Re: The Elon Musk Thread
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2023 11:58 pm
More on the trial: https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/23/2356 ... -tesla-pif
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Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/jury-cl ... er-tweet/SAN FRANCISCO (Courthouse News) — After three weeks of testimony in the Tesla securities trial, jurors on Friday found Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Tesla itself not liable on all claims of fraud and attempts to deceive investors in their efforts to take the electric vehicle company private.
Musk faced trial in the lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders who said they were misled by an Aug. 7, 2018, tweet in which he said he secured financing for a Tesla buyout. That buyout never came to fruition, however, and stockholders cried foul.
“Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured,” the South African-born multibillionaire tweeted at the time. Tesla stock jumped in value and then sank when it when it became clear nothing of the sort was going to happen. The tweet also cost Musk $40 million when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined him following an investigation.
The nine jurors heard more than two hours of closing arguments before beginning deliberations, a process that lasted only a couple of hours.
While a victory for the defense, the day started a little less optimistically. Friday’s session began with a tongue-lashing from U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, excoriating the defense for submitting evidence outside his established time limits and and continued with technical problems as the court’s tech guy moved about the room trying to fix the issue. Nearly 45 minutes after the scheduled start time of 8:30 a.m., closing arguments finally got under way.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup, Neuralink, said it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruiting patients for its first human trial. The company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device in a six-year study.
Neuralink is one of several companies developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can collect and analyze brain signals. But its billionaire executive’s bombastic promotion of the company, including promises to develop an all-encompassing brain computer to help humans keep up with artificial intelligence, has attracted skepticism and raised ethical concerns among neuroscientists and other experts.
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration denied the company’s request to fast-track human trials, but in May approved Neuralink for an investigational device exemption (IDE) that allows a device to be used for clinical studies. The agency has not disclosed how its initial concerns were resolved.
Neuralink says it is looking for patients with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or ALS. Participants will have a BCI surgically implanted using a proprietary robot in a region of the brain that controls movement, with the goal of enabling them to control a computer cursor or a keyboard using just their thoughts. The study will evaluate the safety and functionality of the technology, according to a statement.
A few months after getting FDA approval for human trials, Neuralink is looking for its first test subjects. The six-year initial trial, which the Elon Musk-owned company is calling “the PRIME Study,” is intended to test Neuralink tech designed to help those with paralysis control devices. The company is looking for people with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or ALS who are over the age of 22 and have a “consistent and reliable caregiver” to be part of the study.
The PRIME Study (which apparently stands for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, even though that acronym makes no sense) is set to research three things at once. The first is the N1 implant, Neuralink’s brain-computer device. The second is the R1 robot, the surgical robot that actually implants the device. The third is the N1 User App, the software that connects to the N1 and translates brain signals into computer actions. Neuralink says it’s planning to test both the safety and efficacy of all three parts of the system.
To be clear: this is not the all-encompassing brain computer Musk has been talking about for years. Musk has spent years talking about the potential for telepathy and using Neuralink to help humans keep up with AI, and the system Neuralink plans to test is nothing close to that ambition.
Researchers have long been testing implants that let people with paralysis control computers and other devices, too. Two recently published studies, for instance, showed brain-to-computer interfaces could help patients with ALS communicate by typing on a computer.