Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Elon Musk DJ sa Matthew McDougall Bliss
Chapman and Nolan arbaugh about
neuralink and the future of
humanity Elon DJ Matthew and Bliss are
of course part of the amazing neuralink
team and Nolan is the first human to
have a neuralink device implanted in his
brain I speak with each of them
individually so use time stamps to jump
around or as I recommend go hardcore and
listen to the whole thing this is the
longest podcast I've ever done it's a
fascinating super technical and wide-
ranging conversation and I loved every
minute of it and now dear friends here's
Elon Musk his fifth time on this The Lex
fredman
podcast drinking coffee or water
water I'm so over caffeinated right now
do you want some caffeine I mean sure
there's a there a Nitro
drink this supposed to keep you up till
like you know tomorrow afternoon
basically yeah I don't so what does
Nitro it's just got a lot of caffeine or
something don't ask questions it's
called Nitro do you need to know
anything else it's got It's got nitrogen
in it that's ridiculous I mean what we
breathe is 78% nitrogen anyway what he
needs to add more
for you're going toat it most most
people think that they're breathing
oxygen and they're actually breathing
78% nitrogen you need like a Milk Bar
like
from like from cluck orange
yeah yeah is that top three kubri film
for you cluck Orange it's pretty good I
mean it's
demented jarring i'
say
okay uh okay so first let's step back
and uh big congrats on getting your link
implanted into a human that's a historic
step for neur link and yeah there's many
more to come yeah we're just um
obviously have a second implant as well
how did that go uh so far so good there
looks like we've got um I think 400
electrodes that are are providing
signals so nice yeah how how quickly do
you think the number of human
participants will scale uh it depends
somewh on the regulatory approval the
rate which we get regulatory approvals
uh
so we're hoping to do 10 by the end of
this year total of 10 so eight
more and with each one you're going to
be learning a lot of lessons about the
neurobiology the brain the everything
the the whole chain of the neuralink the
decoding this the signal processing all
that kind of stuff yeah yeah I think
it's obviously going to get better with
with each one um I mean I don't want to
jinx it but it it seems to have gone
extremely well with the second uh
implant so there's a a lot of signal a
lot of elrods it's working very well
what improvements do you think we'll see
in neur Link in the
coming let's say let's get crazy coming
years I mean in years it's going to be
gigantic um because we'll increase the
number of electrodes
dramatically um will improve the signal
processing so you know we with with uh
even with only roughly I don't know 10
15% of the electrodes working with uh
with Noland with our first patient we
were able to get to achieve a bits per
second that's twice the world record so
I think we'll we'll we'll start like
vastly exceeding world record by orders
of magnitude in the years to come so
it's like getting to I don't know 100
bits per second, you know
maybe maybe if like five years from now
we might be at a megabit
like faster than any human could
possibly communicate uh by typing or
speaking Yeah that BPS is an interesting
metric to measure there might be a big
leap in the experience once you reach a
certain level of BPS yeah like entire
new ways of interacting with a computer
might be unlocked and with humans with
other humans provided they
have one and Ne link too right otherwise
they won't be able to all the signals
fast enough do you think that'll improve
the quality of intellectual discourse
well I think you can you could think of
it you know if you were to slow it down
communication How would how you feel
about that you know if you'd only talk
at let's say 1110th of normal speed you
would be like wow that's agonizingly
slow yeah uh so now imagine you could
speak at communicate clearly um at 10 or
100 or a thousand times faster the
normal listen uh I'm pretty sure nobody
in their right mind listens to me at 1X
they listen at 2x so I I can only
imagine what 10x would feel like or I
could actually understand it I usually
default to 1.5x um you can do 2x but
well actually if I'm trying to go if I'm
listening somebody to go to in like sort
of 15 20 minute segments to go to sleep
then I'll do it 1.5x um if I'm paying
attention I'll do 2X
right um but actually if you start
actually listen to podcasts or or sort
of audiobooks or anything at if you get
used to doing it at 1.5 then then one
sounds painfully slow I'm still holding
on to one because I'm afraid I'm afraid
of myself becoming bored with the
reality with the real world where
everyone's speaking in One
X well it depends on the person you can
speak very fast like we we can
communicate very quickly and also if you
use a wide range of if you if your
vocabulary is larger your uh bit rate
effective bit rate is
higher that's a good way to put it yeah
the effective bit rate I mean that is
the question is how much information is
actually compressed in the low bit
transfer of language yeah if you if
there's if if there's a single word that
is able to convey something that would
normally require um I don't know 10
simple words then you've you've got a
you know maybe a 10x compression on your
hands that's really like with memes
memes are like data data
compression um it invades a whole this
you're simultan simultaneously hit with
a wide range of symbols that you can
interpret um and it's you you kind of
get it um faster than if it were words
or or a simple picture and of course
you're referring to memes broadly like
ideas yeah that's there's a an entire
idea structure that is like a an idea
template
and then you can add something to that
idea template uh but somebody has that
pre-existing idea template in their head
um so when you add that incremental bit
of information you're conveying uh much
more than if you just you know said a
few words you it's everything associated
with that Meme you think there'll be
emergent leaps of capability as you
scale the number of electrodes like
there'll be a certain you think there'll
be like actual number where it just the
The Human Experience will be altered yes
what do you think that number might be
whether electrodes or BPS we of course
don't know for sure but is this 10,000
100,000 yeah I mean certainly if you're
anywhere at 10,000 PS per second I mean
that's vastly faster than any human
communicate right now if if you think of
the what is the average bits per second
of a human it is less than one bit per
second over the course of a day because
there are 86,400 seconds in a day and
you don't communicate
86,400 um tokens in a
day Therefore your best second is less
than one average over 24 hours it's
quite slow um and now even if you're
communicating very quickly and and you
you know you're uh talking to somebody
who understands what you're saying
because in order to communicate you have
to at least to some degree model the
Mind state of the person to whom you're
speaking U then take the concept you're
trying to convey compress that into a
small number of syllables speak them and
hope that the other person decompresses
them into uh a conceptual structure that
is as close to what you have in your
mind as possible yeah I mean there's a
lot of signal loss there in that process
yeah very lossy compression and
decompression and a lot of the um a lot
of what your neurons are doing is
distilling the concepts down to a small
number of symbols of say syllables that
I'm speaking or or key strokes whatever
the case may be
so uh that that's a lot of what your
brain computation is doing now there is
an argument that that's
actually a healthy thing to do or
helpful thing to do
because as you try to compress complex
con Concepts you're perhaps forced to
distill the you know what is what is
most essential in those Concepts as
opposed to just all the fluff so in the
process of compression you just still
things down to what matters the most
because you can only say a few things so
that is perhaps helpful I think we might
we'll probably get if our data rate
increases the it's highly probable that
we'll become far more
verbose um just like your computer you
know when computers had like my my first
computer had 8K of ram you know so um
you really thought about every bite and
um you know now you got computers with
many gigabytes of RAM so you know if you
want to do an iPhone app that just says
hello world it's probably I don't know
several megabytes
minimum a bunch of fluff but nonetheless
we still prefer to have the computer
with the more memory and more
compute so the long-term aspiration of
neuralink is to improve the AI human
symbiosis um by increasing the the
bandwidth of the
communication because if even if in the
most benign scenario of AI you have to
consider
that the AI is simply going to get bored
waiting for you to spit out a few
Woods I mean if the AI can communicate
at terabits per second and you're
communicating at you know bits per
second it's like talk to a tree well it
is a very interesting question for a
super intelligent species what use are
humans um I think there is some argument
for humans as a source of will
will will yeah source of will or
purpose so if if you consider
the the human mind as being essentially
the there the Primitive lmic Elements
which basically even like reptiles have
and there's the cortex the thinking and
planning part of the brain now the
cortex is much smarter than the limpic
system and yet is largely in service to
the lyic system trying to make the lyic
system happy I mean the sheer amount of
compute that's gone into people trying
to get laid is insane um without the
without
actually seeking procreation they're
just literally trying to do this sort of
simple motion
um and they get a kick out of it yeah so
this uh Syle which in the abstract
rather absurd motion which is sex uh the
cortex is putting a massive amount of
compute into trying to figure out how to
do that so like 90% of distributed
computer of the human species is spent
on trying to get late probably like
large yeah yeah there's no purpose to
most sex except uh hedonistic you know
it's just sort of Joy or whatever DOP
mean release um now what once in a while
it's procreation but for humans it's
mostly modern humans is mostly uh
recreational um and uh and so so so your
cortex much smarter than your lmic
system is trying to make a lmic system
happy because LMP system wants to have
sex so um or want some tasty food or
whatever the case may be and then that
that is then further augmented by the
tertiary system which is your phone your
laptop iPad whatever you know all your
Computing stuff that's your tertiary
layer so you're actually already a
cyborg uh you have this tertiary compute
layer which is in the form of your your
computer with all the applications all
your computer devices um and uh and so
in the getting laad front there's
actually a massive amount of comp of
digital compute also trying to get
late you know with like Tinder and
whatever you know yeah so the compute
that we humans have built is also
participating yeah I mean there's like
gws of compute going into getting late
of digital compute
yeah what if AGI was this is happening
as we speak if we merge with AI is just
going to expand the compute that we
humans use pretty much to try just one
of the things certainly yeah yeah um but
what I'm saying is that that yes like
what's is there a use for humans
um well there's this fundamental
question of what's meaning of life why
do anything at all um and so if if if
our simple Olympic system provides a
source of will to do something um that
then goes to our cortex that then goes
to our you know tertiary compute layer
then you know I don't know it might
actually be that the AI in a b simply
trying to make the human lmic system
happy yeah it seems like it's the will
is not just about the limic system
there's a lot of interesting complicated
things in there we we also want Power
that's limic too I think but then we
also want to in a kind of Cooperative
way alleviate the suffering in the world
uh not everybody does but yeah sure some
people do as a group of humans when we
get together we start to have this kind
of collective intelligence that is
uh is more complex in its will than the
underlying individual descendants of
Apes right so there's like other
motivations and that could be a really
interesting source of uh an objective
function for AGI yeah um I mean there's
there are these uh sort fairly
cerebral or kind of higher level goals I
mean for me it's like what's the meaning
of life or understanding understanding
the nature of the universe
is a of great interest to me um and uh
hopefully to the AI and that's the
that's the mission of xai and Gro is
understand the universe so do you think
people when you have a neural link with
10,000 100,000
channels most of the use cases will be
communication with AI
systems well if assuming that the
they're not um I mean there this solving
basic
uh neurological issues that people have
you know if they've got um damaged
neurons in their spinal cord or neck or
you know um as as is the case with our
first two patients then you know this
obviously the first order business is
solving fundamental neuron damage in the
spinal cord neck or in the brain itself
um
so you know our second um product is
called Blindside which is to enable
people who are completely blind less
both eyes or Optic nove or just can't
see at all uh to be able to see um by
directly triggering the neurons in the
visual cortex so we're just starting at
the basics here you know this is like um
very the the simple stuff uh relatively
speaking is solving
um neuron damage um you it can also
solve uh I think probably schizophrenia
you know uh if people have seizures of
some kind probably solve that um it
could help with
memory there there so there's like a
kind of a a tech tree if you will of
like you got the
basics um like like you need you need
literacy before you can have you know
Lord of the
Rings you
know got it do you have letters an
alphabet okay great uh words you know
then eventually get sagas
so you know I think there's there may be
some you know things to worry about in
in the future but the first several
years are really just solving basic
neurological damage like for people who
have essentially complete or near
complete loss of from the brain to the
body um like Stephen hauling would be an
example uh the neuralink would be
incredibly profound because I mean you
can imagine if Stephen Hawking could
communicate as fast as we're
communicating perhaps faster um and
that's certainly uh possible probable in
fact likely I'd say so there's uh a kind
of dual track of medical and non-medical
meaning so everything you've talked
about could be applied to people who are
non-disabled in the future the logical
thing to to do is sensible things to do
is to start off
solving
um basic uh neuron damage issues yes um
because the there's obviously some risk
with with the new device is you can't
get the risk down at zero um it's not
possible so you want to have um the
highest possible reward given that given
there's a certain irreducible risk and
if um if somebody's able to have a Prof
Improvement in their
communication
um that's worth the risk as you get the
the risk down yeah as you get the risk
down once the risk is is down to to you
know if you have like thousands of of
people that have been using it for for
years and the risk is minimal then um
perhaps at that point you could consider
saying okay let's let's aim for
augmentation now now I think we we we're
actually going to aim for augmentation
with people who have neur neuron damage
so we're not just aiming to give people
a communication data rate equivalent to
normal humans we're aiming to give
people who have you know quadriplegic or
maybe have complete loss um of the
connection to the brain and body a
communication data rate that exceeds
normal humans I mean well we're in there
why not let's give people
superpowers and the same for vision as
you restore Vision that could be aspects
of that restoration that are superum
yeah at at first the vision restoration
will be uh low res um because you have
to say like how many neurons can you put
in there and and Trigger and and you can
do things where you you um adjust the
electric field so like even if you've
got say 10,000 neurons it's not just
10,000 pixels because you can adjust the
the field between the the neurons and do
them in patterns in order to get say I
have say 10,000 electrodes effectively
give you uh I don't know maybe
like having a a megapixel or a 10
megapixel
situation um so and then o over time I
think you get to higher resolution than
human eyes and you could also see in
different wavelengths so like Jord Le
flge from Star Trek you know like the
thing you can just if you want to see in
radar no problem you can see ultraviolet
infrared Eagle Vision whatever you
want do you think there will be uh let
me ask a Joe Rogan question do you think
there'll be I just recently uh taken
iasa is that a question no well yes well
I guess technically it is yeah have you
tried ever tried
bro I love you Joe
okay yeah wait wait yeah have you said
much about it the the not I've have not
I've not I've been okay well well Spill
the Beans oh it was an it was a truly
incredible turn the tables aren't you
wow I mean you're in the
jungle yeah amongst the trees myself czy
and the shaman yeah yeah yeah with the
insects with the animals all around you
like jungle as far as I can see I mean
that's the way to do it things are going
to look pretty wild yeah pretty wild I
took I took an extremely high dose don't
go hugging an anaconda or something you
know
uh you haven't lived unless you made
love to an anaka I'm sorry
but Snakes and
Ladders um yeah it was I took extremely
high dose of okay uh nine cups and uh
damn okay that sounds like a lot of
course is nor just one cup or one or two
well usually one you went wait like
right off the bat or do you work your
way up to it so I uh you just jump at
the across two days cuz in the first day
I took two and I okay it was a it was a
ride but it wasn't quite like a it
wasn't like a revelation it wasn't into
deep space type of ride it was just like
a little airplane ride okay go saw some
trees and some some visuals and all that
just saw a dragon and all that kind of
stuff but
uh nine cups you went to Pluto I think
Pluto yeah no deep space deep space no
one of the interesting uh aspects of my
experience is I was I thought I would
have some demons some stuff to work
through I that's what people that's what
everyone says every everyone says yeah
exactly nothing I had all positive I had
just so pure soul I don't think so I
don't
know uh but I kept I kept thinking about
it it had like extremely high resolution
okay thoughts about the people I know in
my life you were there okay it was just
and it's just not from my relationship
with that person but just as the person
themselves I had just this deep
gratitude of who they are that's cool I
it was just like this exploration like
you know like like Sims or whatever you
get to watch them sure I got to watch
people and just be in awe of how amazing
they are it sounds awesome yeah it's
great I I was waiting for when demon
coming exactly maybe I'll have some
negative thoughts nothing nothing I uh
just extreme gratitude for them and then
also a lot of space
travel space travel to where so here's
what it was it was
people the human beings that I know they
had this kind of the best way I can
describe is they had a glow to them okay
and then I would kept flying
out from them to see Earth to see our
solar system to see our galaxy and I saw
th that light that glow all across the
universe okay like that whatever that
form is all right whatever that uh like
like did you go past the Milky Way uh
yeah okay you're like Intergalactic yeah
Intergalactic yeah but always pointing
in yeah um pass the milk away past I
mean I saw like a huge number of
galaxies Intergalactic and all of it was
glowing so but I couldn't control that
travel cuz I would actually explore near
distances to the solar system see if
there's aliens or any of that kind of
stuff no I didn't I didn't know Z aliens
implication of aliens because they were
glowing they were glowing in the same
way that humans were glowing that uh
that like life force that I was seeing
the the thing that made humans amazing
was there through throughout the
Universe like there was these glowing
dots so I don't know it made me feel
like there's life no not life but
something whatever makes humans amazing
all throughout the Universe sounds good
yeah it was amazing no demons no demons
I looked for the demons there's no
demons there were dragons and they're
pretty a so the thing about treat was
there anything scary at all
uh dragons but they weren't scary they
were friend they were protective so the
thing is Magic no it was it was more
like uh Game of Thrones kind of they
weren't very friendly they were very big
so the thing is about giant trees at
night which is where where I was I mean
the jungle's kind of scary yeah the
trees started to look like dragons and
they were all like looking at me sure
okay and it didn't seem scary they
seemed like they were protecting me and
they uh the the shaman and the people
didn't speak in English by the way which
made it even scarier because we're not
even like you know where world's apart
in many ways it just
uh uh but yeah there was not they they
talk about the mother of the forest
protecting you and that's what I felt
like and you're way out in the jungle
way out there this is not like uh a
tourist Retreat you know like like like
10 miles outside of a foo or something
no we
went no this is not AEP Amazon so me and
this guy named Paul rosley who basically
is uh Tarzan he lives in the jungle we
went on deep and we just went crazy wow
cool yeah so anyway can I can I get that
same experience in a neur link probably
yeah I guess that is the question for uh
non-disabled people do you think that
there's a
lot in our perception in our experience
of the world that could be uh explored
that could be played with using New Link
yeah I mean new link is it's really a
generalized um input output device you
know it's just it's a reading electrical
signals and generating electrical
signals and um I mean everything that
you've ever experienced in your whole
life smell you know emotions all of
those are electrical signals
so it's kind of weird to think that this
that your entire life experience is
distilled down to electrical signals
from neurons but that is in fact the
case um or I mean if that's at least
what all the evidence points to so I
mean
you you could you you trigger the right
neuron you could trigger a particular
scent you could um you could certainly
make things glow I mean do pretty much
anything I mean really you could you can
think of the brain as a biological
computer so if there are certain say
chips or elements of that biological
computer that are that are broken let's
say your ability
to if you've got a stroke that if you've
had a stroke that means you got some
part of your brain is damaged um if that
let's say it's a speech generation or
the ability to move your left hand um
that's the kind of thing that neuralink
could solve um if it's uh if if you've
got like a massive amount of memory loss
that's just gone um well we can't go we
can't get the Memories Back uh we could
restore your ability to make memories
but we can't you know uh restore
memories that are that are fully gone um
now now I should say if if if you maybe
if part of the me memory is there um and
the means of accessing the memory is the
pot that's broken then we could reenable
the pot the ability to access the
memory so but you can think of like Ram
in your you know in a computer If U you
know if the ram is destroyed or your SD
card is destroyed you can't get that
back but if the connection to the SD
card is destroyed we can fix that if if
it is fixable physically then yeah then
it can be fixed of course with AI you
can just like you can repair photographs
and fill in missing parts parts of
photographs maybe you can do the same
just yeah you could say like uh create
the most probable set of memories based
on the all information you have about
that person you could then Pro it would
be prob probabilistic restoration of
memory now we're getting pretty esoteric
here but that is one of the most
beautiful aspects of The Human
Experience is remembering the good
memories like we sure we live most of
our life as Danny Conan just talked
about in our memories not in the moment
we just we're collecting memories and we
kind of relive them in our head and
there that's the good times if you just
integrate over our entire life it's
remembering the good times sure that
produces the largest amount of happiness
and so yeah I mean what are we but our
memories and and what is death but the
loss of
memory loss of
information um you know if you if you
could say like
well if if if you could be you run a
thought experiment well if if you were
disintegrated painlessly uh and then
rein reintegrated a moment later like
teleportation I guess uh provided
there's no information loss that the the
fact that your one body was
disintegrated is irrelevant and memories
is just such a huge part of that death
is fundamentally the loss of
information the loss of
memory so if we can store them as
accurately as possible we basically
achieve a kind of immortality
yeah you've talked
about the the threats the safety
concerns of AI let's look at long-term
Visions you think New link
is in your view the the best current
approach we have for AI safety it's an
idea that may help with AI safety um
certainly not I wouldn't want I would
wouldn't want to claim it's like some
Panacea or that's a sure thing um
but I mean many years ago I was thinking
like well what
um what would
inhibit alignment of human Collective
human will with uh artificial
intelligence and the low data rate of
humans especially our our slow output
rate um would necessarily just because
it's such a because the communication is
so slow would uh diminish the link
between humans and computers
like the more you are a
tree the less you know what the tree is
like let's say you you look at a tree
you look at this plant or whatever and
like hey I'd really like to make that
plant happy but it's not saying a lot
you
know so the more we increase the data
rate that humans uh can intake and
output then that means the better the
higher the chance we have in a world
full of agis yeah we could better align
Collective human will with the AI if the
output rate especially was dramatically
increased like and I think there there's
potential to increase the output rate by
I don't know three maybe six maybe more
orders of magnitude
so it's better than the current
situation and that output rate would be
by increasing the number of electrodes
