It’s the first time I’ve heard about this company, and of course I haven’t taken the time to check how real their product is, but honestly, for me it’s very difficult to believe we currently have the technology to correctly integrate a living neuron into a chip, let alone compute anything meaningful with it.
From what I’ve read elsewhere, our understanding of neurons is still very basic, and we need a lot more fundamental research before reaching results like these. We still don’t even properly know how migraines work, nor can we cure paraplegia, yet somehow we supposedly have the capacity to grow second brains and program them on top of that.
You don't need to understand how neurons work in detail to be able to use them to do something. In the past, we were able to use electricity for various purposes without knowing about electrons.
But my point is: have we really reached a technological level where we can use neurons like replaceable car parts? That video seems to suggest yes, but I’m still skeptical.
My impression is that this company is offering a product that’s still beyond our technological capabilities, much like the cold‑fusion startups that pop up from time to time.
To my knowledge, we understand how an individual neuron works quite well. We just don’t really understand macro effects in large networks of neurons.
The video seems buzz wordy. Without looking into this too deeply, it seems like they’re using neurons individually or in small groups rather than creating a true “brain”. I would guess they’re using neurons or small groups of them sort of like transistors that do a single basic thing rather than a full “brain” that they just feed images to.
Maybe I wasn’t explicit about this point, but I’m not only talking about understanding the biological processes behind a neuron. I’m also talking about our ability to manipulate them in something like an industrial process, combining them with hardware in a controlled way and achieving reliable results.
Cells have a metabolism, right? They need to be fed and require a specific environment to survive. They age and can die, and they can be attacked by other microorganisms. Are all of these problems solved and applicable on an industrial scale? I had no idea.
Why aren’t we fixing people’s retinas and paraplegia if we can manipulate neurons with that level of precision?
From their video it just comes across as they stimulate different left/right neurons depending on where the enemy is on screen and then listen to some output that also says left/right. Shooting looks completely random, to be frank.
If you connected electrodes to two different fish, shocked them and interpreted twitching as intelligent output, fish could also play Doom. The interface is doing all the work.
It doesn't sound like the neurons have any concept of the game other than "left input means left output", which is a rather trivial result... It's effectively no different than the pong example.
They don't say anything on how much training is required for this to happen, or if there's any "learning" going on at all. The learning part is "next".
>The median salary for a urologist in the United States is approximately $590,000 per year as of March 2026. Most urologists earn between $550,000 and $630,000 annually.
>1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;
This humanist view unfortunately doesn’t hold anymore in the modern world. Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing, so that their own homes can appreciate in value. Republicans would rather burn money than spend it on houses, hospitals, or bridges that might benefit immigrants or “other people” more than themselves.
I used an American political party only as a reference, but the same phenomenon can be seen in many countries around the world. Society has become incredibly cynical and has regressed a lot in terms of humanity.
>"Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing"
Not sure what boomers you are talking about. I for one am disgusted at what is happening with the things in general and with the housing in particular. I do not want my house to appreciate Ad infinitum. I do not want to have ever growing class of have-not's so that few jerks can own the governments and half of the world.
Just so we're on the same page, the GP was reeferring to "baby boomers", as in people born 1945-1965. Maybe you know that and that's when you were born. I don't know. But "boomer" has taken on a slang meaning the latest few years for someone who's simply not tech-savvy or is otherwise out-of-touch.
Generational politics has definite limits and isn't absolute but it's also true that the Baby Boomer generation as a whole enjoyed the great opportunities and wealth generation opportunities in history. They fled to the suburbs, subsidized by the government every step of the way, and then basically pulled up the ladder behind them. They also refuse to quit.
And then when crime receded (and there are multiple theories for why this happened), they moved back into the city, bought up all the real estate and then blocked building affordable housing there too.
I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore.
> I personally have a theory that the parting gift of the Baby Boomer generation will be to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since they don't need it anymore.
They do need social security and Medicare. Studies show even with social security and Medicare half or more might struggle in retirement due to insufficient savings.
