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Just get it to write out plans, checks, tests. You're blowing these issues way out of proportion. How can it possibly be that these agent swarms are capable of advancing the frontier of mathematics but can't do 1900s tank cannons? Maybe it can't oneshot a tank cannon simulation to a certain level. But tell it to reassess assumptions, check against other physics models or read the literature on tank guns, ask it to generate an exhaustive plan for implementing your general vision, then have it go step by step through that plan.
I don't say that the brain is a computer, it's like a computer in that in a fundamental sense, it processes information in accordance with mathematical rules. Brains and LLMs belong in a subcategory for non-deterministic neural systems, separate from traditional computers. But all are part of the same set.
If a brain is not like a computer at that fundamental sense, then what is it? What else processes information outside the realm of mathematics? If you deny that the brain is in that broader set of mathematical information processing systems, then you must be introducing a soul or some other woo.
They had a 4% fatality rate, many weird side effects. It did work at reducing agitation, just that what they were doing was grossly disproportionate and unnecessary:
I reject the notion that it didn't work. It did work, it just isn't cost-effective or ethical.
Obviously wireheading cannot be used like mechanical controls can be used on machines, it's an incentive. We can't force LLMs to do certain things either, we can't sockpuppet them to refuse certain things every time (even if you ask in Leetspeak, or get Pliny the Liberator to prompt).
Neuralink isn't melting the brain into a puddle. Nor the MRI induced mild belief changes.
If that could be done right now, the CIA would have it under wraps. Nobody's gonna announce 'we made the Totalitarian Dream Torment Nexus'. Note that BCI works. Extracting memories is a lot more difficult, naturally. But it's not impossible in principle and there's no reason to think it might be. Memories are just another kind of stored information. There's nothing else they could be!
If you can fix a genetic disease that causes brain dysfunction by altering genes, you could also augment brain function by improving the genes. There's no hard line between the two. If you can fix, you can also improve, perhaps by stitching neurons together or altering the chemicals. Theoretically, you could make a hip replacement that performs better than an actual hip or is at least much harder to break. We haven't done this but it's possible in principle to make a better hip. Nothing is complicated about that, it's clear that the materials that make up the hip in humans are not as diverse or as intensively processed as those available to industry.
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