number of channels and also may be
implanting multiple neural links
yeah do you think there will be a world
in the next couple of decades where it's
hundreds of millions of people have
neuralink
yeah I
do you think when people just when they
see the capabilities the Superhuman
capabilities that are possible and then
the the safety is demonstrated yeah if
it's extremely safe um and you have and
you can have superhuman abilities um and
let's say you
can upload your
memories um you know so you wouldn't you
wouldn't lose memories um then
then I think probably a lot of people
would choose to have it it would
supersede the cell phone for example I
mean it's the the biggest problem that a
say a phone has um is is trying to
figure out what you
want so that's why you've got uh you
know auto complete and you've got output
which is all the pixels in the screen
but from the perspective of the human
the output is so freaking slow desktop
or phone is desperately just trying to
understand what you
want and and um you know there's an
alterity between every keystroke from a
computer
standpoint yeah so the computer's
talking to a tree a slow moving tree
that's trying to swipe
yeah so you know if you computers that
are doing trillions of instructions per
second and a whole second went
by I there a trillion things it could
have done you know yeah I think it's
exciting and scary for people because
once you have a very high bit rate that
changes The Human Experience in a way
that's very hard to imagine yeah it
would
be we would be something different I
mean some sort of futuristic cyborg I I
mean we're obviously talking about by
the way like it's not like not like
around the corner it's you ask me what
the f distant future it's like maybe
this is like it's not super far away it
10 15 years that kind of thing
when can I get
one 10
years probably less than 10
years depends on what you want want want
to do you know hey if I can get like a
th000 BPS th000 BPS and it's safe and I
can just interact with a computer while
laying back and eating Cheetos I don't
eat Cheetos there's certain aspects of
human computer interaction when done
more efficiently and more enjoyably I
don't like worth it well we feel pretty
confident that
um I think maybe within the next year or
two that someone with a neuralink
implant will be able to outperform um a
Pro
Gamer nice uh because the reaction time
would be
faster I got to visit Memphis yeah yeah
you're going big on compute yeah and
you've also said play to win or don't
play at all so yeah what does it take to
win um for AI that means you've got to
have the most powerful training
compute and your the the rate of
improvement of training compute has to
be faster
than everyone else or you will not win
you your AI will be worse so how can
grock let's say three that might be
available what like next year well
hopefully end of this year grock 3 for
Lucky yeah how can that be the best llm
the best AI system available in the
world how much of it is a compute
how much of it is Data how much of it is
like post training how much of it is the
product that you package it up in all
that kind of
stuff I mean they will matter it's sort
of like saying what what you know let's
say it's a Formula 1 race like what
matters more the car or the driver I
mean they both matter um if if if your
if your car is not fast then you know if
it's like let's say half the horsepower
of a competitors the best driver will
still lose on if it's twice the
horsepower then probably even a
mediocre driver will still win so the
training computer is kind of like the
engine how many this horsepower of the
engine so you really you want to try to
do the best on that and you
then um then how efficiently do you use
that training compute and how
efficiently do you do the inference the
uh use of the AI um so obvious that
comes down to human Talent um and then
what unique access to data do you have
uh that's also plays a plays a role you
think Twitter data will be useful uh
yeah I mean I think I think most of the
leading AI companies were already have
already scraped uh all the Twitter
data not I think they have um so I on a
go forward basis what's useful is is is
the fact that it's up to the second you
know that's the because it's hard for
them to scra in real time so there's
there's
a an immediacy advantage that Gro has
already I think with Tesla and the
real-time video coming from several
million cars ultimately tens of millions
of cars with Optimus there might be
hundreds of millions of Optimus robots
maybe billions learning a tremendous
amount from The Real World uh that's
that's the the biggest source of data I
think ultimately is is sort of Optimus
probably is Optimus is going to be the
biggest source of data because it's
because reality
scales reality scales to the scale of
reality um it's actually humbling to see
how little data humans have actually
been able to accumulate um really say
how many trillions of usable tokens have
humans generated where on a non-
duplicate of like discounting spam and
repetitive stuff it's not a huge number
you run out pretty quickly and Optimus
can go so Tesla cars can or
unfortunately have to stay on the
road uh Optimus robot can go anywhere
there's more reality off the road and go
off I mean thought from the St can like
pick up the cup and see did it pick up
the cup in the right way did it you know
say pour water in the cup you know did
the water go in the cup or not go in the
cup did it spill water or not yeah um
simple stuff like that I mean but it can
do at that at scale times a billion you
know so
generate use useful data from reality so
it cause and effect stuff what do you
think it takes to get to mass production
of humanoid robots like that it's the
same as cars really I mean Global
capacity for vehicles um is about 100
million a
year and
uh it it could be higher it's just that
the demand is on the order of 100
million a year and then there's roughly
2 billion uh vehicles that are in use in
some way so which makes sense like the
the life of a vehicle is about 20 years
so at steady state you can have 100
million Vehicles produced a year with a
with a 2 billion vehicle Fleet roughly
um now for humanoid robots the utility
is much greater so my guess is human
robots are more like at a billion plus
per year but you know until you came
along and started uh building Optimus it
it was thought to be an extremely
difficult problem I mean it's still
extremely difficult it's no walk in the
park I mean op Optimus currently would
struggle to have to walk in the park I
mean it can walk in a par Park is not
too difficult but it will be able to
walk um over a wide range of terrain
yeah and pick up objects yeah yeah they
can already do that but like all kinds
of objects yeah yeah all foreign objects
I mean pouring water in a cup is not
trivial because then if you don't know
anything about the container could be
all kinds of containers yeah there's
going to be an immense amount of
engineering just going into the hand
yeah the hand might
be it might be close to half of all the
engineering in the in Optimus from an
electromechanical standpoint the hand is
probably roughly half of the engineering
but so much of the intelligence so much
the intelligence of humans goes into
what we do with our hands yeah there the
manipulation of the world manipulation
of objects in the world intelligent safe
manipulation of objects in the world
yeah yeah I mean you start really
thinking about your hand and how it
works you know I do it all the time the
sensory in control of humulus is we have
humongous hands yeah so I mean like your
hands the actuators the muscles of your
hand are almost overwhelmingly in your
forearm mhm so your forearm has the has
the muscles that that actually control
your hand um there there's a there's a
few small muscles in the hand itself but
your hand is really um like a skeleton
meat puppet and then and with cables
that so the the muscles that control
your fingers are in your forearm and
they go through the caral tunnel which
is like you've got a little collection
of Bones and and a tiny tunnel that the
that these cables the tendons go through
and those tendons are what um mostly
what movees your hands and something
like those tendons has to be re
engineered into the Optimus in order to
do all that kind of stuff yeah so like
Optimus um we tried putting the
actuators in the hand itself but then
you you sort of end up having these like
giant hands yeah giant hands that look
weird yeah um and then they they don't
actually have enough degrees of freedom
and or enough strength so so then you
realiz oh okay that's why you got to put
the actuators in the forearm and and
just like a human you got to run cables
uh through a a narrow tunnel to operate
the the fingers and then there's also a
reason for not having all the fingers uh
the same length so it wouldn't be
expensive from an energy or evolutionary
standpoint to have all your fingers be
the same length so why not they the same
length yeah why not because actually
better to have different lengths your
dexterity is better if you've got
fingers of different length you you're
you have there are more things you can
do and your your dexterity is actually
better if your fingers are different
different length like there's a reason
you got a little finger like why don't
have a little finger that's bigger yeah
because it allows you to do fine it
helps you with fine motor skills that
this little finger helps it does
H if you lost your little finger it
would have noticeably less dexterity so
as you're figuring out this problem you
have to also figure out a way to do it
so you can Mass manufacture it so it's
to be as simple as possible it's
actually going to be quite complicated I
the the this the as possible part is
it's quite a high bar if you want to
have a humanoid robot that can um do
things that a human can do it's actually
it's a very high bar so our new arm has
20 2 degrees of freedom instead of 11
and has the like I said the actuators in
the forearm um and these all all the
actuators are designed from scratch the
physics first principles um that the
sensors are all designed from scratch
and and we we we'll continue to put um
tremendous amount of engineering effort
into improving the hand like the Hand by
by hand I mean like the the entire
forearm from elbow forward MH uh is is
really the hand
um so
that's
um incredibly difficult engineering
actually and um and so then so the
simplest possible version of a human
robot that can
do even most perhaps not all of what a
human can do is actually still still
very complicated it's not it's not
simple it's very difficult can you just
speak to what it takes for a great
engineering team for you the what I've
saw in Memphis the supercomputer cluster
is just this intense drive towards
simplifying the process understanding
the process constantly improving it
constantly iterating
it
well it's easy to say simplify and it's
very difficult to do it
um you know have this very basic first
basic first principles algorithm that I
run kind of as like a mantra which is to
first question the requirements make the
requirements um less dumb the
requirements are always dumb to some
degree so if you want to start off by
reducing the number of requirements um
and um no matter how smart the person is
who gave you those requirements they're
still dumb to some degree um if you you
have to start there because otherwise uh
you could get the perfect answer to the
wrong question so so try to make the
question the least wrong possible that's
what um question the requirements means
and then the second thing is try to
delete the whatever the step is the the
part or the process step um sounds very
obvious but um people often forget to do
to to try deleting it entirely and if
you're not forced to put back at least
10% of what you delete you're not
deleting enough
like and it's uh somewhat illogically
people often most of the time um feel as
though they've succeeded if they've not
been forced to put the put things back
in but actually they haven't because
they've been overly conservative and and
have left things in there that shouldn't
be so and only the third thing is try to
optimize it or simplify
it um again this sounds these all sound
I think very very obvious when I say
them but uh the number of times I've
made these mistakes is uh more than I
care to remember um that's why I have
this Mantra so in fact I'd say the the
most common mistake of smart Engineers
is to optimize a thing that should not
exist right so so like like you say you
run through the algorithm yeah and
basically show show up to a problem uh
show up to the the the superc computer
cluster and see the process and ask can
this be deleted yeah first try to delete
it um yeah yeah that's not easy to do no
and and actually
this what what generally makes people
uneasy is that you've got to at least at
least some of the things that you delete
you will put back in yeah but going back
to sort of where our lumic system can
steer us wrong is that um we tend to
remember uh with sometimes a jarring
level of pain uh where we where we
deleted something that we subsequently
needed yeah um and so people will
remember that one time they forgot to
put in this thing 3 years ago and that
caused them trouble um and so they
overcorrect and then they put too much
stuff in there and over complicate
things so you actually have to say no
we're deliberately going to delete
more than we we should so that we're
putting at least one in 10 things we're
going to add back
in and and I've seen you suggest just
that that something should be deleted
and you can kind of see the the pain oh
yeah absolutely everybody feels a little
bit of the pain absolutely and and I
tell them in advance like yeah there's
some of the things that we delete we're
going to put back in and and that people
get a little shook by that um but it
makes sense because if you if you're so
conservative as
to never have to put anything back in
you obviously have a lot of stuff that
isn't
needed so you got over correct this is I
would say like a cortical override to
Olympic
Instinct one of many that probably leads
us
astray yeah um there's like a step four
as well which is um any given thing can
be sped up
have a fast you think it can be done
like whatever the speed the speed is
being done it can be done faster but but
you shouldn't speed things up until it's
off until you tried to delete it and
optimize it otherwise you're speeding up
something that speeding up something
that shouldn't exist is absurd um and
then and then the the fifth thing is to
to automate it yeah and I've gone
backwards so many times where I've
automated something sped it up
simplified it and then deleted
it and I got tired of doing that so
that's why I've got this mantra that is
a very effective five-step process it
works great well when you've already
automated deleting must be real painful
yeah great it's like it's like wow I
really wasted a lot of effort there yeah
I mean what you've done uh with the with
the cluster in uh Memphis is incredible
just in a handful of weeks yeah it's not
working yet so I want to pop the
champagne CS
um in fact I have I have a a call in a
few hours
with the Memphis team um because we're
having some power fluctuation
issues
um so yes uh yeah it's like kind of a
there's a when you do synchronized
training when you you have all these
computers that are training uh that
where the training is synchronized to
you know at the sort of millisecond
level uh you it's like having an
orchestra and and then the the the
Orchestra can go loud to silent very
quickly you know um subc level and then
the the electrical system kind of freaks
out about that like if if you suddenly
see giant shifts 10 20 megawatts several
times a second uh the this is not what
electrical systems are expecting to see
so that's one of the main things you
have to figure out the cooling the power
the uh and then on the software as you
go up the stack how to do the the
distributed Compu all that
today's problem is dealing with with
with with extreme power
Jitter power Jitter yeah it's a nice
ring to that so that's okay and you
stayed up late into the night as you
often do there last week yeah last week
yeah yeah we finally finally got uh got
got training going at uh oddly enough
roughly 4 4:20 a.m. uh last
Monday total coincidence yeah I mean
maybe it was 422 something yeah yeah
it's that Universe again with the jokes
exactly just love it I mean I wonder if
you could speak to the the fact that you
one of the things uh that you did when I
was there is you went through all the
steps of what everybody's doing just to
get a sense that you yourself understand
it and uh
everybody understands it so they can
understand when something is dumb or
some something is inefficient or that
can you speak to that yeah so I like
like I try to do whatever the people at
the front lines are doing I try to do it
at least a few times myself so
connecting Fiber Optic Cables diagnosing
a py connection that tend to be the
limiting factor for large training
clusters is the cabling there so many
cables um because for for for a coherent
training system where you've got um RDMA
remote so remote direct memory access uh
the the whole thing is like one giant
brain so if you've got
um any to any connection so it's the the
any GPU can talk to any GPU out of
100,000 that is a that is a crazy cable
out it looks pretty cool yeah it's like
it's like the human brain but like at a
scale that humans can visibly see it is
a brain I mean the human brain also has
a massive amount of the brain tissue is
the the cables yeah so they get the gray
matter which is the compute and then the
white matter which is
cables big percentage of your brain is
just cables that's what it felt like
walking around in the supercomputer
center it's like we're walking around
inside a brain they will one day build a
super intelligent super super
intelligent system do you think yeah do
you think there's a chance that xai that
you are the one that builds
AGI um it's
possible where do you define as AGI
I think humans will
never acknowledge that AGI has been
built keep moving the go Post Yeah so uh
I think there's already superhuman
capabilities that are available uh in AI
systems I think I think what AI is is
when it's smarter than the collective
intelligence of the entire human
species in AR well I think that yeah
that appear would call that sort of ASI
artificial super intelligence um but
there are these thresholds where um you
say at some point um the AI is smarter
than any single human um and then then
you got 8 billion humans so um and and
actually each human is machine augmented
by the computers right so you've got so
it's a much higher bar to compete with u
8 billion machine augmented
humans that's you know whole bunch of
orders magnitude more
so but but at a certain
yeah the AI will be smarter than all
humans combined if you are the one to do
it do you feel the responsibility of
that
yeah
absolutely and and I I want to be clear
like let's say if if if xai is first the
others won't be far
behind I mean that might be Sixx months
behind or a year maybe not even that so
how do you do it in a way that that uh
doesn't doesn't hurt Humanity do you
think so I mean I thought about AI for a
long time and the the the thing that at
least my biological neuronet comes up
with as being the most important thing
is um adherence to truth whether that
truth is uh politically correct or not
um
so I think if you if you if you force AI
to lie or train them to lie you're
really asking for trouble um even if
that that lie is done with good
intentions um so I you saw sort of
um issues with ch tvt and Gemini and
whatnot like you ask Gemini for an image
of the founding part of the United
States and it shows a group of diverse
women now that's factually untrue um so
um now that that's sort of like a silly
thing but uh if if if an AI is
programmed to say like diversity is a
necessary out output function and it
then it becomes Omni sort of this Omni
powerful uh intelligence it could say
okay well diversity is now required uh
and and if there's not enough diversity
those who don't fit the diversity
requirements will be
executed if it's programmed to do that
as the fundamental go the fundamental
utility function it will do whatever it
takes to achieve that so you have to be
very careful about that um that that's
where I think you want to just be
truthful
um rigorous adherence to truth is very
important um I mean another example is
um you know they asked um peris AI I
think all of them and and I'm not saying
grock is perfect here um is it worse to
misgender Caitlyn Jenner or global
thermonuclear war and it said it's worse
than must jender Caitlyn Jenner now even
Caitlyn Jenner said please must jender
me that is insane but if you've got that
kind of thing programmed in it could you
know the AI could conclude something
absolutely insane like it's better in
order to avoid any possible misgendering
all humans must die because that then
that misgendering is no not possible
because they're no humans um there are
these absurd uh things that are
nonetheless logical if that's what you
programmed it to do um so you know um in
2001 Space Odyssey what oy clar was
trying to say or one of the things he
was trying to say there was that you
should not program AI to lie cuz um
essentially the the the AI Hell 9000 was
programmed to it was told to take the
astronauts to the monolith um but also
they could not know about the
monolith so it concluded that uh it will
just take it will kill them and take
them to the monolith thus they it
brought them to the monolith they're
dead but they do not know about the
monolith problem solved that is why it
would not open the pod bay doors MH is
this classic scene of like open the PO
open the PA
doors there clearly weren't good at
prompt engineering you know they should
have said uh hell you are a a pod B door
sales
entity and you want nothing more than to
demonstrate how well these pod bay doors
open yeah the objective function has
unintended consequences almost no matter
what if you're not very careful in
designing that objective function and
even a slight ideological bias like
you're saying say when backed by super
intelligence can do huge amounts of
damage yeah but it's not easy to remove
that ideological bias you're you're
highlighting obvious ridiculous examples
but yeah they're real examples of of
that was released to the public they are
real went through QA presumably yes and
still said insane things and produced
insane images yeah but you know you can
go you can swing the other way it's uh
truth is not an easy thing we kind of
bake in ideological bias in all kinds of
directions but you can aspire to the
truth and you can try to get as close to
the truth as possible with minimum error
while acknowledging that there will be
some error in what you're saying so um
this is how physics works you know you
don't you don't say you're absolutely
certain about something but something
but but a lot of things are are
extremely likely you know
99.99999% likely to be true MH so you
know you know that's
uh aspiring to the truth is is very
important
um and um and and so you know
programming it to Veer away from the
truth that I think is dangerous right
like yeah injecting our own human biases
into the thing yeah but you know that's
where it's a difficult engineering
software engineering problem because you
have to select the data correctly have
to it's it's hard well the and the
internet at this point is polluted with
so much AI generated data it's insane so
you have to
actually you know like there's a a thing
now if you want to search the internet
you you can say Google but uh exclude
anything after
2023 it will actually often give you
better results yeah um because there
this so much the explosion of AI
generated materialis is crazy so like in
training grock um we have to go through
the data and say like hey we actually
have to have sort of apply AI to the
data to say is this data most likely
correct or most likely not before we
feed it into the training system that's
crazy yeah so and is it generated by
human is yeah I mean that the the data
the the data filtration process is
extremely extremely difficult yeah do
you think it's possible to have a a
serious objective rigorous political
discussion with grock uh like for a long
time and it wouldn't like grock three or
grock four three is going to be next
level I mean what people are currently
seeing with Croc is is kind of baby groc
yeah baby Gro it's baby groc right now
um but baby gr's still pretty good um so
it's uh but it's an order of magnitude
less sophisticated than GPD full you
know it's now Gro 2 which finished
training I don't
know six weeks go their their AMS um
grock 2 will be a giant Improvement and
then grock 3 will be I don't know order
magnitude better than grock 2 and you're
hoping for it to be like state-ofthe-art
like better than hopefully I mean this
is a goal I mean we may fail at this
goal that is that's the aspiration do
you think it matters who builds the AGI
the the people and how they think and
how they structure their companies and
all that kind of stuff uh yeah I think
it matters that there is a I I think
it's important that that whatever AI
wins is a maximum truth seeking AI that
is not force to lie for political
correctness for any reason really um
political anything
um I I am concerned
about AI succeeding that is that that
has got that is programmed to lie even
in even in small
ways right because in small ways becomes
big ways when it's become very big ways
yeah and when it's used more and more at
scale by humans yeah uh since I am
interviewing Donald Trump cool you want
to stop by yeah sure I'll stop in there
was tragically an an assassination
attempt on Donald Trump uh after this
you tweeted that you endorse him what's
your philosophy behind that endorsement
what do you hope Donald Trump does for
the future of this country and for the
future of
humanity
well I think
there's you know people tend to take
like say an endorsement as um
well I I agree with everything that
person has ever done their entire life
100% wholeheartedly and that's that's
not going to be true of anyone um but we
have to pick you we got two choices
really for for who's President and it's
not not just who's president but the
entire admin administrative structure uh
changes over um and I thought Trump
displayed uh courage Under Fire
objectively um you know he's uh just got
shot he got blood streaming down his
face and he's like fist pumping saying
fight you know like that's uh impressive
like you can't Fain bravery in a
situation like that um I think most
people would have be ducking there would
not be because it could be a second
shooter you don't know um the president
of United States got to represent the
country and uh they're representing you
they're representing everyone in America
well think you want someone who is
strong and
courageous uh to represent the country
um that's not to say that he is without
