quality of life for many people.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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Will we also get a control valve back on our heads?
Yes, but it belongs to Gaben. Don't touch it.