I think that's a little unfair. I guess what they are doing is achieving the basics, but with a different interface. This is an important proof of concept.
Remember, Musk is all about scalable manufacturing and products. If this was other's tech from 20 years ago, where's the massive commercialization? They failed. Musk is focused on this aspect, and he will (given his past achievements) succeed.
That's akin to saying that phones are basic since we already had desktops in the 1990s.
Having 10x more electrodes that stay active for a long time, attached to self powered unit under skin with low latency wireless comm link is a major step forward.
It’s not that it’s nothing new - it’s obviously not identical to previous BMIs. But the thing people are reacting too is mostly the MindPong part (genuinely basic) and not the 10x electrode part (novel). It’s not like a paradigm shift, it’s a practice run for them to see if they can replicate previous successes with some changes to the tech.
That's what I'm saying. Exactly. I don't think it's "easier" to use 2000 electrodes in a microneural mesh.
Besides that, why the pushback? Is it coming from field experts who are like, "bah, old hat as shiny new. humbug!"; disappointed futurists who expected more ("we were promised flying cars and intelligent robotic spouses, and all we got was 2000 electrodes in our brains, and 140 characters"); misMuskists; people who sense unfairness in praises lauded upon this, in their mind, mediocre achievement, echoing to them a theme that the already-anointed and, in their view, undeserving, accrue all praise, while the genuinely meritful, themselves, for example, are overlooked, yet again?
I'm going to echo that this is not really as impressive as neuralink is saying. It's a good incremental improvement, but no breakthrough, and enough people have shown similar results. It's still quite far from achieving Musk's dream of uploading his brain into a robot body to fight the AI Singularity.
Remember, Musk is all about scalable manufacturing and products. If this was other's tech from 20 years ago, where's the massive commercialization? They failed. Musk is focused on this aspect, and he will (given his past achievements) succeed.