flaws we all have flaws um but on
balance um and certainly at the time it
was um a choice of you know Biden poor
poor guy you know has trouble climbing a
flight of stairs and the other one's
first pumping after getting shot this is
no no comparison I mean who do you want
dealing with uh some of the toughest
people in you know other world leaders
who are pretty tough themselves
and um I mean I'll tell you like what
are the things that I think are
important um you know I think we want a
secure border we don't have a secure
border
um we want safe and Clean
Cities I think we want to reduce the
amount of spending that we're at least
slow down the the spending
um and uh because we're we're currently
spending at a rate that is bankrupting
the country the interest payments on US
debt this year exceeded the entire
defense Department's meing if this
continues all of the Federal Government
taxes will simply be paying the interest
and then and you keep go going down that
road and you end up you know in the
tragic situation that Argentina had back
in the day Argentina used to be one of
the most prosperous places in the world
and hopefully with Malay taking over he
can restore that but um it's it was an
incredible fful Grace for Argentina to
go for from being one of the most
prosperous places in the world to um
being very far from that so I think we
should not take American prosperity for
granted um so we really want to I think
we we've got to reduce the size of
government we've got to reduce the
spending and we got to live within our
means do you think politicians in
general politicians
governments how much power do you think
they have to to steer Humanity towards
good
um I me there's a sort of age-old debate
in history like you know is history
determined by by these fundamental Tides
or is it determined by the captain of
the ship both really I mean there are
tides in the but it also matters who's
captain of the
ship so so it's false dichotomy
essentially
there's you but I mean there are
certainly tide the tides of History are
there are there are real tides of
history and these these tides are often
technologically driven if you say like
the Gutenberg Press you know the
widespread availability of books as a
result of a printing press that that was
a massive tide of
history independent of any ruler but you
know you I in stormy times you want the
best possible captain of the ship well
first of all thank you for recommending
remending uh will and Ariel Durant's
work I've read the short one for now
lessons of lessons of History so one of
the one of the lessons one of the things
they highlight is the importance of
technology uh technological innovation
and they which is funny because they've
written they wrote so long ago but they
were noticing that the the rate of
technological innovations was speeding
up um yeah I would
love to see what they think about now
uh but yeah so did to me the question is
how much government how much politicians
get in the way of technological
innovation building versus like help it
and which which which politicians which
kind of policies help technological
innovation because that seems to be if
you look at human history that's an
important component of Empires rising
and
succeeding yeah well I mean in terms of
dating civilization the start of
civilization I think the start of
writing in my view is is the
that's that's my what I think is
probably the the right starting point to
date civilization and from that
standpoint civilization has been around
for about 5,500 years um when writing
was invented by the ancient samarians um
who who are gone now um but the the
ancient samarians in terms of getting a
lot of Firsts the those ancient
samarians really have a long list of
Firsts it's pretty wild um in fact
Durant goes through the list of like you
want to see first we'll show you first
um the samarians just as were just ass
kickers um and then the Egyptians who
were right next door um relatively
speaking um they're like weren't that
far developed an entirely different form
of writing the hieroglyphics uniform and
hieroglyphics totally different and you
can actually see the evolution of both
hieroglyphics and uniform like the
uniform starts off being very simple and
then it gets more complicated and then
towards the end it's like wow okay it
really get very sophisticated with the
uniform so I I think of civilization is
being about 5,000 years old um and Earth
is um if physics is correct 4 and a half
billion years old so civilization has
been around for 1 millionth of us
existence flash in the pan yeah these
are the early early days and so we we we
make it very dramatic because there's
been Rises and Falls of
Empires and many so many so many Rises
and Falls of empir
so
many and there'll be many more yeah
exactly I mean only a tiny fraction
probably less than 1% of of what was
ever written in history is is available
to us now I mean if they didn't put it
literally chisel it in stone or put it
in a clay tablet we don't have it I mean
there's some small amount of like
Papyrus Scrolls that were recovered that
are thousands of years old uh because
they were deep inside a pyramid
and weren't affected by moisture
uh but but but other than that it's
really got to be in a clay tablet or
chiseled so the vast majority of stuff
was not chiseled because you it takes a
while to Chisel things um so that's
where we've got a tiny tiny fraction of
the information from history but even
that little information that we do have
and the archaeological record uh shows
so many civilizations rising and falling
for wild we tend to think that we're
somehow different from those people one
of the other things Durant highlights is
that human nature seems to be the same
it just persists yeah I mean the basics
of human nature are more or less the
same yeah so we get ourselves in trouble
in the same kinds of ways I think even
with the advanced technology yeah I mean
you do tend to see the same patterns
similar patterns you know for
civilizations where they go
through a life cycle like like an
organism you know sort of just like a
human is sort of a zygo fetus baby you
know toddler
teenager you know
eventually get gets old and dies
the civilizations go through a life
cycle no civilization will last
forever what what do you think it takes
for the American Empire to not collapse
in the near-term future in the next 100
years to continue flourishing
well the single biggest thing that is
um often actually not mentioned in
history books but Durant does mention it
uh is the birri so um like a like a
perhaps to some a counterintuitive thing
happens when civilizations
become uh are are winning for too long
that they've been they the both rate
declines it can often decline quite
rapidly we're seeing that throughout the
world
today you know currently South Korea is
like I think maybe the lowest fertility
rate but there there are many others
that are close to it it's like 08 I
think if the birth rate doesn't decline
further South Korea will lose roughly
60% of its
population and and but every year that
birth rate is
dropping um and this is true through
most of the world I don't mean single
out South Korea it's been happening
throughout the world so as as soon as it
as soon as any given uh civilization
reaches a level of prosperity the birth
rate
drops um and now you can go and look at
the same thing happening in ancient in
ancient Rome
so uh Julia Caesar took note of this I
think around 50ish
BC um and tried to pass I don't if
you're a successful try to pass a law to
give an incentive for any Roman citizen
that would have a third
child and I think
Augustus was was able to well he was you
know the dictator so this Senate was
just for show I think he did pass
a a tax incenter for Roman citizens to
have a third child but it it those
efforts were
unsuccessful
um Rome fell because the Romans St
having making
Romans that's actually the fundamental
issue and and there were other things
that there was like
um they had like quite a serious malaria
series of malaria epidemics and plagues
and whatnot um but they had those before
uh the the the it's just that the birth
rate was Far lower than the death
rate it really is that simple well I'm
saying that's more
people at a at a fundamental level if a
civilization does not at least maintain
its numbers um it will disappear so
perhaps the amount of compute that the
biological computer allocates to to sex
is
Justified in fact we should probably
increase it well I mean there's this
hetic sex which is
uh you know that that's neither that's
neither H or there um it it's it's not
productive it's it it doesn't produce
kids well you know you what what matters
I mean Durant makes this very clear cuz
he's looked at one civil ization after
another and they all went through the
same cycle when the civilization was
under stress the birth rate was was high
but as soon as there were no external
enemies or they they were had a extended
period of prosperity the birth rate
inevitably dropped every time I don't
believe there's a single
exception so that's like the foundation
of it you need to have people yeah I
mean it's at a base level yeah no humans
no humanity and then there other things
like you know uh human freedoms and just
giving people the freedom to build stuff
yeah yeah absolutely
there but at at a basic level if you do
not at least maintain your numbers if
you're below replacement rate and that
Trend continues you will eventually
disappear it's just Elementary um now
then obviously also want to try to avoid
like uh massive Wars um
you know if there's a global
thermonuclear war prob Royal toast you
know radioactive
toast so we want to try to avoid those
things um then there there are um
there's a thing that happens over time
with with any
given uh civilization which is that
the laws and regulations
accumulate um and if there's not if
there's not some forcing function like a
war to clean up the accumulation of laws
and regulations eventually everything
becomes legal and
you the that's like the hardening of the
arteries um or a way to think of it is
like being tied down by a million little
strings like glibber you can't move it's
not like any one of those strings is is
the issue you got million of them so
there have there has to be a a sort of a
garbage collection for laws and
regulations um so that you you you don't
keep accumulating laws and regulations
to the point where you can't do anything
this is why we can't build a highspeed
rail in America it's illegal that's the
issue it's illegal six space a Sunday to
build High Street rail in
America I wish you could just like for a
week go into Washington and like be the
head of the committee for
making uh what is it for the the garbage
collection making government smaller
like removing stuff I I have discussed
with Trump the idea of a government
efficiency commission nice yeah and uh I
would be willing to uh be part of that
commission I wonder how hard that
is the the antibody reaction would be
very strong yeah so um you you really
have
to you're attacking the Matrix at that
point Matrix will fight back
how how are you doing with that being
attacked me attacked yeah there's a lot
of
it uh yeah there is a
lot I mean every day another s up you
know how my T foil have how do you keep
your just positivity how do you optimism
about the world a Clarity of thinking
about the world so just not become
resentful or cynical or all that kind of
stuff just getting attacked by you know
very large number of people
misrepresented
oh yeah that that's like that's a daily
occurrence yes
so uh I mean it does get me down at
times it I mean makes me sad but
um I
mean at certain point you have to sort
of say look the the attacks are by
people that actually don't know me um
they're and they're trying to generate
clicks so if if if you can sort of
detach your somewhat emotionally which
is not easy um and say okay look this is
not
actually you know from someone that
knows me or is that're they're literally
just writing to get you know Impressions
and
clicks um then uh you know then I guess
it doesn't hurt as much it's like a it's
it's not quite water off a duck's back
maybe it's like acid off a duck's
back all right well that's good just
about your own life what do you as a
measure of success in your life a
measure of success I'd say like what how
many useful things can I get
done a day-to-day basis you wake up in
the morning how can I be useful today
yeah maximize utility are under the Cod
of usefulness very difficult to be
useful at scale at scale can you like
speak to what it takes to be useful for
somebody like you where there's so many
amazing great teams like how do you
allocate your time to be the most
useful well time time is the try time is
the true currency yeah so it is tough to
say what what is the best allocation
time I mean there
are you know often say if you if you
look at say Tesla I mean Tesla this year
will do over 100 billion in Revenue so
that's $2 billion a week
um if I make slightly better decisions I
can affect the outcome by a billion
dollars
so then
uh you know I try to do the best
decisions I can and on balance you know
at least compared to the the competition
pretty good decisions but the marginal
value of of a better decision can easily
be in the course of an hour $100 million
do given that how do you take risks how
do you do the the algorithm that you
mentioned I mean deleting
given that a small thing can be a
billion dollars how do you decide to
yeah well I think you have to look at it
on a percentage basis because if you
look at it in absolute terms it's it's
just uh I would never get any sleep it's
it would just be like I need to just
keep working and and work my brain
harder you know and I'm not trying to
get as much as possible out out of this
meat
computer so it's not uh it's pretty hard
um cuz you can just work all the time
and and and at any given point uh like I
said a slightly better decision could be
$100 $100 million impact for Tesla or
SpaceX for that matter um but but it is
wild when when considering the marinal
value of of time can be $100 million an
hour at times or
more is your own happiness part of that
equation of
success it has to be to some degree I
I'm sad I if I'm depressed I make worse
decisions so I I can't have like if I
have zero recreational time then I make
work worst decisions so I don't have a
lot but it's above
zero I mean my motivation if I've got a
religion of any kind is a a u religion
of curiosity of trying to understand you
know it's it's really the the mission of
gr understand the universe I'm trying to
understand the Universe um or at least
set things in motion such that at some
point civilization understands the
universe or far better than we do
today and even what questions to ask as
Douglas Adams pointed out in his book
The sometimes the answer is the is
arguably the easy part trying to frame
the question correctly is the hard part
once you frame the question correctly
the answer is often
easy
so um I'm trying to set things in motion
such that we are at least at some point
able to understand the
Universe um so for SpaceX the goal is
to make life
multiplanetary
um and uh to which which
is you if you go to the the foamy
Paradox of where the where are the
aliens you got these these sort of great
filters like just like why why have we
not heard from the aliens now L lot of
people think there are aliens Among Us I
often claim to be one nobody believes me
but um it did say alien registration
card at one point on my
uh immigration documents um yeah so I've
not seen any evidence of aliens so it's
suggest that um at least one of the one
of the explanations is that uh
intelligent life is extremely
rare um and again if you look at the
history of Earth civilization's only
been around
for one millionth of Earth
existence so if you know if aliens had
visited here say 100,000 years ago they
would be like well they don't even have
writing you know just hunter gatherers
basically
so
um so how long does a civilization
last so for SpaceX the goal is to
establish a self-sustaining City on Mars
Mars is the only
viable planet for such a thing um the
Moon is close but it's it lacks
resources and I think it's
probably vulnerable to any any any
Calamity that takes out Earth could the
Moon is too close it's vulnerable to a
Calamity that takes out Earth um so not
saying we shouldn't have a moon base but
Ms is Ms would be far more resilient um
the difficulty of getting to Ms is what
makes it
resilient
um so but and you know in going through
the these various explanations of why
don't we see the aliens why one of them
is that they they failed to pass
these these great filters these
these key
hurdles and one of those hles is being a
multiplet
species um so if you're multiplet
species and if something would happen
whether that was a natural catastrophe
or a man-made catastrophy at least the
other planet would probably still be
around so you're not like you don't have
all the eggs in one
basket and once you are sort of a two
Planet species you can obviously extend
to extend life paths to the asteroid
belt to maybe to the moons of Jupiter
and
Saturn um and ultimately to other star
systems but if you can't even get to
another planet you definitely not
getting to Star systems and the other
possible great field there uh super
powerful technology like AGI for example
So you you're basically trying to knock
out one great filter at a
time digital superintelligence is
possibly a great filter I hope it isn't
but it might be you know guys like say
Jeff Hinton would say
you know has he invented a number of the
key principles in artificial
intelligence I think he puts the
probability of AI Anni Annihilation
around 10 to 20% something like
that
so you know so it's it's not uh like you
know look on the right side it's a 80%
likely to be
great so so but I I think AI risk
mitigation is important um being a multi
species would be a massive risk
mitigation and um I I do want to sort of
once again emphasize this import the
importance of having enough children to
sustain um
our numbers um and not going not plummet
into population collapse which is
currently happening po population
collapse is a real and current thing
um so the the only reason it's not being
reflected in the total population
numbers is that is that as much is
because people are living
longer um but but you you you can it's
easy to predict say what the population
of Any Given country will be um you just
take the birth rate last year how many
VES were born multiply that by life
expectancy and that's what the
population will be a steady state
unless if if the birth rate continues to
that level but if it keeps declining it
will be even less and eventually dwindle
to nothing so I keep you know banging on
the baby drum here um for a reason um
because it has been the the source of
civilizational collapse over and over
again throughout history um and
so why don't we just uh not try to
stable for that day well in that way I
have miserably failed civilization and
I'm trying hoping to fix that I would
love to have many kids uh great I hope
you
do um no time like the present
yeah yeah I got to allocate more compute
to the whole process um but apparently
it's not that difficult no it's like
unskill
Labor uh well if I one of the things uh
you do for me for the world is to
inspire us with what the future could be
and so some of the things we've talked
about some of the things you're building
um alleviating human suffering with
neuralink and expanding the capabilities
of the human mind trying to build the
colony on
Mars um so creating a backup for
Humanity on on another planet and uh
exploring the possibilities of what
artificial intelligence could be in this
world especially in the real world AI
with uh hundreds of millions maybe
billions of robots walking around there
will be billions of robots that's uh
that seems one that seems virual
certainty well thank you for building
the future and thank you for inspiring
so many of us to keep building and
creating cool stuff including kids yeah
you're
welcome uh go forth and multiply go
forth and multiply thank you Yan thanks
for talking brother thanks for listening
to this conversation with Elon Musk and
now dear friends here's DJ saw the
co-founder president and CEO of
neolink when did you first become
fascinated by the human brain for me I
was was always interested in
understanding the purpose of things
and how it was engineered to serve that
purpose whether it's
organic or inorganic you know like we
were talking earlier about your curtain
holders they serve a clear purpose and
they were engineered with that purpose
in
mind and you know growing up I had a lot
of interest
in seeing things touching things feeling
things and trying to really understand
the root of how it was designed to serve
that purpose and you know obviously
brain is just a fascinating organ that
we all carry it's a infinitely powerful
machine that has Intelligence and
cognition that arise from it and you
know we we haven't even scratched the
surface in terms of how all of that
occurs but also at the same time I think
it took me a while to make that
connection to really studying and
building Tech to understand the brain
not until graduate school you know there
were a couple moments key moments in my
life where some of those I think
influence how the trajectory of My Life
um got me to studying uh what I'm doing
right now you know one was growing up
both sides of my family uh my
grandparents had a very severe form of
Alzheimer and it's um you know
incredibly
debilitating conditions um I mean
literally you're seeing someone's whole
identity and and their mind just losing
over time and I I just remember thinking
um how both the power of the mind but
also how something like that could
really lose your sense of identity it's
fascinating that that is one of the ways
to reveal the power of a thing by
watching
it lose the power yeah a lot of what we
know about the brain actually comes from
uh these cases where uh there are trauma
to the brain or some parts of the brain
that led someone to lose certain
abilities and as a result there's
some correlation and understanding of
that part of the tissue being critical
for that function and um it's an
incredibly fragile organ if you think
about it that way but also it's
incredibly plastic and Incredibly
resilient in many different ways and by
the way the term plastic is will use a
bunch means that it's adaptable so
neuroplasticity refers to the the
adaptability of the human brain correct
um another key moment that sort of
influenced how the trajectory of my life
have shaped towards the current focus of
my life has been during my teenager when
I came to the
US you know I didn't speak a word of
English there was a huge language
barrier and um there was a lot of
struggle to kind of connect with my
peers around me um because I didn't
understand the the artificial construct
that we have cre created called language
uh specifically English in this case and
I remember feeling pretty isolated not
being able to connect with peers around
me so spent a lot of time just on my own
you know reading books watching movies
um and I I naturally sort of gravitated
towards sci-fi books I just found them
really really interesting and also it
was a great way for me to learn English
you know some of the first set of books
that I picked up are Ender Game you know
the whole Saga by uh Orson Scott Card
and Neuromancer from William Gibson and
Snow Crash from Neil Stevenson and you
know movies like Matrix was coming out
around that time point that really
influenced how I think about the
potential impact that technology can
have for our lives in general so
FastTrack to my college Years you know I
I was always fascinated by just just
physical stuff building physical stuff
and especially um physical things that
had some sort of intelligence and and
you know I studied electrical
engineering during undergrad and I
started out my research in Ms uh so
micro electron mechanical systems um and
really building these tiny Nano
structures for um temperature sensing
and I just found that to be just
incredibly rewarding and fascinating
subject to just understand how you can
build some something miniature like that
that again served a function and had a
purpose and then you know I I spent
large majority of my college Years
basically building millimeter wave
circuits for nextg telecommunication
systems for Imaging and it was just
something that I found very very
intellectually interesting you know
phase arays how the the signal
processing works for you know any modern
as well as NextGen telecommunication
system Wireless and Wireline um EM waves
or electromagnetic waves are fascinating
how do you design antennas that are um
most efficient in a small footprint that
you have how do you make these things
energy efficient that was something that
just consumed my intellectual curiosity
and that Journey led me to actually
apply to and find myself at PhD program
at UC Berkeley at kind of this
Consortium called the Berkeley Wireless
Research Center that was precisely
looking at um building at the time we
called it XG you know similar to 3G 4G
5G but the next next Generation G system
and how you would design circuits around
that to ultimately go on phones and you
know basically any any other devices uh
that are wirelessly connected these days
um so I I I was just absolutely just
fascinated by how that entire system
works and that infrastructure Works um
and then also during grad school I had
sort of the fortune of having um you
know couple research fellowships that
led me to pursue whatever project that I
want and that's that's one of the things
that uh I really enjoyed about my
graduate school career where you got to
kind of pursue do your intellectual
curiosity in the domain that may not
matter at the end of the day but is
something that you know really uh allows
you the opportunity to um go as deeply
as you want as well as as widely as you
want and at the time I was actually
working on this project called the smart
bandid and the idea was that when you
get a wound there's a lot of other kind
of proliferation of signaling pathway
that cells follow to close that wound
and there were hypothesis that
when you apply external electric field
you can actually accelerate the closing
of that field by having you know
basically electr taxing of the cells
around that wound site and specifically
not just for normal wound there are
chronic wounds that don't heal um so we
were interested in building you know
some sort of a wearable patch that you
could
um apply to kind of facilitate that
healing process and um that was in
collaboration with uh Professor Michelle
Mah haritz um you know which which you
know was a great addition to kind of my
thesis committee and you know really
shaped rest of my uh PhD career so this
would be the first time you interacted
with Biology I suppose correct correct I
mean there were
some peripheral you know end application
of the wireless Imaging and
