cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19628702
image transcript
screenshot of this bluesky post (which you can read without logging in here) from
@comraderobot.bsky.social
(“Notorious RBMK”) saying:my friend who still lives in palo alto gave me permission to share this mailer he got.
there’s unhinged and then there’s tech unhinged
image in post has two photos of people wearing EEG electrodes, one xray of a human head, an EEG data plot over a silhouette of a head, and this text:
REM sleep is the next Al
The upcoming era of physical reality integrated with dream worlds advanced by the REMspace startup
- Controlling a smart home from dreams
- Transferring speech from dreams
- Controlling virtual cars from dreams
- Interacting with dream worlds using brain implants
- Social media for sharing dream journals
- Smart sleep masks powered by Al
- Many other breakthroughs from our lab (videos and tech)
Don’t miss the pitch of the year for potential partners and investors
Aug 29th Palo Alto
Above the image is an (inaccurate) BlueSky label saying “Possible tumblr screenshot” with a “hide” button.
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the guy behind this startup:
- (CW bloody photos) “I confirm the information published in the Daily Mail. On May 17, 2023, I performed by myself trepanation, electrode implantation, and electrical stimulation of my brain’s motor cortex. I needed it to test brain stimulation during lucid dreaming”
- https://www.newsweek.com/russian-implants-chip-brain-control-dreams-hospital-1814256
I saw the tagline and thought it meant that REM sleep is the next big thing people invest in because sleep is good for your health so they’re selling solutions to boost your sleep quality
Boy was I wrong
Oh, so they can’t get autonomous driving to work, thus the next step is to get people who are sleeping to steer the cars remotely
But do I get paid for that?
They’re going to ender’s game you. It’ll be pitched as a game or training and it’ll come out it was real cars
I will totally abide by all traffic rules when playing a virtual reality driving game in my sleep. Nothing can go wrong there.
Well, in the case of Ender’s Game, that was the point. Trick kids into thinking they were playing a game and they wouldn’t think twice about being as brutal as necessary to win. So if your goal is to have cars murder people, having people control them with their dreams is a pretty good idea.
Even if all of that worked, why would I want it?
Interactive dream worlds is essentially full dive vr. I guess you could just not use it, and while you’re dreaming about losing your teeth, I’ll be living through whatever movie I picked before going to bed.
Expecting any part of the brain to work that simply is foolish. We already know that REM sleep does a lot of the lifting for forming long term memories and processing complex input from your waking hours. Not to mention the importance of it for actual rest/recharging so you aren’t an exhausted zombie all the time.
Sounds like a wonderful idea to just fuck around with that.
There’s a saying in my language that roughly translates to “the morning is wiser than the evening” in English. I believe in English it’s common to say “sleep on it” for tough decisions.
I often wake up and come up with a solution to my toughest problems from the previous day. My REM sleep brain is already keeping me gainfully employed.
No idea why anyone would want to fuck with this. It’s awesome.
You don’t want it.
But the people who can put ads on your dreams want it.
CEO: “Did you know that people can do basic work during REM? And they won’t even feel like they have worked after waking up. We can boost employee productivity by 40%!!”
So I can spend less time at work??
CEO: “Umm…next question please”
Yeah, I totally want a copy of the dream I had last night where someone stole my motor scooter and I was chasing them around a parking lot
There’s a free tier, which means the dream is same but there are billboards all around the parking lot