>Block said Thursday it’s laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its headcount. The stock skyrocketed more than 24% in extended trading.
Society provides support to this kind of decision, it's obvious why it happens.
And nobody really believes this whole "we got too efficient" so now we don't need 40% of our company anymore.
There was an article a few years ago here on HN about "can't be evil" business models, which used Costco as an example. As soon as Costco turns evil, it stops working. https://www.bryanlehrer.com/entries/costco/
So code was apparently cheap, but in fact it was expensive because it was low quality.
Now with LLMs, code is cheap and it also has quality, therefore "quality code can be had in the cheap".
Do you really believe this is the case? Why don't companies fire all their developers if they can have an algorithm that can output cheap and quality code?
Because cheap and quality code is only part of the story. The code needs to solve the right problem and that is a domain only a human can operate, at least for now. Back then when I was inexperienced I couldn't write good code, but I could sit with the company's CTO while he explained the domain, the challenges and the goal of the project. I could talk with domain experts and understand what the common solutions to the problems were. These are things that for an LLM to do would require untold amounts of context or a specialized model that understands the domain.
But the thing is, there are many unknowns. We humans are very capable of adapting as we go. LLMs have a fixed data they were trained on and prompt engineering can only get you so far.
I think anyone asking this with the intention of actually replacing humans with LLMs don't really understand neither humans nor LLMs. They are just talking money.
We didn’t fire all our developers when we invented compilers either, and for much the same reason we didn’t stop hiring laborers when we first built ships and established overseas trade routes: business will always expand to meet its reach
Many enterprises are currently exploring to see if they can invite developers to leverage AI tools—like they leveraged the compiler—to be more productive. To operate on a higher plane of agency, collaborating on what we should be building and not just technical execution. Those actively hostile or just checked out with the idea of relearning skills are being laid off. (Some unprofitable business sections are being swept up opportunistically too.) The idea that all developers would be fired if AI tools can write good code doesn’t meet the lessons of history
> Many enterprises are currently exploring to see if they can invite developers to leverage AI tools—like they leveraged the compiler—to be more productive. To operate on a higher plane of agency, collaborating on what we should be building and not just technical execution.
The thing is, developers have been hired to automate process, and as for any professional doing a good job, that means the output should perform reliably. But now they are forcing us to use a tools that everyone knows is not reliable, but the onus is still on us to keep the same reliability. So do you see why we are not thrilled?
It’s like providing a faulty piano (that shuffles the notes when a key is pressed) and expecting a good rendition of the Moonlight Sonata.
Or a crane that will stall and drop its load randomly. It would have been sent to the scrapyard on the first day.
> "Or a crane that will stall and drop its load randomly. It would have been sent to the scrapyard on the first day."
The only reason you have the concept that engines can "stall" is because people have bought engines that can stall by the hundreds of millions, instead of the earliest people refusing to buy them at all and all waiting for the perfect engine.
Container ships can sink with all the containers lost at sea. Still used.
Steam train engines could explode, derailing the train and killing some passengers and employees. Still used.
Buildings can collapse. Still used.
Pneumatic tyres can burst. Still used.
Here[1] is Tom Scott using a recreation walking crane from the 13th century, a technology going back to Roman times, which has no evidence that it ever had brakes on it historically. Look at that and tell me you think the rope never snappped, the wood never broke, the walker never tripped and the thing never unreeled the load back to the ground with the walker severely injured, because if it went wrong builders would refuse to use it? No chance.
Nothing functions like you're claiming; that's where we get the saying "don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough", as soon as stuff is better than not having it, people want to make use of it.
You forgot to address the random aspect of the failure cases.
Real world is chaotic, technology was always first about controlling, then improving said control. A lot of the risks in the situations you described have been brought down that the savings (time, money,…) are magnitude more than the cost of the failure.
I’m not asking for perfection, but something good enough that we can demonstrate the savings outweigh the costs. So far there’s none. In fact, we are increasing it. And fast.
> But now they are forcing us to use a tools that everyone knows is not reliable, but the onus is still on us to keep the same reliability. So do you see why we are not thrilled?