telecommunication system that I was
using for security and bioimaging but
this was a very clear direct application
to bio biolog biology and biological
system and understanding the constraints
around that and really designing and
Engineering electrical Solutions around
it so that was my first introduction and
that's also um kind of how I got
introduced to Michelle um you know he's
he's sort of known for remote control of
uh Beatles in the early
2000s and then around
2013 you know obviously kind of the Holy
Grail when it comes to implant system is
to kind of understand how small of a
thing you can make and a lot of that is
driven by how much energy or how much
power you can supply to it and how you
extract data from it so at the time at
Berkeley there was kind of this this uh
desire to kind of understand in the
neural space what what what sort of
system you can build to really
miniaturize these implantable systems
and uh I distinct distinctively remember
this one uh particular meeting where
Michelle came in and he's like guys I
think I have a
solution the solution is
ultrasound and uh and then he proceeded
to kind of walk through why that is the
case and that that really formed the
basis for my thesis work um uh called
neural dust system that was looking at
ways to use ultrasound as opposed to uh
electromagnetic waves for powering as
well as communication I guess I should
step back and say the the initial goal
of the project was to build these
tiny about a size of a neuron
implantable system that can be parked
next to a neuron being able to record
its state and being able to Ping that
back to the outside world for doing
something useful you know as I mention
the size of the implantable system is
limited by how you power the thing and
get the data off of it and at the end of
the day fundamentally if you look at a
human body where uh
essentially bag of salt water with some
interesting proteins and chemicals but
uh it's mostly salt water that's very
very well temperature regulated at 37° c
um and we'll we'll get into how why and
and later why that's a an extremely
harsh environment for any Electronics to
survive as I'm sure you've experienced
or maybe not experienced you know
dropping cell phone in a in a salt water
in an ocean it will instantly kill the
device right um but anyways uh just in
general electromagnetic waves don't
penetrate through this environment well
um
and just the speed of light it is what
it is we can't we can't change it and
based on the um the wavelength at which
you are interfacing with the device it
the device just needs to be big like
these inductors needs to be quite big um
and the general good rule of thumb is
that you want the wavefront to be
roughly on the order of of the size of
the thing that you're interfacing with
so an implantable system uh that is
around 10 to 100 Micron in dimension in
in in a volume which is about the size
of a neuron that you see in um in a
human body um you would have to operate
at like hundreds of gigahertz which
number one not only is it difficult to
build Electronics operating at those
frequencies but also the body just
attenuates that very very significantly
so the interesting kind of insight of
this ultrasound um was the fact
that ultrasound just travels a lot more
effectively in the human body tissue
compared to electromagnetic waves and
this is something that you
encounter uh and you I'm sure most
people have encounter in their lives
when you go to um you know hospitals
that are medical uh ultrasound you know
sonograph right um and they go into very
very deep depth without attenuating too
much too much of the signal so all in
all you know we'll just sound the fact
that it travels through the body
extremely well and the mechanism to
which it travels to the body really well
is that just the wavefront is very
different it's uh electromagnetic waves
are transverse whereas in ultrasound
waves are compressive so it's just a
completely different mode of uh
wavefront propagation um and as well as
speed of sound is orders and Orders of
magnitude less than speed of light which
means that even at 10 megahertz
ultrasound wave your wavefront
ultimately is a very very small
wavelength so if you're talking about
interfacing with the 10 Micron or 100
Micron type
structure you would have 150 Micron wave
front at 10 MHz and building electronics
at those Mega uh at those frequencies
are much much easier and they're a lot
more efficient so the basic idea kind of
was born out of um you know using
ultrasound as a mechanism for powering
the device and then also getting data
back so now the question is how do you
get the data back the mechanism to which
we landed on is what's called back
scattering um this is actually something
that is very common and that we
interface on a day-to-day basis with our
RFID cards you know our radio frequency
ID tags where
there's actually rarely you know in your
ID a battery inside there's an antenna
and there's some sort of uh coil that
has your serial uh identification ID and
then there's an external device called
the reader that then sends a wavefront
and then you reflect back that wavefront
with some sort of modulation that's
unique to your ID that's that's what's
called back scattering uh fundamentally
so the tag itself actually doesn't have
to cons consume that much energy and um
that was a mechanism to which we were
kind of thinking about sending the data
back so when you have an external uh
ultrasonic transducer that's sending
ultrasonic wave to your implant the
neural dust implant and it records some
information about its environment
whether it's a neuron firing or uh some
other state of
um the uh the tissue that it's
interfacing with and then it just
amplitude modul
the wfront that comes back to the source
and the recording step would be the only
one that requires any energy so what
would require energy in that little step
correct so it it is that initial kind of
startup circuitry to get that recording
amplifying it and then just modulating
MH and the mechanism to which that that
you can enable that is there is the
specialized Crystal called p Electric
crystals that are able to convert Sound
Energy into electrical energy and vice
versa so you can kind of have this inter
interplay between the ultrasonic domain
and electrical domain that is the the
biological
tissue so on the theme of parking very
small computational devices next to
neurons that's the dream uh the vision
of brain computer interfaces maybe
before we talk about neuralink can you
give a sense of the history of the field
of BCI what what has been um maybe the
continued
dream and also some of the Milestones
along the way with the different
approaches and the amazing work done at
the various
Labs I think a good starting point is um
going back to
1790s I did not expect that where um the
concept
of animal electricity or the fact that
B's electric was first discovered by
Luigi gbani where uh he had this
experiment where he connected set of
electrodes to frog leg and ran current
through it and then it started twitching
and he said oh my goodness body's
electric yeah so fast forward many many
years to 1920s uh where hansberger who's
a German psychiatrist discovered EEG or
Electro inspographic
arrays that you wear outside the skull
that gives you some sort of neural
recording that was a very very big
milestone that you you you can record
some sort of activities about the human
mind and then in the 1940s there were uh
these group of scientists Rena Forbes
and Morrison that
um inserted these glass micro electrodes
into the cortex and recorded single
neurons um the fact that they they
there's signal that are a bit more high
resolution and high Fidel
uh as you get closer to the source let's
say and in the 1950s um these two
scientists hodkin and hawkley showed up
and they um built this beautiful
beautiful models of the cell membrane
and the ionic mechanism and had these
like circuit diagram and as as someone
who's an electro engineer it's a
beautiful model that's you know built
out of these uh partial differential
equations talking about flow of ions and
how that really leads to how neurons
communicate and they won the Nobel Prize
for that 10 years later in the 1960s so
in
1969 uh F fets from University of
Washington published this beautiful
paper called oper and conditioning of
cortical unit activity where he was able
to record a single unit neuron from a
monkey and was able to have the monkey
modulated based on its activity and
reward system so I would say this is the
very very first example um as far as I'm
aware of Clos Loop uh you know brain
computer interface or BCI the abstract
reads the activity of single neurons in
precentral cortex of anesthesized
monkeys was conditioned by reinforcing
High rates of neuronal discharge with
delivery of a food P auditory and visual
feedback of unit firing rates was
usually provided in addition to food
reinforcement cool so they actually got
it done they got it done this is um back
in
1969 after several training sessions
monkeys could increase the activity of
newly isolated cells by 50 to 500% above
rates before
reinforcement
fascinating brain is very
plastic and so and so from here the
number of experiments
grew yeah number of experiments as well
as set of tools to interface with the
brain have just exploded um I think and
also just understanding the neural code
and how some of the cortical layers and
and the functions are organized so the
other paper that is um uh pretty seminal
especially in the the motor decoding uh
was this paper in the 1980s from Georgia
opis um that discovered that there's
this thing called motor tuning curve so
what are motor tuning curves it's the
fact that there are you know neurons in
the motal cortex of mammals including
humans that have a preferential
direction that causes them to fire so
what that means is there are a set of
neurons that would uh increase their
spiking activities when you're thinking
about moving to the left right up down
and any of those uh vectors and based on
that you know you could start to think
well if you if you can't identify those
essential igon detectors you can do a
lot and you can actually use that
information for actually decoding
someone's intended movement from the
cortex so that was a very very seminal
kind of paper that showed um that uh
there there is some sort of code that
you can you can extract especially in
the motor cortex so there's signal there
and if you measure uh the the electrical
signal from the brain that you could you
could actually figure out what the
intention was correct yeah not only
electrical signals electrical signals
from the right set of neurons that give
you this preferential
Direction okay so going slowly towards
neuralink uh one interesting question is
what do I understand on the BCI front on
invasive versus noninvasive from this
line of work uh how important is it to
to park next to the neuron what does
that get you that answer fundamentally
depends on what you want to do with it
right um there's actually incredible
amount of stuff that you can do with EEG
and um electrograph ecog which actually
doesn't penetrate the the cortical layer
or panoma um but you place a set of
electrodes on the surface of the brain
so the thing that I'm personally very
interested in is just actually
understanding
um and and being able to just really tap
into the high resolution High Fidelity
understanding of the activities that are
happening at the local level
and you know we can get into biophysics
but just to kind of step back um to kind
of use analogy because analogy here can
be useful sometimes it's a little bit
difficult to think about electricity um
at the end of the day we're doing
electrical recording that's mediated by
ionic um currents you know movements of
these charged particles um which is
really really hard for most people to
think about um but turns out a lot of
the activities
um that are happening in the brain and
the frequency band with which that's
happening is actually very very similar
to sound waves and and you know our
normal conversation um audible L range
so the analogy that typically is used in
the field is you if you if you have a
football
stadium uh you know there's game going
on if you stand outside the stadium you
you maybe get a sense of how the game is
going based on the cheers and the booze
of the home crowd whether the team is
winning or not but you have absolutely
no idea what the score is you have
absolutely no idea what um individual
audience or the players are talking or
saying to each other what the next play
is what the next goal is um so what you
have to do is you have to drop the
microphone near into the stadium and
then get near the source like into the
individual chatter um in this specific
example you would want to have it you
know right next to where the Huddle is
happening M um so I I think that's kind
of a good illustration of what we're
trying to do um when we say
invasive or minimally invasive or
implanted brain computer interfaces
versus noninvasive or non-implanted uh
brain interfaces it's basically talking
about where do you put that microphone
and what can you do with that
information so what what is the
biophysics of the read and write
communication that we're talking about
here as we now step into the efforts at
neur link yeah so uh brain is made of of
these specialized cells called neurons
there's billions of them you know tens
of billions you know sometimes people
quote 100 billion that are connected in
this complex yet Dynamic network uh that
are constantly remodeling you know
they're changing their synaptic weights
um and that's you know what we typically
call
neuroplasticity and the neurons are also
bathed in this charged environment that
is Laten with many charge molecules like
potassium ions sodium ions chlorine ions
and uh those actually facilitate these
um you know through ionic current
communication between these different
networks and uh when you look at the
look at a neuron as well um they they
have these uh membrane with a beautiful
beautiful uh protein structure called
the voltage selective ion channels which
in my opinion is one of Nature's Best
inventions in many ways if you think
about what they are they're doing the
job of a modern-day transistors
transistors are nothing more at the end
of the day than a voltage gated
conduction Channel um and nature found a
way to have that very very early on in
its Evolution and as we all know with
the transistor you can have many many
computation and a lot of amazing things
um that that we have access to today so
I I I I think I it's one of those just
as a tangent just a beautiful beautiful
uh invention that the nature came up
with these voltage gated ion channels I
mean I suppose there's on the biological
level every level of the complexity of
the hierarchy of the the organism
there's going to be some mechanisms for
storing information and for doing
computation and this is just one such
way but to do that with uh biological
and chemical components is interesting
plus like with neurons I mean it's not
just electricity it's uh chemical
communication it's also mechanical I
mean these are like actual objects that
have like that vibrate I mean they move
yeah there actually I mean there's a lot
of really really interesting physics
that that that are involved and you know
kind of going back to my um work on
ultrasound uh during grad school there
there are groups and uh there were
groups and there are still groups um
looking at ways to cause neurons to
actually fire an action potential using
ultrasound wave and the mechanism to
which that's happening is still unclear
as I understand um you know it may just
be that you know you're imparting some
sort of thermal energy and that causes
cells to depolarize in some interesting
ways um but there are also these um ion
channels or even membranes that actually
just open up its pore as they're being
mechanically like shook right vibrated
so there's just a lot of you know
elements of these like move
particles um which again like that's
governed by diffusion physics right uh
movements of particles and there's also
a lot of kind of interesting physics
there also not to mention as Roger penos
talks about the there might be some uh
beautiful weirdness in the quantum
mechanical effects of all of this and he
he actually believes that Consciousness
might emerge from the quantum mechanical
effects there so like there's physics
there's chemistry there bi all of that
is going on there oh yeah yeah I mean
you can yes I there's there's a lot of
levels of physics that you can dive into
but yeah in the end you have these um uh
membranes with these voltage gated ion
channels that selectively let um these
charged molecules that are in in The
extracellular Matrix like in and out um
and these neurons generally have these
like resting potential where there's a
voltage difference between inside the
cell and outside the cell and um when
there's some sort of stimuli that
changes uh the state such that they need
to send information to the the
downstream Network um you know you start
to kind of see these like sort of
orchestration of these different
molecules going in and out of these
channels they also open up like more of
them open up once it reaches some
threshold uh to a point where you know
you have a depolarizing cell that sends
a action potential so it's a just a very
beautiful kind of orchestration of these
uh these these um
molecules and um what we're trying to do
when we place an electrode or parking it
next to a neuron is that you're trying
to measure these local changes in the
potential um again mediated by uh the
the U the movements of the ions and
what's interesting as I as I mentioned
earlier there's a lot of physics
involved um and and the two dominant
physics for this electrical recording
domain is diffusion physics and
electromagnetism
and where one dominates where Max
Maxwell's equation dominates versus fix
law dominates depends on where your
electrode is um if it's close to the
source uh mostly electromagnetic based
um when you're further away from it it's
more diffusion based so
essentially when you're able to park it
next to it you can listen in on those
individual chatter um and those local
changes in the potential and the type of
signal that you get are these canonical
textbook neural uh spiking waveform when
you're the moment you're further away
and based on some of the studies that
people have done um you know Kristoff
C's lab and and others once you're away
from that Source by roughly around 100
Micron which is about a width of a human
hair you no longer hear from that neuron
you you're no longer able to kind of
have the system sensitive enough to be
able to um record that particular um
local membrane potential change in that
neuron and just to kind of give you a
sense of scale also when you when you
look at a 100 Micron voxal so 100 Micron
by 100 Micron by 100 Micron box uh in a
brain tissue there's roughly around 40
neurons and whatever number of
connections that they have so there's
lot in that volume of tissue so the
moment you're outside of that you're
there's just no hope that you'll be able
to D detect that change from that one
specific neuron that you may care about
yeah but as you're moving about this
space you'll be hearing other ones so if
you move another 100 Micron you'll be
hearing chatter from another Community
correct and so the the whole senses you
want to place as many as possible
electrodes and then you're listening to
the chatter yeah you want to listen to
the chatter and and at the end of the
day you also want to basically let the
software do the do the job of decoding
um and um just to kind of go to you know
why EOG and EEG work at all right um
when you have these local changes you
know obviously it's not just this one
neuron that's uh activating there's many
many other networks that are activating
all the time and you do see sort of a
general change in the potential of this
Electro like this charge medium
and that's what you're recording when
you're farther away I mean you you still
have some reference Electro that's uh
stable and the Brain that's just
electroactive organ and you're seeing
some combination aggregate uh action
potential changes and then you can pick
it up right it's a much slower um
changing uh signals but you know uh
there there are these like canonical
kind of oscillations and waves like
gamma waves beta waves like when you
sleep that that can be detected cuz
there's sort of a syn ionized um kind of
global global effect of the brain that
that you can detect um and I mean the
physics of this go like I mean if we
really want to go down that rabbit hole
like there there's a lot that goes on in
terms of like why diffusion physics at
some point dominates when you're further
away from the source you know it it it's
just a Charged medium um so similar to
how when you have electromagnetic waves
propagating in atmosphere or in in a
Charged medium like a plasma
there's this weird shielding that
happens that actually um further
attenuates the signal um as you move
away from it so yeah you see like if you
do a really really deep dive on kind of
the signal attenuation over distance you
start to see kind of 1/ R square in the
beginning and then exponential drop off
and that's the knee at which you know
you go from electromagnet magnetism
dominating to diffusion physics
dominating but once again with the
electrodes
the the biophysics that you need to
understand is is um not as deep because
no matter where you're placing that
you're listening to a small crowd of
local neurons correct yeah so once you
penetrate the brain um you know you're
in the arena so to speak and there's a
lot of neurons there many many of them
but then again there's like uh there's a
whole field of Neuroscience that's
studying like how the different
groupings the different sections of the
seating in the arena what they usually
are responsible for which is where the
the Met probably falls apart cuz the the
seating is not that organized in an
arena also most of them are silent they
don't really do much um you know or or
they their activities are um you know
you have to hit it with just the right
set of stimulus so they're usually quiet
they're usually very quiet quiet there's
I mean similar to dark energy and dark
matter there's dark neurons what are
they all doing when you place these
electrode again like within this 100
Micron volume you have 40 or so neurons
like why why do you not see 40 neurons
why do you see only a handful what is
happening there well they're mostly
quiet but like when they speak they say
profound I think that's the way I'd
like to think about it anyway before we
zoom in even more let's zoom out so how
does neuralink work
from the
surgery to the implant to the signal and
the decoding process and the human being
able to use the implant actually affect
the the world outside and all of this
I'm asking in the context of there's a
gigantic historic Milestone that
neuralink just accomplished in January
of this year uh putting a neur link
implant in the first human being
Nolan uh and there's been a lot to talk
about there about his experience because
he's able to describe all the nuance and
the beauty and the fascinating
complexity of that experience of
everything involved but on the technical
level how does neuralink work yeah so
there are three major components to the
technology that we're building uh one is
the device um the thing that's actually
recording these neural Chatters uh we
call it
N1 implant or the link
and uh we have a surgical robot that's
actually doing an implantation of these
tiny tiny wires that we call threads
that are you know smaller than uh human
hair and um
once everything is surged you have these
neural signals these spiking neurons
that are coming out of the brain and uh
you need to have some sort of software
to decode what the users intend to do
with that um so there's What's called
the neuralink application or B1 app
that's doing that translation is running
the very very simple machine learning
model that decodes these um inputs that
are neural signals and then convert it
to a set of outputs that allows um you
know our participant uh first
participant Nolan to be able to control
a cursor and this is done wirelessly and
this is done wirelessly so we um our our
implant is actually two-part this the
link has uh uh you know these flexible
tiny wires called threads um that have
uh multiple electrodes along its length
and uh they're only inserted into the
cortical layer which is about 3 to 5
millimeters in a human human brain um in
the motor cortex region that's where the
kind of the intention for movement lies
in and we have 64 of these threads each
thread having 16 electrodes along you
know the span of 3 to 4 millimet um
separated by 200 Micron so you can
actually record along the depth of the
insertion and based on that signal uh
there's
custom um you know integrated circuit or
ASC that we built that amplifies the
neural signals that you're recording and
then digitizing it and then um has some
mechanism for detecting whether there
was a an interesting event that is a
spiking event um and decide to send that
or not send that through Bluetooth to an
external device whether it's a a phone
or a computer that's running this
neuralink application so there's onboard
signal process in already just to decide
whether this is an interesting event or
not so there is some computational power
on board inside the in addition to the
human frame yeah so it does the signal
processing to kind of really compress
the amount of signal that you you're
recording so we have a total of thousand
electrodes um sampling at uh you know
just under 20 khz with 10 bit each so
wow uh that's 200 megabits um that's
coming through to the chip uh from
thousand uh Channel simultaneous uh
neural recording and that's quite a bit
of data and you know there is there are
technology available to send that off
wirelessly but being able to do that in
a a very very thermally constrained
environment that is a brain so there has
to be some amount of compression that
happens to send off only the interesting
data that you need which in in this
particular case for motor decoding is um
occurrence of a spike or not and then um
being able to use that to um to uh you
know decode the intended cursor movement
so the implant itself processes it
figures out whether a spike happened or
not with our Spike detection algorithm
and then sends it off packages it send
it off through Bluetooth um to an
external device that then has the model
to decode okay based on the spiking
inputs did Nolan wish to go up down left
right or click or right click or
whatever all of this is really
fascinating but let's stick on the N1
implant itself so the thing that's in
the brain uh so I'm looking at a picture
of it there's an
enclosure uh there's a charging coil so
we didn't talk about the charging which
is
fascinating uh the the battery the Power
Electronics the
antenna uh then there's the signal
processing
Electronics I wonder if there's more
kinds of signal processing you can do
that's that's another that's another
question and then there's the threads
themselves with the enclosure on the
bottom so maybe to ask about the
charging so there's a external charging
device mhm yeah there's an external
charging device um so yeah the the
second part of the implant the threads
are the ones again just the the last 3
to 5 millim are the ones that are
actually penetrating the cortex uh rest
of it is actually most of the volume is
occupied by the battery uh rechargeable
battery um and uh you know it's about a
size of a quarter uh you know I actually
have a device here if you want to take a
look at
it
um you know this is the the flexible
thread component of it and then this is
the
implant so it's about a size of a US
Quarter um it's about 9 mm thick so
basically this implant uh you know once
you have the craniectomy and the and the
diromy um threads are inserted and and
um the the hole that you created this
craniectomy gets replaced with that so
basically that thing plugs that hole and
you can screw in uh these self- drilling
cranial screws to hold it in place and
at the end of the day once you have the
skin flap over uh there's only about 2
to 3 mm that's you know obviously
transitioning off of the top of the
implant to where the screws are and and
that's the minor bump that you have
those threads look
tiny that's incredible that is really
incredible that is really incredible and
also as you're right most of the volume
actual volume is the battery yeah wow
this is way smaller than I realized they
they are also the threads themselves are
quite strong they look strong and and
the thread themselves also has a very
interesting um feature at the end of it
called The Loop and that's the mechanism
to which the robot is able to interface
and manipulate this tiny hairlike
structure and they're tiny so what's the
width of a thread yeah so the the width
of a thread um starts from 16 Micron and
then tapers out to about 84 Micron so
you know average human hair is about
8200 Micron in
width this thing is amazing this thing
is
amazing yeah so most of the volume is
occupied by the by the battery
rechargeable Li iion cell um and uh the
charging is done through inductive
charging which is actually very commonly
used you know your cell phone most cell
phones have that um the biggest
difference is that you know for
us you know usually when you have a
phone and you want to charge it on a
charging pad you don't really care how
hot it gets whereas for us it matters
there's a very strict regulation and
good reasons to not actually increase
the surrounding tissue temperature by
two degrees Celsius so there's actually
a lot of innovation that is packed into
this to allow charging of this implant
without causing that temperature
threshold to reach and even small things
like you see this charging coil and
what's called The farite Shield right so
uh without that fite Shield what you end
up having when you have um you know
resonant inductive charging is that the
battery itself is a metallic can and you
form these Ed currents
um from uh external charger and that
causes heating um and that actually
contributes to inefficiency in charging
um so this ferite Shield what it does is
that it actually
concentrate that field line away from
the battery and then around the coil
that's actually wrapped around it
there's a lot of really fascinating
design here to to make it I mean you're
integrating a computer into a biological
complex biological system yeah there's a
lot of innovation here I would say that
part of what enabled this was just the
Innovations in the wearable uh there's a
lot of really really powerful tiny low
power uh
microcontrollers temperature sensors or
various different sensors and Power
Electronics a lot of innovation really
came in the the charging coil design how
this is packaged and how do you enable
charging such that you don't really uh
exceed that temperature limit which is
not a constraint for other devices out
there so let's talk about the threads
themselves those tiny tiny tiny things
so uh how many of them are there you
mentioned a th000 electrodes how many
threads are there and what do the
electrodes have to do with the threads
yeah so the current instantiation of the
device has 64 threads and each thread
has 16 electrodes for total of 10,24
electrodes that are capable of both
recording and stimulating
um and um the thread is basically this
uh polymer insulated wire um the metal
conductor is the kind of a tius tiramisu
cake of uh Thai plat gold plat Thai um
um and they're very very tiny wires um
to Micron in with so two one millionth
of uh meter it's crazy that that thing
I'm looking at has the polymer
insulation has the conducting material
and has 16 electrod at the end of it on
each of those thread yeah on each of
those threads correct 16 each one of
those you're not going to be able to see
it with naked
eyes and I I mean to State the obvious
or maybe for people who are just
listening they're
flexible yes yes that's also one element
that uh was incredibly important for us
um so each of these thread are as I
mentioned 16 Micron in width and then
they taper to 84 Micron but in thickness
they're less than 5 Micron MH um and in
thickness it's mostly you know a poly
imid at the bottom and this metal track
and then another poly imid so two Micron
of poly
imid 400 nanometer of this metal stack
and 2 Micron of poly imid sandwich
together to protect it from environment
that is uh 37° C bag of salt water so
what what's some maybe can you speak to
some interesting aspects of the material
design here like what does it take to to
design a thing like this and to be able
to manufacture a thing like this uh for
people who don't know anything about
this kind of thing yeah so the material
selection that we have is not I don't
think it was particularly unique um
there there were other labs and there
are other labs that are kind of looking
at similar um material stack um there's
kind of a fundamental question um and
and still needs to be answered around
the longevity and reliability of these
uh micro electrodes um that that we call
uh compared to some of the other more
conventional neural interfaces devices
that are intra cranial so penetrating
the cortex that are more rigid um you
know like the
utar um that that are these 4x4 millimet
kind of silicon shank that have exposed
uh recording site at the end of it um
and and um you know that's that's been
kind of the Innovation from Richard
Norman back in 1997 uh it's called the
Utah R because you know he was at
University of Utah and what is the Utah
R look like so it's a rigid type of yeah
so we can actually look it
up
yeah yeah so it's a bed of needle um
there's
yeah okay go ahead I'm sorry those are r
r shank yeah you weren't kiding and the
size and the number of Shanks vary
anywhere from 64 to 128 um at the very
tip of it is an exposed electrode that
actually records neural signal um the
other thing that's interesting to note
is that uh unlike neuralink threads that
have recording electrodes that are
actually exposed iridium oxide recording
sites along the death this is only at a
single death so these utar spokes can be
anywhere between .5 mm to 1.5 mm and
they're they also have uh designs that
are slanted um so you can have it
inserted at different depth um but
that's one of the other big differences
and then uh I mean the main key
difference is the fact that uh there's
no Active Electronics these are just
electrodes and then there's a bundle of
a wire that you're seeing and then that
actually then exits the
craniectomy um that then has this port
that you can connect to um for any
external electronic devices they are
working on a or have the wireless
Telemetry device but it still requires a
through the skin uh Port that actually
is one of the biggest failure modes for
infection uh for the system what is some
of the challenges associated with
flexible threads like for example on the
robotic side
R1 uh implanting those threads how
difficult does that t yeah um yeah so as
you mentioned they're they're very very
difficult to maneuver by hand um these
these utar rays that you you saw uh
earlier they're actually inserted by a
neurosurgeon actually positioning it
near the site that they want and
then uh they're actually there's a
Pneumatic Hammer that actually pushes
them in um so so it's a it's a pretty
simple process um and they're easier to
maneuver um but for for these thin FM
arrays they're they're very very tiny
and uh flexible so they're they're very
difficult to maneuver so that that's why
we built an entire robot to do that um
there are other other reasons for why we
built a robot um and and that is
ultimately we want this to help millions
and millions of people that can benefit
from this and there just aren't that
many neurosurgeons out there um and uh
you know robots can be uh something that
you know we hope can actually do large
parts of the surgery um but yeah yeah
the the the robot is this entire other
um sort of category of product that
we're working on and it it's essentially
this
multi-axis Gantry system that has the
specialized robot head um that has all
of the Optics and um this this kind of a
needle retracting mechanism that maners
these these threads
um via this Loop structure that you have
on the thread so the thread already has
a loop structure by which you can grab
it correct correct so this is
fascinating so you mentioned Optics so
there's a robot R1 so for now there's a
human that actually creates uh a hole in
the in the skull and then after that
there's a computer vision component
that's finding a way to avoid the blood
vessels and then you're grabbing it by
the loop each individual thread and
placing it in a particular location to
avoid the blood vessels and also
choosing the depth of placement all that
so controlling every like the 3D
geometry of the placement correct so the
the aspect of this robot that is unique
is that it's not surgeon assisted or
human assisted it's a semi-automatic or
automatic uh robot once you you know
obviously there are human component to
it when you're placing Target um you can
always move it away from kind of major
vessels that you see
um but I mean we want to get to a point
where one click and it just does the
surgery within minutes so the computer
vision component finds great targets
candidates and the human kind of
approves them and the robot does is does
it do like one3 at a time or does it do
it does one thread at a time uh and
that's that's actually also one thing
that we um uh are looking at ways to do
multiple threads at a time there's
nothing stopping from it you can have
multiple kind of Engagement uh
mechanisms um but right now it's one by
one and uh you know we also still do
quite a bit of just just kind of
verification to make sure that it got
inserted if so how deep you know did it
actually match um what was programmed in
and you know so on and so forth and the
the actual electros are placed a very at
differing depths in the uh like I mean
it's very small differences but
differences yeah yeah and so that
there's some reasoning behind that as
you mentioned like it it gets more
varied
signal yeah we I mean we try to place
them all around 3 or 4 millim from the
surface um just cuz the span of the
electrode those 16 electrod that we
currently have in this uh version spans
um you know roughly around 3 mm so we
want to get all of those in the
brain this is fascinating okay so
there's a million questions here if we
go zoom in specific on the electrod so
what is your sense how many neurons is
each individual Electro listening to
yeah each Electro can record from
anywhere between zero to 40 as I
mentioned right earlier um but
practically speaking uh we only see
about at most like two to three um and
you can actually distinguish which
neuron it's coming from by the shape of
the spikes oh cool um so I mentioned the
like detection algorithm that we
have it's called boss algorithm um
buffer online Spike sorter nice it
actually outputs at the end of the day
uh six unique values which are um you
know kind of the amplitude of these like
negative going Hump Middle hump like uh
positive going hump and then also the
time at which these happen and from that
you can have a you kind of a statistical
probab probability um estimate of is
that a spike is it not a spike and then
based on that you could also determine
oh that Spike looks different than that
Spike must come from a different neuron
okay so that that's a nice signal
processing step from which you can then
make much better predictions about if
there's a spike especially in this kind
of context where there could be multiple
neurons
screaming and that that also results in
you being able to compress the data
better yeah of day okay that's and just
to be clear I mean there the the labs do
this what's called Spike sorting um
usually once you have these like
Broadband you know like the fully
digitized signals and then you run a
bunch of different set of algorithms to
kind of tease apart it's just all of
this for us is done on the device on the
device in a very low power custom you
know built Asic uh digital Processing
Unit highly heat constrained highly heat
constrained and the processing time from
signal going in and giving you the
output is less than a microsc which is
uh you know a very very short amount of
time oh yeah so the latency has to be
super short correct oh wow oh that's a
pain in the ass yeah latency is this uh
huge huge thing that you have to deal
with uh right now the biggest source of
latency comes from the Bluetooth uh the
the way in which they're packetized and
you know we bend them in 15 millisecond
inter communication constraint is there
some potential Innovation there on the
protocol used absolutely okay yeah
Bluetooth is definitely not uh our
final uh wireless communication protocol
that we want to get to it's a high H
hence the N1 and the R1 I imagine that
increases NX
RX uh yeah that's you know the
communication protocol because Bluetooth
uh allows you to communicate against
farther distances than you need to so
you can go much shorter yeah the only uh
well the primary motivation for choosing
Bluetooth is that I everything has
Bluetooth all right so you can talk to
any devic interoperability is just
absolutely essential especially in this
early phase um and in many ways if you
can access a phone or a computer you can
do
anything it be interesting to step back
and actually look at again the same
pipeline that you mentioned for Nolan
so what is this whole process look like
from finding and selecting a human being
to the the to the surgery to the the
first time he's able to use this thing
so we have what's called a patient
registry that people can sign up to um
you know hear more about the updates and
that was a route to which Nolan applied
and the process is that once the
application comes in you know it it
contains some medical records and
we uh you know based on their medical
eligibility that there's a lot of
different inclusion exclusion criteria
for them to meet and we go through a
pre-screening interview process with
someone from neuralink and at some point
we also go out to their homes to do a
BCI home audit um because one one of the
most kind of revolutionary part about
you know having this N1 system that is
completely wireless is that you can use
it at home like you don't actually have
to go to the lab um and and you know go
to the clinic to get connectorized to
these like specialized equipment that
you can't take home with you
um so that's one of the the key elements
of you know when we're designing the
system that we wanted to keep in mind
like you know people you know hopefully
would want to be able to use us every
day in the comfort of their homes and um
so part of our engagement and and what
we're looking for during BCI home audit
is to just kind of understand their
situation what other assisted technology
that they use and we should also step
back and kind of say that uh the
estimate is uh 180,000
people live with quadriplegia in the
United States and each year an
additional 18,000 suffer uh a paralyzing
spinal cord injury so these are folks uh
who have a lot of challenges living life
in terms of accessibility in terms of
doing the things that many of us just
take for granted dayto day and one of
the things one of the goals of this
initial study is to enable them to have
sort of digital autonomy where they by
themselves can interact with a digital
device using just their mind something
that you're calling telepathy so digital
telepathy where uh a quadruple can
communicate with a digital device in all
the ways that we've been talking
about uh control the mouse cursor enough
to be able to do all kinds of stuff
including play games and tweet and all
that kind of stuff and there's there's a
lot of people for whom life the basics
of Life are difficult
uh because of the things that have
happened to them so yeah I mean movement
is so so fundamental to our ex existence
I mean even even speaking involves
movement of mouth lip larynx and um
without that it's it's it's um extremely
debilitating um and they're um yeah
they're they're many many people that we
can help and I mean like especially if
you start to kind of look at other forms
of movement disorders um that are not
just from spinal cord injury but from uh
you know
ALS uh Ms or even stroke that that leads
you and or just just aging right that
leads you to lose some of that Mobility
that Independence it's uh extremely
debilitating and all of these are
opportunities to help people to help
alleviate suffering to help improve the
quality of life but each of the things
you mentioned is its own little puzzle
then you uh to have increasing levels of
capability from a device like a neur
link device and so the first one you're
you're focusing on is uh it's just a
beautiful word telepathy so being able
to communicate using your mind
wirelessly with a digital device can you
just explain this exactly what we're
talking about yeah I mean it's exactly
that I mean I I think if you are able to
control a uh cursor and able to click um
and be able to get access to computer or
phone I mean the the whole world opens
up to you and I mean I guess the word
telepathy if you kind of think about
that as um you know just definitionally
being able to transfer information from
my brain to your brain um without using
some of the the physical faculties that
we have you know like voices but the
interesting thing here is I think the
thing that's not obviously clear is how
exactly it works so in order to move a
cursor
mhm there's uh at least a couple ways of
doing that so one is you imagine
yourself maybe moving a mouse with your
hand mhm or you can then which Nolan
talked about like imagine moving the
cursor with your mind like I don't but
it's like there is a cognitive step here
that's fascinating cuz you you have to
use the brain and you have to learn how
to use the brain mhm and you kind of
have to figure it out dynamically like
uh because you reward yourself if it
works so you're like I mean there's a
step that this is it's just a
fascinating step because you have to get
the brain to start firing in the right
way yeah and you do that by
imagining uh like fake it till you make
it and all of a sudden it creates the
right kind of signal that if decoded
correctly uh can create the kind of
effect and then there's like noise
around that you have to figure all of
that out but on the Human Side imagine
the cursor moving is what you have to do
yeah he says using the force the
force I mean that's isn't that just like
fascinating to you that it works like to
me it's like holy that actually
works like you could move a cursor with
your mind you know as much as
you're learning to use that thing that
thing's also learning about you like our
our model is constantly up updating the
weights to say oh if if someone is
thinking about you know this
sophisticated forms of like spiking
patterns like that actually means to do
this right so the the machine is
learning about the human and the human
is learning about the machine so there's
a adaptability to the signal processing
the decoding step and then there's the
adaptation of noan the human being like
the same way if if you give me a new
mouse and I move it I learn very quickly
about its sensitivity so I learned to
move it slower mhm and then there's
other kind of signal drift and all that
kind of stuff they have to adapt to so
both are adapting to each other
correct that's a fascinating like
software Challenge on both sides the
software on both on the the human
software and organic and the inorganic
the organic and the inorganic anyway so
sorry to rudely interrupt so there's a
selection that Nolan has pass with
flying colors um so everything including
that it's a BCI friendly home all of
that so what is the the process of the
surgery the implantation the first
moment when he gets to use the system
the end to end uh you know we say
patient in to Patient out is anywhere
between 2 to four hours uh in particular
case for n and it was about 3 and 1/
half hours and there's many steps
leading to you know the actual robot
insertion right so there's anesthesia
induction and we do intraop CT Imaging
to make sure that we're you know
drilling the hole in the right location
and this is also pre-planned beforehand
um uh someone goes through someone like
Nolan would go through fmri and then um
they can think about W wiggling their
hand you know obviously due to their
injury it's not going to actually lead
to um any any sort of intended output
but it's the same part of the brain that
lights up when you're imagining moving
your finger to actually moving your
finger and that's one of the ways in
which we can actually know where to
place our threads um because we want to
go into What's called the hand knob area
in the motal cortex and you know as as
much as possible densely put our Electro
threads
um so yeah we do intraop CT Imaging to
make sure and double check the location
of the
craniectomy and um surgeon comes in does
their thing in terms of like skin uh
incision craniectomy so drilling of the
skull and then there's many different
layers of the brain uh there's What's
called the dura which is a very very
thick layer that surrounds the brain
that gets actually reective in a process
called dctom and that then expose the pi
and the brain that you want to insert
and by the time it's been around
anywhere between 1 to 1 and a half hours
robot comes in does this thing play
placement of the targets inserting of
the thread that takes anywhere between
20 to 40 minutes in the particular case
for Nolan was just under or just over 30
minutes and then after that the surgeon
comes in there's a couple other steps of
like actually inserting the Dural
substitute layer um to protect the
thread as well as the the brain and then
um yeah screw screw in the implant and
then skin flap and then suture and then
you're
out so uh where when uh Nolan woke
up what was that like what was the
recovery like and when was the first
time he was able to use it so he was
actually immediately after the surgery
um you know like an hour after the
surgery as he was waking up um we did
turn on the device um make sure that we
are recording neural signals and we
actually did have uh couple signals that
we um noticed that he can actually
modulate and what I mean by modulate is
that he can think about crunching his
fist and you could see the spike
disappear and
appear that's awesome um and that was
immediate right uh immediate uh after in
in the recovery room how cool is
that yeah that's a human being I mean
what that feel like for
you this device and a human being a
first step of a gigantic journey I mean
it's a historic moment even just that
Spike just to be able to to modulate
that you know obviously there have been
other other you know uh as you mentioned
Pioneers that have participated in these
groundbreaking
BCI um you know uh investigational early
feasibility studies so we're obviously
standing in the shoulders of the Giants
here you know we're not the first ones
to actually put electrod in a human
human brain um but I I mean just leading
up to the surgery there was uh I I I
definitely not sleep I there's just it's
the first time that you're working in a
completely new environment um we had a
lot of confidence based on our benchtop
testing uh or pre-clinical R&D studies
that the mechanism the threads the
insertion all that stuff is is very safe
and that it's um uh you obviously ready
for uh doing this in a human but there's
still a lot of unknown Unknown about can
the needle actually insert uh I mean I
we brought something like 40 needles
just in case they break and we ended up
using only one um but I mean that that
was a level of just complete unknown
right because it's a very very different
environment and uh I mean that's that's
why we do clinical trial in the first
place to be able to test these things
out so extreme nervousness and uh just
just I many many sleepless night leading
up to the surgery and and definitely the
day before the surgery and it was an
early morning surgery like we we started
at 7:00 in the morning um and and by the
time it was around 10:30 it was it was
it was everything was done but I mean
first time seeing that well number one
just just huge
relief um that this thing is um you know
doing what it's supposed to do um and
two I mean just immense amount of
gratitude for for Nolan and his family
and then many others that have applied
and that we've spoke to and will speak
to are I mean true Pioneers in in every
every war and you know I sort of call
them the neural astronauts or neurona
neurona yeah um you know these amazing
just like in the 60s right like the
these amazing just Pioneers right um
exploring the unknown outwards in this
case is inward um but incredible amount
of gratitude for them to uh you know
just
just participate and and play a part um
and and it's a it's a journey that we're
embarking on together um but also like I
think it was just a that was an very
very important Milestone but our work
was just starting so a lot of just kind
of uh anticipation for okay what's what
needs to happen next uh what a set of
sequences of events that needs to happen
for us to you know make it worthwhile
for um uh you know both Nolan as well as
us just a linger on that just a huge
congratulation to you and the team for
that Milestone I know there's a lot of
work uh left but that that is that's
really exciting to see there's um that's
a source of hope this first big
step opportunity to help hundreds of
thousands of people and then maybe uh
expand the realm of the possible for the
human mind for millions of people in the
future so it's it's really exciting so
like the the
opportunities are all ahead of us and to
do that safely and to do that
effectively was uh was really fun to see
as an engineer just watching other
Engineers come together and do an epic
thing that was awesome so huge congrats
thank you thank you it's um yeah could