I don't know if you've heard, but there have been a large number of layoffs in the tech sector recently. Whether they're actually related to AI as executives claim, and not section 174 of the US IRS tax code in the BBB, is known only to them, but if your argument hinges on people having not been fired when there have been layoffs, you may need a different one.
I think a major contributor to the layoffs is companies hiring to much people around covid[1]. I cant find good stats for the years 2019-2026 besides looking at now and the past directly. There are some data for the ukranin side djinni[1][2] and for US IT job postings[3].
I dont think AI is the reason for the layoffs. Its just easier to say "because of AI we are firing" than to say "because we overhired and its actually our fault".
As you said, it's impossible to determine how many of the current layoffs are caused by AI, they probably also have a lot to do with the broader economic downturn. But you’re still missing the point, if companies truly have a black box that can produce cheap, high‑quality code as the GP put it, why don't they just fire 95% of their developers and keep only a small core of AI orchestrators?
Who's missing who's point? You're asking why haven't they fired 95% of their people. I'm pointing at tech sector layoffs saying people are being laid off. It's not 95% which is a number you totally made up, but in the broader picture, I wouldn't say it isn't happening.
This what I really wonder, what is even the cost of code? Or what is real code quality.
I know that things like “clean code” exists but I always felt that actual code quality only shows when you try adding or changing existing code. Not by looking at it.
And the ability to judge code quality on a system scale is something I don’t think LLMs can do. But they may support developers in their judgment.
I don't know why people think SWEs are aesthetic snobs when we talk about "clean code"--the point of code is not to be pretty, it's to be understandable and predictable.
Quality doesn't matter if you're writing throwaway code or you need your startup to find a market before you run out of cash.
>The EU has had 20 years to create an equally successful and popular product, which it failed to do. American companies don’t owe your European nationalist ambitions a dime. Use their products at your own discretion.
I can see not everybody here will agree with me, but I find this take absolutely reasonable. The European space has the capacity and the resources to create a product that replaces something as trivial as Linkedin, and yet it takes the lazy approach of just using American products.
It's the same thing with China's manufactured products, at some point the rest of the world just accepted that everything gets done in China and then keep complaining about how abusive China can be.
The most recent issue is the military question. Europe relied for decades on the "cheap" protection of the USA. Now the USA gave the middle finger to Europe and Europe acts shocked, but Europe is not so shocked when it comes to the military budget it did not spend on self defense during all the time the Americans provided protection.
> "The most recent issue is the military question. Europe relied for decades on the "cheap" protection of the USA. Now the USA gave the middle finger to Europe and Europe acts shocked, but Europe is not so shocked when it comes to the military budget it did not spend on self defense during all the time the Americans provided protection."
Fully agree. Europe expects some kids from nowheresville Tennessee to die in a ditch defending Ukraine. The war will be over the second they need to draft 18 year-olds at scale from anywhere in western Europe to go defend "Europe". Nobody in France will die defending Poland, nobody in Greece will die defending Latvia. The EU is such a joke.
>In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh.
Yet another person who thinks that there is a silver bullet for complexity. The mythical intelligent machines that from poorly described natural language can erect flawless complex system is like the philosopher's stone of our time.
And let's be honest that's not a new thing. It's been already a long time since you had a revolutionary idea in the shower only to google it(or use an LLM nowadays) and discover that there are already eight different apps that do what you were thinking.
I believe that most of what you said is true, but I don't think the tracking of people around the world is as efficient as your post suggests. If a single face scan were enough to track people anywhere like that, American government agencies (I'm thinking ICE, the FBI, etc.) wouldn’t have as much trouble as they do arresting people. That’s just my impression of course, maybe for some reason they choose not to use these technologies.
From what I’ve read elsewhere, our understanding of neurons is still very basic, and we need a lot more fundamental research before reaching results like these. We still don’t even properly know how migraines work, nor can we cure paraplegia, yet somehow we supposedly have the capacity to grow second brains and program them on top of that.
reply