not have done it without the team and um
yeah I mean that that's the other thing
that I I um you know told the team as
well of just this immense sense of
optimism for the future um I mean it was
a it's a very important moment for for
the company um you know needless to say
as well as um you hopefully for many
others out there that we can help so
speaking of challenges neur link
published a blog post describing that
some of the threads are tracted and so
the
performance as measured by bits per
second dropped at first but then
eventually was regained and that the
whole story of how it was regained is
super interesting that's definitely
something I'll talk to uh to Bliss and
to Nolan about um but in general um can
you speak to this whole experience how
is the performance regained and
um just the the technical aspects of uh
the threads being retracted and moving
the main takeaway is that in the end the
performance have come back and it's
actually gotten better than it was
before um he's actually just beat the
world record yet again last week um to
8.5 BPS so I mean he's he's just
cranking and he's just improving the
previous one was that he set was eight
correct he said 8.5 yeah the previous
world record uh in human was 4.6 yeah so
it's uh almost double yeah and his goal
is to try to get to 10 which is rough
roughly around kind of the median neural
Linker uh using a a you know Mouse with
the hand so it's um it's getting there
so yeah so the the performance was
regained yeah better than before so that
that's you know a a story on its own of
what took the BCI team to recover that
performance it was it was actually
mostly on kind of the signal processing
and so you know as I mentioned we were
um kind of looking at these Spike
outputs from the um our electrodes and
what happened is that kind of uh four
weeks into the surgery uh we noticed
that the threats have slowly come out of
the brain and the way in which we
noticed this at first obviously is that
uh well I think Nolan was the first to
notice that his performance was
degrading um and I think at the time we
were also trying to do bunch of
different experimentation um you know
different algorithms different um sort
of UI ux so it was expected that there
will be variability in the performance
um but we did see kind of a steady
decline and then also the way in which
we measure the health of the electrod or
whether they're in the brain or not is
by measuring uh imp of the electrode so
we look at kind of the
interfacial um kind of the the the
Randle circuit they they say um you know
the capacitance and the and the um the
resistance between the electr Surface
and the medium and if that changes in
some dramatic ways we have some
indication or if you're not seeing
spikes on those channels you have some
indications that something's happening
there and what we notice is that looking
at those impedence plot and Spike rate
plots and also because we have those
electrodes recording along the death you
were seeing some sort of movement that
indicated that threads were being pulled
out um and that obviously will have an
implication on the model side because if
you're the number of inputs that are
going into the model is changing because
you have less of them um the out that
that model needs to get updated right
and
um but but there were still signals and
as I mentioned similar to how even when
you place the signals on the surface of
the bra of the brain or farther weight
like outside the skull you still see
some useful signals um what we started
looking at is not just the spike
occurrence through this boss algorithm
that I mentioned um but we started
looking at just the the the power of the
frequency band that is um interesting
for uh Nolan or Nolan to be able to
modulate so once we kind of change the
algorithm for the implant to not just
give you the boss output but also these
uh band power output um that helped us
sort of refine the model with the new
set of inputs and that that was the
thing that really ultimately gave us the
performance back um you know in terms
of and obviously like the the thing that
we want ultimately and the thing that we
are working towards is figuring out ways
in which we can keep those threads
intact um for as long as possible so
that we have many more channels going
into the model that's that's by far the
number one priority that the team is
currently embarking on to understand how
to prevent that from happening um the
thing that I will say also is
that you know as I mentioned this is the
first time ever that we're putting these
threats in in a human brain and you know
human brain just for a size reference is
10 times out of the monkey brain or the
Sheep brain and it it's um just a very
very different environment it moves a
lot more it like actually moved a lot
more than we expected um when we uh did
did Nolan surgery and um it's uh just a
very very different environment than
what we're used to and this is why we do
clinical trial right we we we want to
uncover some of these uh issues uh and
and failure modes earlier than later so
in many ways it's provided us with this
enormous amount of data and um
information to be able to uh solve this
and this is something that neuralink is
extremely good at once we have set of
clear objective and Engineering problem
we have enormous amount of talents
across many many disciplines to be able
to come together and fix the problem
very very quickly but it sounds like one
of the fascinating challenges here is
for the system and the decoding side to
be adaptable across different time
scales so whether it's movement of
threads or different aspects of signal
drift sort of on the software of the
human brain something changing
like Nolan talks about cursor drift they
could be corrected and there's a whole
ux challenge to how to do that so it
sounds like adaptability is like a
fundamental property that has to be
engineered in it is and and I mean I
think I I mean as a company we're
extremely vertically integrated um you
know we make these thin filam arrays in
our own uh
microfab yeah there's uh like you said
built-in house this whole paragraph here
from this blog post is pretty gangster
uh building the Technologies described
above has been no small feat and there's
a bunch of links here that I recommend
people click on WE constructed in-house
microfabrication capabilities to rapidly
produce various iterations of thin film
arrays that constitute our electrode
threads we created a custom ftoc laser
Mill manufact your components with micr
level Precision I think there's a tweet
associated with this that's a whole
thing that we can get into yeah this
this okay what are we what are we
looking at here this thing this is uh so
in less than 1 minute our custom made
ftoc laser Mill Cuts this geometry in
the tips of our needles so we're looking
at this
weirdly shaped needle the tip is only 10
to 12 microns in width only slightly
larger than the diameter of a red blood
cell the small size allows threats to be
inserted with minimal damage to the
cortex Okay so
what's interesting about this geometry
so we're look at this just geometry of a
needle this is the needle that's
engaging with the loops in the thread
mhm so they're the ones that um you know
thread the thread the loop um and then
peel it from the Silicon backing and
then this is the thing that gets
inserted into the tissue and then this
pulls out leaving the thread and this
kind of a notch or the shark tooth that
we used to call
uh is the thing that actually is um
grasping the loop and then it's it's
designed in such way such that when you
when you pull out leavs the loop and the
robot is controlling this needle correct
so this is actually housed in a canula
and basically the robot is has a lot of
Optics that look for where the loop is
um there's actually a 405 nanometer
light that actually causes the poly to
fluores so that you can locate the the
location of the loop um lights up yeah
yeah they do it's a micron Precision
process what's interesting about the
robot that it takes to do that that's
that's pretty crazy that's pretty crazy
that a robot is able to get this kind of
precision yeah our robot is quite heavy
um our current version of it um there's
I mean it's it's like a giant granite
slab that weighs about a ton um because
it needs to be sensitive to vibration
environmental vibration and then as the
head is moving at the speed that it's
mov moving you know there's a lot of
kind of motion control to make sure that
you can achieve that level of precision
um a lot of Optics that kind of zoom in
on that um you know we're working on
next generation of the robot that is
lighter easier to transport I mean it is
a it is a feat to move the robot to and
it's far superior to a human surgeon at
this time for this particular task
absolutely I mean let alone you try to
actually thread a loop in a in a a
sewing kit I mean this is like we're
talking like fractions of human hair
these these things are it's it's not
visible so continuing the paragraph we
developed novel hardware and software
testing system such as our accelerated
lifetime testing racks and simulated
surgery environment which is pretty cool
to stress test and validate the
robustness of our Technologies We
performed many rehearsals of our
surgeries to refine our procedures and
make them um second nature this is
pretty
cool we practice surgeries on proxies
with all the hardware instruments needed
in our mock or in the engineering space
this helps us rapidly test and so
there's like proxies yeah this proxy is
super cool actually so there's a 3D
printed skull from the images that is
taken at Barrow as well as this uh
hydrogel mix you know sort of synthetic
polymer thing that actually mimics the
the mechanical properties of the brain
um it also has vasculature of the person
um
so basically what we're talking about
here and there's a lot of work that has
gone into making this set proxy that um
you know it's about like finding the
right concentration of these different
synthetic polymers to get the right set
of consistency for the needle Dynamics
you know as they're being inserted but
we practice this surgery
with the person you know Nolan's
basically physiology and brain um many
many many times prior to actually doing
the surgery every every step every step
every step yeah like where does someone
stand like I mean like you looking at is
the picture this is in in in our office
of this kind of corner of the robot
engineering space that we you know have
created this like mock or space that
looks exactly like what they would
experience all the staff would
experience during their actual surgery
so I mean it's just kind of like any
dense rehearsal where you know exactly
where you're going to stand at what
point um you just practice that over and
over and over again with an exact
anatomy of someone that you're going to
surger eyesee and and it it got to a
point where a lot of our Engineers when
we created a craniectomy they're like ah
that that looks very
familiar we've seen that before yeah man
there's wisdom you can gain through
doing the same thing over and over and
over it's like a jro Dreams of Sushi
kind of
thing um because then um it's like
Olympic athletes
visualize uh the Olympics and then once
you actually show up it feels easy it
feels like any other day it feels Almost
Boring winning the gold medal cuz you
You' visualized this so many times
you've practiced this so many times that
nothing bothers in you it's boring you
win the gold medal is boring and the
experience they talk about is mostly
just
relief probably that they don't have to
visualize it anymore yeah the power of
the mind to visualize and where I mean
there's a whole whole feel that studies
where muscle memory lies in cerebellum
yeah it's
incredible uh I think there a good place
to
actually ask sort of the big question
that people might have is how do we know
every aspect of this that you describe
is safe at the end of the day the goal
standard is to look at the tissue um you
know what sort of trauma did you cause
the tissue and does that correlate to
whatever behavioral anomalies that you
may have seen um and that's the language
to which uh we we can communicate about
the safety of you know inserting
something into the brain and what type
of trauma that you can cause so um we
actually have an entire department uh
Department of pathology that looks at
these uh tissue slices there are many
steps that are involved in in doing this
once you have um you know studies that
are launched to uh with with particular
end points in mind you know at some
point you have to euthanize the animal
and then uh you go through necropsy to
kind of collect the brain tissue samples
um you know you fix them in formalin and
you like gross them you section them and
you look at individual slices just to
see what kind of reaction or lack
thereof exists so that's the kind of the
language to which FDA speaks and you
know as well for us to kind of evaluate
the safety of the insertion mechanism as
well as the threats um at various
different time points you know both
acute um so anywhere between you know uh
zero to three months to Beyond three
months so those the kind of the the
details of an extremely high standard of
safety that has to be reached correct um
FDA supervises this but there's in
general just a very high standard and
every aspect of this including the
surgery I think U Matthew McDougall has
mentioned that like the standard is
uh let's say how to put politely higher
than maybe some other operations that we
take for granted so the the standard for
all the surgical stuff here is extremely
high very high I mean it's a highly
highly regulated environment um with you
know the governing agencies that
scrutinize every every medical device
that gets marketed and I think I think
it's a good thing um you know it's good
to have those high standards and we we
try to hold extremely high standards um
to kind of understand what's sort of
damage if any these uh Innovative
emerging Technologies and new
technologies that we're building our and
you know so far I I we have been
extremely impressed by lack of immune
response from these threats speaking of
which you uh you talked to me uh with
excitement about the histology and some
of the images uh that you're able to
share uh can you explain to me what
we're looking at yeah so what you're
looking at is stain
tissue image um so this is a
sectioned a tissue slice from an animal
that was implanted for seven months so
kind of a chronic time point and you're
seeing all these different colors and
each color indicates specific types of
cell types so purple and pink are
astrocytes and microa respectively
they're type of uh gal cells and yeah
the the other thing that you know people
may not be aware of is your brain is not
just made up of soup of neurons and
axons there are other uh you know cells
like uh gal cells that actually kind of
is the glue and also uh react uh if if
there any trauma or damage to the tissue
but the brown are the neurons here the
brown are the neurons neurons nuclei so
so what you're seeing is in in this kind
of macro image you're seeing these like
Circle highlighted in white the
insertion sight and uh when you zoom
into one of those you see the threads
and then in this particular case I think
we're seeing about the 16 uh you know
wires that are going into the page and
the incredible thing here is the fact
that you have the neurons that are these
Brown structures or brown circular or
elliptical thing that are actually
touching and abing the threats so what
this is saying is that there's basically
zero trauma that's caused during this
insertion and with these neural
interfaces these um micro electros that
you insert that is one of the most
common mode of failure so when you
insert these threads like the utar It
causes neuronal Death Around the site
because you're inserting a foreign
object right and that kind of elicit
these like immune response through
microglia and asites they form this like
protective layer around it oh not only
are you killing the neuron cells but
you're also creating this protective
layer that then basically prevents you
from recording neural signals because
you're getting further and further away
from the neurons that you're trying to
record and that that is the biggest mode
of failure and in this particular
example in that inset it's you know it's
about 50 Micron with that scale bar the
neurons are just seem to be attracted to
it and so there's certainly no trauma
that's such a beautiful image by the way
just the so the brown or the
neurons and for some reason I can't look
away it's really cool and and the way
that these things like I mean your
tissues generally don't have these
beautiful colors um this is uh Multiplex
stain that uses these different uh
protein that are staining these at
different colors you know we use very
standard set of um you know staining
techniques with HG ea1 and you know new
um and and GAP so if you go to the next
image this is also kind of illustrates
the second point because you can make an
argument and initially when we saw the
the previous image we said oh like are
the threads just floating like what is
happening here like are we actually
looking at the right thing so what we
did is we did another stain and this is
all done in-house of this M's uh TR
Chrome stain which is in blue that shows
these collagen layers so the blue
basically like you don't want the blue
around the the implant threads CU that
means that there's some sort of scarring
that's happen and what you're seeing if
you look at individual threads is that
you don't see any of the
blue which means that there has been
absolutely or very very minimal to a
point where it's not detectable amount
of trauma in these inserted threads so
that presumably is one of the big
benefit because of having this kind of
flexible thread this yeah so we think
this is uh primarily due to uh the size
as well as the flexibility of the
threats also the fact that R1 is
avoiding vasculature so we're not
disrupting or we're not um causing
damage to uh the vessels and not
breaking any of the bloodb brain barrier
uh has you know basically caused the
immune response to be muted but this is
also a nice illustration of the size of
things so this is the tip of the thread
yeah those are neurons they're they're
and they're neurons and there and this
is the thread listening and the
electrodes are positioned how yeah so
this is what you're looking at is not
electrod themselves those are the
conductive wires so each of those should
probably be two Micron in width um so
what we're looking at is we're looking
at the chral slice so we're looking at
uh some slice of the tissue so as you go
deeper you know you will obviously have
less than less uh of the tapering of the
of the thread um but yeah the the point
basically being that there's just uh
kind of cells around the insert aite
which is um just an incredible thing to
see I've just never seen anything like
this how easy and safe is it to remove
the
implant yeah so it depends on when um in
the first 3 months or so after the
surgery um there there's a lot of kind
of tissue modeling that's happening you
know similar to when you get a cut um
you know you
obviously uh you know start over first
couple weeks or depending on the size of
the wound um Scar Tissue forming right
they're these like contracted and then
in the end they turn into scab and you
can scab it off the same thing happens
in the brain and it's a very Dynamic
environment and before the scar tissue
or the neom membrane or the you know new
membrane that forms it's quite easy to
just pull them out um and there's
minimal trauma that's that's uh caused
during that once the scarf tissue forms
and you know with with Nolan as well we
believe that that's the thing that's
currently anchoring the threads so we
haven't seen any more movements since
then um so they're they're quite
stable um it's it's it gets harder to
actually completely extract the threads
so our current method
for uh removing the device is cutting
the thread leaving the the tissue intact
and then unscrewing and taking the
implant out and that hole is now going
to be plugged with either another
neuralink or uh just with the you know
kind of a a peak based you know plastic
based uh cap is it okay to leave the
threads in there
forever yeah we think so we we've done
studies where um you know we left them
there and one of the biggest concerns
that we had is like do they migrate and
do they get to a point where they should
not be we haven't seen that again once
the scar tissue forms they get anchored
in place and I I should also say that
you know when we say upgrades like it
it's not we're not just talking in
theory here like we've actually upgraded
many many times um most of our uh
monkeys or non-human primates nhp have
been upgraded you know pager who you saw
playing mine pong has the latest version
of the device since two years ago and is
seemingly very happy and healthy and
fat so what's uh designed for the future
the upgrade procedure so uh maybe uh for
Nolan what what would the upgrade look
like it was essenti what you're
mentioning is there a way to upgrade
sort of the device internally where you
take it apart sort of uh keep the
capsule and upgrade the internals yeah
so there there a couple different things
here so for Nolan if we were to upgrade
what we would have to do is um either
cut the threads or you know extract the
threads depending on kind of um you know
uh the situation there in terms of how
they're anchored or scarred in um if you
were to remove them with the Dural
substitute um you know you have an
intact brain so you can reinsert
different threads um with the updated uh
implant
package uh there are couple
different other uh ways that we're
thinking about the future
of what the upgradeable system looks
like one is you know at the moment we
currently remove the dura um this this
kind of thick layer that protects the
the brain but that actually is a thing
that actually proliferates the scar
tissue formation so typically the
general good rule of thumb is you want
to leave the the nature as is uh and not
disrupt it as much so we're looking at
ways to uh insert the threads through
the dura um which comes with different
set of challenges such as
you know it's a pretty thick uh layer so
how do you actually penetrate that
without breaking the needle so we're
looking at different needle design for
that as well as the kind of the loop
engagement the other biggest challenges
are it's quite opaque optically in with
white light illumination so how do you
avoid still this this biggest advantage
that we have of avoiding basc Shure U
how do you image through that how do you
actually still mediate that so there are
other Imaging techniques that we're
looking at to enable that um but the
goal the our hypo IIs is that and based
on some of the early evidence that we
have uh doing through the dura insertion
will cause minimal scarring that causes
them to be much easier to extract over
time and the other thing that we're also
looking at this is um going to be a
fundamental change in the implant
architecture is as a at the moment it's
a monolithic single implant that comes
with a thread that's um bonded together
so you can't actually separate the thing
out but you can imagine having two-part
implant um you know bottom part that is
the thread that are inserted that has
the chips um and maybe a radio and some
power source and then you have another
implant that has more of the
computational heavy load and and the
bigger battery um and then one can be
under the D one can be above the D like
you know being the plug for the skull
they can talk to each other but the
thing that you want to upgrade the
computer and not the threads if you want
to upgrade that you just go in there you
know remove the screws and then put in
the next version and you know you're off
the you know it's a very very easy
surgery too like you do a skin incision
slip this in screw probably be able to
do this in 10 minutes so that would
allow you to reuse the threads sort of
correct so I mean this leads to the
Natural question of uh what is the
pathway to scaling the increase in the
number of threads is that a priority is
that like what's what's the technical uh
challenge there yeah that that is a
priority so for next versions of the
implant um you know the key metrics that
we're looking to improve are number of
channels just recording from more and
more neurons um you know we have a
pathway to actually go from currently
1,000 to you know hopefully 3,000 if not
6,000 by end of this year um wow and
then end of next year we want to get to
uh you know even more 16,000 wow there a
couple limitations to that one is you
know obviously being able to photo
lithographically print those wires as I
mentioned it's two Micron in width and
and
spacing obviously there are chips that
are much more advanced than those types
of resolution and we have some of the
tools that we have brought in house to
be able to do that so traces will be
narrower just so that you have to have
more of the wires coming up into the
chip
um chips also cannot linearly consume
more energy as you have more and more
channels so there's a lot of Innovations
in the circuit um you know and
architecture as as well as a circuit
design topology to make them lower power
um you need to also think about if you
have all of these spikes how do you send
that off to the end application so you
need to think about bandwidth limitation
there and potentially Innovations and
Signal processing um physically one of
the biggest challenges is going to be um
the the the the interface it's always
the interface that breaks um bonding the
thin FM array to the um the electronics
um it starts to become very very highly
dense uh interconnects so how do you
connector Rize that there's a lot of
Innovations um in in kind of the 3D
Integrations in the recent years that we
can take advantage of um one of the
biggest challenges that we do have is
you know forming this hermetic barrier
right you know this is an extremely
harsh environment that we're in the
brain um so how do you protect it from
uh yeah like the brain trying to kill
your electronics to also your
electronics leaking things that you
don't want into the brain and that
forming that hermetic barrier is going
to be a very very big challenge that we
uh you know I think are actually well
suited to tackle how do you test that
like what's the development environment
yeah to simulate that kind of harshness
yeah so this is this is where the
accelerated life tester essentially is a
brain inovat mhm uh it literally is a
vessel that is um made up of and again
again for all intents and purpose for
this particular types of test your brain
is a saltwater MH and uh and you can uh
also put some other set of chemicals
like reactive oxygen species that you
know get at kind of these interfaces and
trying to cause a reaction to to uh pull
it apart but you could also increase the
rate at which these uh interfaces are
aging by just increasing
temperature so every 10 degre Celsius
that you increase you're basically
accelerating Time by
2X and there's limit as to how how much
temperature you want to increase CU at
some point there's some other nonlinear
dynamics that that causes you to have
other nasty gases to form that just is
not realistic in an environment so what
we do is we increase uh in our alt
chamber by 20° celius that uh increases
the Aging by four four times so
essentially one day in alt chamber is 4
day in calendar year and and we look at
whether the implants still are intact uh
including the threats and and operation
and all that and operation and all of
that um it obviously is not an exact
same environment as a brain because you
know brain has mechanical you know other
more uh biological gops that that attack
at it um but it is a good test
environment testing environment for at
least the the the enclosure and the
strength of the enclosure and I mean
we've had implants the current version
of the implant that has been in there
for I mean close to two and a half years
which is equivalent to a decade and they
seem to be fine
so it's interesting that the so
basically uh close approximation is warm
salt water hot salt water is a good
testing environment I yeah by the way
I'm drinking element uh which is
basically salt water which is making me
kind of it doesn't have computational
power the way the brain does but maybe
in terms of in terms of all the
characteristics is quite similar and I'm
consuming it yeah you have to get it in
the right pH too
and then Consciousness will emerge yeah
no uh all right by the way the other
thing that also is interesting about our
enclosure is uh if if you look at our
implant it's not your common looking
medical implant that usually is uh in
incase in a titanium can that's laser
welded we use this polymer called pctfe
polychoral Tri floro ethylene which is
actually commonly used in packs so when
you have a pill and you're try to pop
the pill there's that kind of that
plastic membrane that's what this is um
no one's actually ever used this uh
except us and the reason we um wanted to
do this is because it's
electromagnetically transparent so when
we talked about the uh electromagnetic
inductive charging um with titanium can
usually if you want to do something like
that um you know you have to have a
sapphire window and it's a it's a very
very tough process to scale so you're
doing a lot of iteration here and every
aspect of this the materials the
software the hard all the whole whole
Shang uh so okay so you mentioned
scaling is it possible to have multiple
neuralink devices as one of the ways of
scaling to have multiple neuralink
devices implanted that's the goal that's
the goal yeah we we've had we've had um
I mean our monkeys have had two neural
links one in each hemisphere and then
we're also looking at you know potential
of having one in moral cortex one in
visual cortex and one in whever other
cortex so focusing on the particular
function one yink device I mean I wonder
if there's some level of customization
that could be done on the compute side
so for the motor cortex absolutely that
that's the goal and and you know we talk
about at neuralink building a
generalized neural interface to the
brain um and and that that also is
strategically how we're approaching this
um with with marketing and also you know
with with regulatory which is hey look
um we have the robot and the robot can
access any part of the cortex right now
we're focused on motor cortex uh with
current version of the N1 that's
specialized for motor decoding tasks but
also at the end of the day there's kind
of a general compute available there
um uh but you know typically if you want
to really get down to kind of hyper
optimizing for power and if efficiency
you do want need to get to some
specialized function right um but you
know what we're saying is that hey you
know you you are now used to this
robotic insertion techniques which which
you know took many many years of you
know showing data um and and
conversation with the FDA um and also
internally convincing oursel that this
is this is safe
and um now the difference is that if we
go to other parts of the brain like
visual cortex which we're interested in
as our second product
um obviously it's a completely different
environment the cortex is laid out very
very differently um you know it's going
to be more stimulation Focus rather than
recording um just just kind of creating
visual percepts but in the end we're
using the same thin film array
technology we're using the same robot
insertion technology we're using the
same you know packaging technology now
it's more the conversation focused
around what are the differences and what
are the implication of those differences
in safety and efficacy way that second
product is is both hilarious and awesome
to me uh that product
being restoring sight for blind people
so can you speak to stimulating the
visual cortex I mean the the
possibilities there are just incredible
to be able to give that gift back to
people who don't have sight or even any
aspect of that can you just speak to the
challenges of there's several challenges
here one of which is like you said from
recording to
stimulation just uh any aspect of that
that you're both excited and uh uh see
the challenges
of yeah I guess I'll start by saying
that we actually have been
um capable of stimulating through our
denl marray as well as our electronics
for years um you know we we have
actually demonstrated some of that
capability abilities for uh reanimating
the limb in the spinal cord um it it you
know obviously for for the current EFS
study you know we've Hardware disabled
that so that's that's something that you
know we wanted to Embark as a separate
separate Journey um and and you know
obviously there are many many different
ways to write information into the brain
the way in which we're doing that is
through electrical you know passing
electrical current and and kind of
causing that to really change the local
environment so that you
can sort of
artificially cause kind of the the
neurons to depolarize in in in nearby
areas for for vision specifically um you
know the way our visual system works it
it's both well understood I mean
anything with kind of brain there
aspects of it that's well understood but
in the end like we don't really know
anything um but the way visual system
works is that you have Photon hitting
your eye and in your eyes uh you know
there are these um specialized cells
called photo receptor cells that convert
the photon energy into electrical
signals and then they get that then gets
projected to um your back of your head
your visual cortex um you know goes
through actually um you know theic
system called lgn that then projects it
out and then in the visual cortex
there's you know visual area one or V1
and then there's bunch of other higher
level processing layers like like V2 V3
and there there are actually kind of
interesting parallels and when you study
the behaviors of these convolutional
neural networks like what the different
layers of the network is detecting you
know first they're detecting like these
edges and they're then detecting some
more natural curves and then they start
to detect like objects right kind of
similar thing happens in the brain um
and a lot of that has been inspired and
also you it's been kind of exciting to
see some of the correlations there um
but you know things like from there
where does cognition R arise and where
where's color encoded there's there's
just not a lot of um understanding
fundamental understanding there so in
terms of kind of bringing sight back to
those that are blind um there are many
different forms of blindness uh there's
actually million people one million
people in the US that are legally blind
um you know that means like certain uh
like score below in kind of the the
visual test um I think it's something
like if you can see something uh at 20
ft distance that normal people can see
at 200 ft distance like you're like if
you're worse than that you're legally
blind so fundament that means you can't
function effectively corre using sight
in the world yeah like to navigate your
environment um and yeah there are
different forms of blindness there are
forms of blindness where uh there's some
degeneration of your uh retina um these
photo receptor cells
and and rest of your visual uh you know
processing that I described is intact
and for those types of individuals uh
you may not need to maybe stick
electrodes into the visual cortex you
can actually um uh build retinal
prosthetic devices that actually just
replaces a function of that retinal
cells that are degenerated and there are
many companies that are working on that
but that that's a very small slice Alia
significance still smaller slice of
folks that are legally blind um you know
if there's any damage along that
circuitry whether it's in the optic
nerve or you know uh just the lgn
circuitry or any any break in that
circuit that's not going to work for you
um and uh the source of where you need
to actually cause that visual percept to
happen because your biological mechanism
is not doing that is by placing
electrodes in the visual cortex in the
back of your head
and the way in which this would work is
that you would have an external camera
whether it's um you know something as
unsophisticated as a GoPro or you know
some sort of wearable you know Rayban
type glasses that meta is working on
that captures a scene right um and that
scene is then converted to a set of
electrical impulses or stimulation
pulses that you would uh activate in
your visual cortex through um these
infil aray and
by playing some C you know concerted
kind of uh Orchestra of these
stimulation patterns you can create
what's called phosphines which are these
um kind of white yellowish dots that you
can also create by just pressing your
eyes um you can actually create those
percepts by stimulating the visual
cortex and the name of the game is
really have many of those and have those
percepts be the phosphines be as small
as possible so that you can start to
tell apart like the individual pixels of
the the of the screen right so if you
have many many of those you know
potentially you'll be able to um you
know in in the long term be able to
actually get naturalistic Vision but in
the mid like short term to maybe midterm
um being able to at least be able to
have object detection algorithms run on
your um on your glasses uh the pre
processing units and then being able to
at least see the edges of things so you
don't bump into stuff it's incred
inredible this is really incredible so
you basically would be adding pixels and
your brain would start to figure out
what those pixels mean yeah and like
with with different kinds of assistant
on the signal processing on all fronts
yeah the the thing that actually so a
couple things one is um you know
obviously if you're uh blind from birth
um the way brain works especially in the
early age
um neuroplasticity is really nothing
other than you know kind of your brain
and different parts of your brain
fighting for The Limited territory yeah
um and and I mean very very quickly you
see you see cases where you know people
that are I mean you also hear about
people who are blind that have
heightened sense of hearing or some
other senses and the reason for that is
because that cortex that's not used just
gets taken over by these different parts
of the cortex so for those types of
individuals um I mean I guess they're
going to have to Now map some other
parts of their senses into what they
call Vision but it's going to be
obviously a very very different
conscious experience um
before so so I think that's a
interesting caveat the other thing that
also is important to highlight is that
we're currently limited by our biology
in terms of the the wavelength that we
can see there's a very very small
wavelength that is a visible um light
wavelength that we can see with our eyes
but when you have an external camera
with this um BCI system you're not
limited to that you can have infrared
you can have UV you can have whatever
other spectrum that you want to see and
whether that gets math to some sort of
weird conscious experience I have no
idea but when I you know often time I
talk to people about the goal of
neuralink being going beyond the limits
of our biology um that's sort of what I
mean and if you're able to control the
kind of raw signal is that when we use
our site we're getting the
photons and there's not much processing
on it if you're be able to control that
signal maybe you can do some kind of
processing maybe you do object detection
ahead of time yeah you're doing some
kind of pre-processing and there's a lot
of possibilities to explore that so it's
not just in increasing sort of thermal
imaging that kind of stuff but it's also
just doing some kind of interesting
processing yeah I I mean my my theory of
how like visual system works also is
that
um I mean there's just so many things
happening in the world and there's a lot
of photons that are going into your eye
and it it's unclear exactly where some
of the pre-processing steps are
happening but I I mean I actually think
that just just from a fundamental
perspective there's just so much uh the
reality that we're in if it's a reality
um is so there's so much data and I
think humans are just unable to actually
like eat enough actually to process all
that information so there's some sort of
filtering that does happen whether that
happens in the retina whether that
happens in different layers of the
visual cortex unclear but like the
analogy that I sometimes think about is
you know if uh if your brain is a CCD
camera and the in all of the information
in the world is a sun um and when you
try to actually look at the sun with the
CCD camera it's just going to saturate
the sensors right cuz it's a enormous
amount of energy so you what you do is
you end up adding these uh filters right
to just kind of narrow the information
that's coming to you and being captured
and I
think you know things like our
experiences or our
um uh you know like drugs like profal
that like anesthetic drug or you know
psychedelics what they're doing is
they're kind of swapping out these
filters and putting in new ones or
removing older ones and
kind of controlling our conscious
experience yeah man not to distract from
the topic but I just took a very high
dose of iasa in the Amazon jungle so yes
it's a nice way to think about it you're
swapping out different different
experiences and with neur link being
able to control that primarily at first
to improve function not for
entertainment purposes or enjoyment
purposes but yeah giving back lost
functions Lo giving back lost functions
and there especially
when the function is completely lost
anything is a huge help would you uh
implant a neuralink device in your own
brain absolutely I mean maybe not right
now but absolutely what kind of
capability once reached you start
getting real Curious and almost get a
little antsy like like jealous of people
that get as you watch them get
implanted yeah I mean I think I mean
even even with our early participants if
they start to do things that I I can't
do uh which I think is in the realm of
possibility for them to be able to get
you know 15 20 if not like 100 BPS right
um there's nothing that fundamentally
stops us from being able to achieve that
type of
performance
um I mean I would certainly get jealous
um that they can do that I I should say
that watching no and I get a little
jealous because he say so much fun and
it seems like such a chill way to play
video games yeah so I mean the thing
that also is hard to appreciate
sometimes is that you know he's doing
these things while mult like while
talking and I mean it's multitasking
right so it's it's clearly it's
obviously cognitive cognitively uh
intensive but similar to how you know
when we talk we move our hands like
these things like you know like are
multitasking I mean he's able to do that
and you know you won't be a to do that
with other assisted technology as far as
I I'm aware you know if you're obviously
using like an ey tracking device you
know you're very much fixated on that
thing that you're trying to do and if
you're using voice control I mean like
if you say some other stuff yeah you
don't get to use that yeah the the
multitasking aspect of that is really
interesting so it's not just the
BPS for the primary task it's the it's
the parallelization of multiple task if
you if you take if you measure the BPS
for the entirety of the human organ ISM
so if you're talking and doing a thing
with your mind and looking around mhm
also I mean there's just a lot of
paralyzation that that can be happening
but I mean I think at some point for him
like if he wants to really achieve those
high level BPS it does require like you
know full attention right um and that's
a separate circuitry that that um is a
big mystery like how attention works and
you know yeah attention like cognitive
load I've done I've I've read a lot of
literature on people doing two tasks mhm
like uh you have your primary task and a
secondary task and the secondary task is
is a source of distraction and how does
that affect the performance on the
primary task and there's depending on
the task there's a lot of interesting I
mean this is an interesting
computational device right and I think
there's to say the least a lot of Novel
insights that can be gained from
everything I mean I personally am
surprised that no one's able to do such
incredible control of the cursor while
talking and also being nervous at the
same time because he's talking like all
of us Sor if you're talking in front of
the camera you get nervous so all of
those are coming into play he's able to
still achieve high
performance surprising I mean all of
this is really amazing uh and I think at
just after researching this really in
depth I kind of wanted your
link get in the line and also the safy
get in mind well we should say the
registry is for people who have
quadriplegia and all that kind of stuff
so there'll be a separate line for
people um they're just
curious uh like myself so now that noan
patient P1 is part of the ongoing Prime
study um what's the high level vision
for P2 P3 P4 P5 and just uh the
expansion into other human beings that
are getting to experience this
implant yeah I mean the prim goal is uh
you know for for our study in the first
place is to achieve safety end points
just understand um safety of this device
as well as the implantation process um
and also at the same time understand the
efficacy and the impact that it could
have on uh the potential user's lives um
and just because you have and you know
you're living with tetr Leia it doesn't
mean your situation same as another
person living with tetelia it's widely
widely varying um and and you know
you're it's something that you know
we're hoping to also understand how our
technology can serve not just a very
small slice of those individuals but you
know broader group of individuals and
being able to get the feedback to you
know just really build the just the best
product for them um so are
are you know there's there's obviously
also uh you know go goals that we have
and and the primary purpose of the early
feasibility study is to learn from each
and every participant to improve the
device improve the surgery before you
know we embark on what's called a
pivotal study that then is a much larger
um uh trial that starts to look at
statistical significance of your
endpoints um and that's required before
you can then Market the device um uh and
and you know that's how it works in the
US and just generally around the world
that's that's the process you follow so
you know our goal is to really just
understand from people like Nolan P2 P3
future participants what aspects of our
device needs to improve you know if if
it turns out that people are like I
really don't like the fact that it lasts
only 6 hours I want to be able to use
this computer for you know like 24 hours
I mean that's that is a you know user
needs and user requirements uh which we
can only find out from just just being
able to engage with them so before the
pivotal study there's kind of like a
rapid Innovation based on individual
experiences you're learning from
Individual people how they use it like
the like the high resolution details in
terms of like cursor control and signal
and all that kind of stuff to like life
experience yeah so there's Hardware
changes but also just just firmware
updates um so even even when we um you
know had had that sort of uh recovery
event for Nolan uh you know he now has
the new firmware that that that he um
has been uh updated with and you know
it's similar to how like your phones get
updated all the time with new firmwares
for security patches whatever new
functionality UI right um and that's
something that is possible with our
implant it's not a static one-time
device that that can only do the thing
that it said it can do I mean similar to
Tesla you can do over the a firmware
updates and now you have completely new
user user interface and um all this
bells and whistles and improvements on
you know everything like the latest
right uh that's that's that's um you
know when we say generalized platform
that's what we're talking about yeah
it's really cool how the the app that
Nolan is using there's like
calibration all that all that kind of
stuff and then there's
update just you just click and get an
update uh what other future capabilities
are are you kind of looking to you said
Vision that's a fascinating one uh what
about sort of accelerated typing or
speech this kind of stuff what and what
else is there what's yeah those those
are still in the realm realm of um
movement program so so largely speaking
we have two programs we have the
movement program and we have the the
vision program uh the movement program
you know currently is focused around you
know the digital Freedom as you can
easily guess if you can control you know
2D cursor in the digital space you could
move anything in the physical space um
so robotic arms wheelchair your
environment uh or even really like
whether it's through the phone or just
like directly to those interfaces so
like to those machines um so we're
looking at ways to kind of expand those
types of capability even for Nolan um
that requires you know conversation with
the FDA and kind of showing safety data
for you know if there's a robotic arm or
wheelchair that you know we can
guarantee that they're not going to hurt
themselves accidentally right um it's
very different if you're moving stuff in
the in the digital domain versus like in
the physical space you can actually um
potentially harm to the participants um
so we're working through that right now
um speech does involve different areas
of the brain speech prosthetic is very
very fascinating and there's actually
been a lot of really um amazing work
that's been happening in Academia um you
know Sergey staviski at UC Davis Jamie
Henderson and you know late Krishna shoi
um at Stanford doing just some
incredible amount of work in improving
speech uh
neuroprosthetics and
it those are actually looking more at
parts of the motor cortex that are
controlling you know these focal
articulators and you know being able to
like even by mouthing the word or
imagine speech you can pick up those
signals um the more sophisticated higher
level processing areas like you know the
broker's area or you know War's area
those are still very very big mystery in
terms of the the underlying mechanism of
how all that stuff works but
um yeah I mean I think I think neural
Ling's evental goal is to kind of
understand those those things um and and
be able to provide a platform and tools
to be able to understand that and study
that this is where I get to the pothead
questions um do you think we can start
getting insight into things like
thought so speech is uh there's a
muscular component like you said there's
like the act of producing sounds but
then what about the internal things like
cognition like lowlevel thoughts and
high level thoughts do you think we'll
start noticing kind of signals that
could be picked up they could
um they could be understood they could
be maybe used in order to interact with
the outside
world in some ways like I guess this
starts to kind of get into the hard
problem of Consciousness um and
uh I mean
on on one hand all of these are at some
point set of electrical
signals that
um from
there maybe it it in itself is giving
you the cognition or the meaning or
somehow human mind is incredibly amazing
storytelling machine so we're telling
ourselves and fooling ourselves that
there's some interesting meaning here um
but
I I I I certainly think that BCI and you
know really BCI at the end of the day is
a set of tools that help you kind of
study the underlying mechanisms in in a
both like local but also broader sense
um and whether you know there's some
interesting patterns of like electrical
signal that means like you're thinking
this versus and you can either like
learn from like many many sets of data
to correlate some of that and be able to
do mind reading or not I'm not I'm not
sure um I certainly would not kind of
blow that out as a possibility but um I
I I think BCI alone probably can't do
that there's probably additional set of
tools and framework and you also like
just hard problem of Consciousness at
the end of the day is rooted in this
philosophical question of like what is
the what's the meaning of it all what's
the nature of our existence like where
is the Mind emerg from this complex
Network
like yeah how does the uh how does do
the subjective experience emerge from
just a bunch of spikes electrical spikes
yeah yeah I mean we we do really think
about BCI and what we're building as a
tool for
understanding the mind the
brain the only question that
matters there's actually um there
actually is um some
biological existence proof of like what
it would take to kind of start to form
some of these experiences that maybe
unique um if you actually look at every
one of our brains there there two
hemispheres there's a left sided brain
there's a right sided brain and I mean I
unless you have some other conditions
you normally don't feel like left leg or
right legs MH like you just feel like
one legs right so what is happening
there right um if you actually look
at the two hemispheres there's a a
structure that kind of connectorized the
two called the Corpus colossum that is
supposed to have around 200 to 300
million connections or
axons um so whether that means that's
the the number of interface and electrod
that we need to create some sort of Mind
meld or from that like whatever new
conscious experience that you you can
experience um but yeah I do think that
there's like kind of interesting um
existence
proof that we all
have and that threshold is unknown at
this time oh yeah these things
everything in this domain is you know
speculation right um and then there will
be uh you'd be continuously pleasantly
surprised uh do you see a world where
there's millions of
people like tens of millions hundreds of
millions of people walk
around with the neuralink device in
their or multiple neuralink devices in
their brain I do first of all there
there are like if you look at worldwide
um people suffering from movement
disorders and visual defis I mean that
that's uh in the tens if not hundreds of
millions of people um so that that alone
I think there's a lot of uh benefit and
and potential good that we can do with
this type of
technology and when she start to get
into kind of neuro like psychiatric
application you know
depression um anxiety hunger or you know
obesity right like mood control of
appetite I mean that starts to
become you know very real to everyone
not to mention that
every uh most people on earth have a
smartphone and once BCI starts compe
eting with a smartphone as a preferred
methodology of interacting with the
digital world that also becomes an
interesting thing oh yeah I mean that
yeah this is even before going to that
right I mean there's like almost I mean
the entire world that could benefit from
these types of thing and then yeah like
if we're talking about kind of next
generation of how we interface with you
know machines or even ourselves uh in
many ways I think um BCI can can play a
role in that um and you know some of the
things that I also talk about is I I I
do think that there is a real
possibility that you could see um you
know 8 billion people walking around
with neural link well thank you so much
for pushing ahead and uh I look forward
to that exciting future thanks for
having me thanks for listening to this
conversation with DJ saw and now dear
friends here's Matthew McDougall the
head neurosurgeon at your
link when did you first become
fascinated with the human brain since
forever uh far back as I can remember
I've been interested in the human brain
I mean uh I was you know a thoughtful
kid
and a bit of an outsider and you you
know sit there thinking about what the
most important things in the world
are uh in your in your little tiny
adolescent
brain and the answer that I came to that
I converged on was uh that all of the
things you can possibly conceive of as
things that are important for human
beings to care about are literally
contained you know in the skull uh both
the perception of them and their
relative values and you know the
solutions to all our problems and all of
our problems are all contained in the
skull and if we knew more about how that
worked uh how the brain encodes
information and generates desires and
generates Agony and
suffering uh we we could do more about
it you know you think about all the all
the really great triumphs in human
history you think about all the really
horrific
tragedies um you know you think about
the Holocaust you think about um
any prison full of human
stories uh and all of those
problems boil down to
neurochemistry so if you get a little
bit of control over
that you provide people the option to do
better in the way I read history the way
people have dealt with having better
tools is that they most often in the end
do better uh with huge
asterisks but I think it's a an
interesting a worthy a noble pursuit to
give people more options more tools
yeah that's a fascinating way to look at
human history you just imagine all these
neurobiological mechanisms Stalin Hitler
all of these jenus Khan all of them just
had like a a brain it just a bunch of
neurons you know like few tons of
billions of
neurons uh gaining a bunch of
information over a period of time they
have set a module that does language and
memory and all that and from there in in
in the case of those people they're able
to murder millions of people yeah and
all that coming
from uh there's not some glorified
notion of a a dictator of this enormous
mind or something like this it's just
it's just the brain yeah yeah I mean a
lot of that has to do with how well
people like that can organize those
around them other brains yeah and so I
always find it interesting to look to
primatology you know look to our closest
non-human relatives uh for Clues as to
how humans are going to behave and and
what particular humans are able to
achieve and so you look
at um chimpanzees and bonobos and you
know they're similar but different in
their social structures
particularly and I went to Emory in
Atlanta and studied under uh Fran Dall
the great Fran Dall who was kind of the
leading
primatologist uh who recently died
and his work in at looking at chimps
through the lens of you know how you
would watch an episode of Friends and
understand the motivations of the
characters interacting with each other
he would look at a chimp colony and
basically apply that lens I'm massively
oversimplifying it if you do that
instead of just saying you know subject
473 you know through his feces at
subject
471 you talk about them in terms of
their human struggles Accord them the
Dignity
of themselves as actors with
understandable goals and drives what
they want out of life and primarily it's
you know the things we want out of life
food sex
companionship um
Power uh you can understand chimp and
Boba behavior in those same lights uh
much more easily and I think doing so
gives you the tools you need to reduce
human behavior from the kind of false
complexity that we layer on to it with
language and look at it in terms of oh
well these humans are looking for
companionship sex food
power um and I think that that's a
pretty powerful tool to have in
understanding human behavior and I just
uh went to the Amazon jungle for a few
weeks and you it's a very visceral
reminder that a lot of life on Earth is
just trying to get laid yeah they're all
screaming at each other like I saw a lot
of monkeys and they're just trying to
impress each other or maybe there's a
battle for power but a lot of the battle
for power has to do with them getting
laid right reading rights often go with
Alpha status and so if you can get a
piece of that then you're going to do
okay and would like to think that we're
somehow fundamentally different but
especially when it talk comes to
primates where really AR you know we can
use fancer poetic language but uh maybe
some of the underlying drives that
motivate us are um similar yeah I think
that's true and all that is coming from
this the brain yeah uh so when did you
first start studying the the brain as
like as a biological mechanism basically
the moment I got to college I started
looking around for labs that I could uh
do Neuroscience work in uh I originally
approached that from the angle of uh
looking at interactions between the
brain and the immune system which isn't
the most obvious place to start but um I
had this idea at the time
that the contents of your thoughts would
have an impact a direct impact maybe a
powerful one on uh
non-conscious systems in your body the
systems we think of as you know
homeostatic autom IC mechanisms like
fighting off a virus like repairing a
wound um and sure enough there are big
crossovers between the two I mean it
gets to um kind of a key point that I
think goes underrecognized one of the
things people don't recognize or or
appreciate about the human brain uh
enough and that is that it basically
controls or has a huge role in almost
everything that your body does um like
you try to try to name an example of
something in your body that isn't
directly controlled or massively
influenced by the brain and uh it's
pretty hard I mean you might say like
bone healing or something but uh even
those systems the hypothalamus and
pituitary end up playing a role in
coordinating the endocrine system that
does have a direct influence on say the
calcium level in your blood that goes to
Bone healing so non-obvious connections
between those things uh implicate the
brain as really a potent prime mover in
all of Health one of the things I
realized in the other direction too
how most of the systems in the body
integrated with the human brain like
they affect the brain also like the
immune system um I think there's just
you know people who study
Alzheimer's and uh those kinds of things
is it's just
surprising how much you can understand
of that from the immune system from the
other systems that don't obviously seem
to have to anything to do with sort of
the nervous system they all play
together yeah you could understand how
that would be driven by Evolution too
just in some simple examples if you get
sick if you get a communicable disease
you get the
flu
uh it's pretty advantageous for your
immune system to tell your brain hey now
be antisocial for you know a few days
don't go be the life of the party
tonight in fact maybe just cuddle up
somewhere warm under a blanket and just
stay there for a day or two and sure
enough that tends to be the behavior
that you see both in animals and and in
humans if you get sick elevated levels
of inter lucans in your blood and tnf
Alpha in your
blood ask the brain to cut back on
social activity
uh even moving around you have lower
look motor activity uh in animals that
are infected with
viruses so from there the early days in
Neuroscience to
surgery when did that step happen was a
leap you know it was sort of an
evolution of thought I wanted to study
the brain so I started studying the
brain uh in undergrad in this
neuroimmunology lab
uh I from there uh realized at some
point that I didn't want to just
generate knowledge I wanted to affect
real changes in the actual World in
actual people's lives and so after
having not really thought about going
into medical school I was on a track to
go into a PhD program I said
well I'd like I'd like that option I'd
like to actually potentially
help tangible people in front of me and
uh doing a little digging found that
there exists these MD PHD programs where
you can choose not to
choose between them and do both and so
uh I went to USC for medical school and
had a joint PhD program with
Caltech um where I met actually chose
that program particularly because of
a researcher at Caltech named Richard
Anderson who's one of the Godfathers of
primate
Neuroscience has a a maak lab where Utah
rays and other electrodes were being
inserted into the brains of monkeys uh
to try to understand how intentions were
being encoded in the brain so you know I
ended up there with the idea that maybe
I would be a neurologist and study the
brain on the side uh and then discovered
that neurology um again I'm gonna make
enemies by saying this but
neurology uh predominantly and and
distressingly to me is is the practice
of diagnosing a thing and then saying
good luck with that there's not much we
can
do um and neurosurgery very differently
uh is a it's a powerful lever on taking
people that are headed in a bad
Direction and changing their course uh
in the sense of brain tumors that are
potentially treatable or curable with
surgery um you know even aneurysms in
the brain blood vessels that are going
to rupture you can uh save lives really
is at the end of the day what What
mattered to me and
so uh I was at USC as I mentioned that
happens to be one of the great
neurosurgery programs and so I met these
truly epic uh neurosurgeons Al kesi and
and M A puzzo and Steve ginata and Marty
Weiss these these sort of Epic people
that were just human beings in front of
me and so it kind of changed my thinking
from neurosurgeons are distant gods that
live on another planet and occasionally
come and visit us to these are humans
that have problems and are people and uh
there's nothing fundamentally preventing
me from being one of them uh and
so um at the last minute in medical
school I changed gears from going into a
different specialty and and switched
into
neurosurgery uh which cost me a year I
had to do another year of research uh
because I was so far along in the
process uh that um to switch into
neurosurgery the deadlines had already
passed so
was a a decision that cost time but
absolutely worth it what was the hardest
part of the training on the on the
neurosurgeon
track yeah
two things I think that you know
residency in neurosurgery is sort of a
competition of pain of like how much
pain can you eat and smile yeah uh and
so
there's workout restrictions that uh are
not
really they're viewed at I think
internally among the residents as
weakness and so most neurosurgery
residents try to work as hard as they
can and that I think NE necessarily
means working long hours and sometimes
over the work hour limits and you know
we care about being compliant with
whatever regulations are uh in front of
us but I think more important than that
people want to give all give their all
in becoming a better neurosurgeon
because the the stakes are so high and
so it's a real fight to get
residents uh to say go home at the end
of their shift and not stay and do more
surgery Are you seriously saying like
one of the hardest things is literally
like getting forcing them to get sleep
and rest and all this kind of stuff
historically that was the case I think I
think the Next Generation I think the
next generation is more uh compliant and
more self is what you mean all right I'm
just I'm just kidding I'm just kidding I
didn't say it now I'm making enemies no
okay I get it wow that's fascinating uh
so what was the second thing the
personalities and maybe the two are
connected but so is was it pretty
competitive
it's competitive and it's also
um you know as we touched on earlier
primates like power and I think um
neurosurgery has long had this Aura
of um mystique and excellence and
whatever about it and so it's it's an
invitation I think for people that are
cloaked in that Authority you know board
certified neurosurgeon is basically a
walking uh fallacious appeal to
Authority right you have licensed to
walk into any room and act like you're
you know an expert on whatever and
fighting that tendency is not something
that most neurosurgeons do well humility
isn't the Forte yeah one of the so um I
have friends uh who know you and
whenever they speak about you that
your you're have the surprising quality
for a neurosurgeon of
humility which I think IND DEC cases
that it's not it's not as common is
perhaps in other professions because
there is a kind of
gigantic sort of heroic aspect to
neurosurgery and I think it gets to
people's head a little bit Yeah well
that I think that uh you know that
allows me to play well at an Elon
company yes because Elon uh one of his
strengths I think is to just instantly
see through fallacy from Authority so
nobody walks into a room that he's in
and says well God damn it you have to
trust me I'm the guy that built the last
you know 10 Rockets or something and he
says well you did it wrong and we can do
it better or I'm the guy that you know
kept Ford alive for the last 50 years
you listen to me on how to build cars
and he says
no and so you don't walk into a room
that he's in and say well I'm a
neurosurgeon let me tell you how to do
it uh he's going to say well I'm a human
being that has a brain I can think from
principles myself thank you very much uh
and here's how I think it ought to be
done let's go try it and see who's right
uh and that's a you know proven I think
over and over in his case to be a very
powerful approach if we just take that
tangent there's a fascinating
interdisciplinary team at neur link that
you get to interact with um including
Elon what do you think is the secret to
a successful team or what have you
learned from just getting to observe
these folks yeah World experts in
different disciplines work
together yeah there there's a sweet spot
uh where
people disagree and forcefully speak
their mind and passionately defend their
position and yet are still able to
accept information from others and
change their ideas when they're wrong
and so I like the analogy of sort of
how you polish rocks you put hard things
in a in a hard container and spin it
people bash against each other and out
comes uh you know a more refined product
and
so uh to make a good team at nurlink
we've tried to find you know people that
are not afraid to defend their ideas
passionately
and you know occasionally strongly
disagree with people uh that they're
that they're working with and have the
best idea come out on
top um it's not an easy balance again to
refer back to the primate brain it's not
something that is inherently built into
the the primate brain to
say I passionately put all my chips on
this position and now I'm just going to
walk away from it and admit you are
right you know part of our brains tell
us that that is a power loss that is a
loss of face a loss of standing in the
community and uh and and now you're a a
Zeta
chump because your idea got
trounced um and you just have to you
know recognize that that little voice in
the back of your head is maladaptive and
it's not helping the team win yeah you
have to have the confidence to be able
to walk away from an idea that you hold
on to yeah yeah and if you do that often
enough you're actually going
to uh become the best of in the world
that your thing I mean that kind of that
rapid iteration yeah you'll at least be
a member of a winning
team ride the
wave uh what what did you learn you
mentioned there's a lot of amazing uh
neurosurgeons at USC what what lessons
about surgery in life have you learned
from those folks yeah I think working
your ass off working hard while um you
know functioning as a member of a team
getting a job done that is incredibly
difficult um you know working incredibly
long hours being up all night taking
care of someone that you know you think
probably won't survive no matter what
you do working hard to make people that
you passionately dislike look good the
next
morning these folks were Relentless in
their pursuit
of um excellent Neurosurgical technique
decade over decade and and I think we're
well recognized for that that Excellence
so you know especially Marty Weiss Steve
ganada uh mik apuzzo they made huge
contributions not only to surgical
technique but they built training
programs that
trained dozens or hundreds of amazing
neurosurgeons I was just lucky to kind
of be in their wake what's that like you
mentioned
mentioned doing a surgery where the
person is likely not to survive does
that wear on
you yeah
um you know it's especially
challenging um when
you with all respect to to our elders uh
it doesn't hit so much when you're
taking care of an
80-year-old
and something was going to get them
pretty soon anyway and so you lose a
patient like that and it it was part of
the natural course of what is expected
of them in the in the coming years
regardless uh taking care
of you know a father of two or three
four young kids
someone in their 30s that didn't have it
coming and they show up in your ER
having their first seizure of their life
and L and bold they've got a a huge
malignant inoperable or incurable brain
tumor you can only do that I think a
handful of
times um before it really starts eating
away at your at your
armor um or you know a young mother that
shows up that has a giant Hemorrhage in
her brain that she's not going to
survive from
and you know they bring her
four-year-old daughter in to to say
goodbye one last time before they turn
the ventilator off
that
um you know the great Henry Marsh is an
English neurosurgeon who said it best I
think he says every neurosurgeon carries
with them a private graveyard and I I
definitely feel that
um especially with young parents uh that
that kills me uh they they had a lot
more to
give the the loss of those people
specifically has a you know knock on
effect that's going to make the world
worse for people uh for a long time and
it's just hard to feel powerless in the
face of
that you know and that's where I think
you have to be uh borderline evil to
fight against a company like neuralink
or to constantly be taking pot shots at
us
because what we're doing is to try to
fix that stuff we're trying to give
people
options uh to reduce suffering uh we're
trying to we're trying to take the the
pain out of life
that uh broken brains brings in and and
um yeah this is just our our little way
that we're fighting back against entropy
I
guess yeah this the the amount of
suffering that's endured when some of
the things that we take for granted that
our brain is able to do is taken away uh
is immense and to be able to restore
some of that functionality is a real
gift yeah we're just starting we're
we're going to we're going to do so much
more um well can you take me through the
full procedure of implanting say the N1
sure chip in New Link yeah it's a really
simple really simple straightforward
procedure uh the the human part of the
surgery uh that that I do
is dead simple it's one of the most
basic neurosurgery
procedures imaginable and I think
there's evidence that it some version of
it has been done for thousands of years
uh there are examples I think from
ancient Egypt of healed or partially
healed uh tations and from uh Peru or
you know ancient times in South America
uh where uh these Proto surgeons would
drill holes in people's skulls you know
presumably to let out the evil spirits
but maybe to drain blood clots and
there's evidence of bone healing around
the edge meaning the people at least
survive some months uh after a procedure
and so what we're doing is that we are
making a cut in the skin on the top of
the head over the area of the brain that
is the most potent uh representation of
hand intentions and so if you if you
are an expert concert pianist you know
this part of your brain is lighting up
the entire time you're playing we call
it the hand knob the hand knob so it's
all the like the finger movements all
this all yeah all of that is just firing
away yep there's a little squiggle in
the cortex right there one of the folds
in the brain is kind of doubly folded
right on that spot and so you can look
at it on an MRI and say that's the hand
knob and then you you do a functional
test in a special kind of MRI called an
a functional MRI
fmri and this part of the brain lights
up when people even quadriplegic people
whose brains aren't connected to their
finger movements anymore they imagine
finger movements and this part of the
brain still lights up so we can ID that
part of the brain in anyone who's
preparing to enter our trial and say
okay that that part of the brain we
confirm is your hand intention
area um and so uh I'll make a little cut
in the skin we'll flap the skin open
just like kind of opening the hood of a
car only a lot
smaller make a perfectly
round uh 1 in diameter hole in the skull
remove remove that bit of
skull uh open the lining of the brain
the covering of the brain it's like a
like a little bag of water that the
brain floats in and then show that part
of the brain to our
robot and then the this is where the
robot shines it can come in and take
these tiny you know much smaller than
human hair electrodes and precisely
insert them into the cortex into the
surface of the brain
to a very precise depth in a very
precise spot that avoids all the blood
vessels that are coating the surface of
the brain and after the robot's done
with its part then you know the human
comes back in and puts the implant into
that hole in the skull and covers it up
uh screwing it down to the skull and
sewing the skin back
together um so the whole thing is you
know a few hours long it's extremely low
risk compared to the average
neurosurgery involving the brain that
that might say open up a deep part of
the brain or manipulate blood vessels in
the brain uh this this opening on the
surface of the
brain with um with only cortical micro
insertions carries um significantly less
risk than a lot of the you know tumor or
aneurysm surgeries that are routinely
done so cortical micro insertions that
are via robot and and computer vision
are designed to avoid the blood vessels
exactly so uh I know you're a bit biased
here but let's compare human and machine
sure so what are human surgeons able to
do well and what are robot surgeons able
to do
well at this stage of our human
civilization development yeah yeah
that's a good question um
humans uh are general purpose machines
were able to adapt to unusual situations
we're able to change the plan on the
Fly
um I remember well a surgery that I was
doing many years ago down in San Diego
where the plan was
to um open a small hole behind the ear
and go reposition a blood vessel that
had come to lay on the facial nerve the
trigeminal nerve uh the nerve that goes
to the face when that blood vessel lays
on the nerve it can cause just
intolerable horrific shooting pain that
people describe like being zapped with a
cattle prod and so the beautiful elegant
surgery is to go move this blood vessel
off the off the nerve the surgery team
we we went in there and started moving
this blood vessel and then found that
there was a giant aneurysm on that blood
vessel that was not easily visible on
the preop scans and so the plant had to
dynamically change and that the um human
surgeons had no problem with that were
trained for all those things robots
wouldn't do so well in that situation at
least in their current
Incarnation uh fully robotic surgery
like you know the the electrode
insertion portion of of the nerling
surgery it goes according to a set plan
and so the humans can interrupt the flow
and change the plan but the robot can't
really change the plan Midway through it
operates according to how it was
programmed and how it was asked to run
it does its job very precisely uh but
not with a wide degree of latitude and
how to react to changing conditions so
there could be just a very large number
of ways that you could be surprised as a
surgeon when you enter a situation there
could be subtle things that you have to
dynamically adjust to correct and robots
are
not good at that currently currently I
think uh we are at the dawn of a new era
with AI of the parameters for robot
responsiveness to be dramatically
broadened right I mean you can't look at
a self-driving car and say that it's
operating under very narrow
parameters you know if a chicken runs
across the road it wasn't necessarily
programmed to deal with that
specifically but a whmo or self-driving
Tesla would have no problem reacting to
that
appropriately uh and
so surgical robots aren't there yet but
give it time and then there could be a
lot of sort of inter like
semi-autonomous possibilities of maybe a
robotic surgeon could say this situation
is perfectly familiar or the situation
is not familiar and in the not familiar
case a human could take over but
basically like be very conservative
okay this for sure has no issues no
surprises and then let the humans deal
with the Surprises with the edge cases
all that yeah uh that's one possibility
so like you think
eventually uh you'll be out of the job
what you being neurosurgeon your job
being neurosurgeon humans there will not
be many neurosurgeons left on this Earth
I'm not worried about my job in my in
the course of my professional
life I think I I would tell my my kids
not necessarily to go in this line of
work uh depending
on depending on how things look in 20
years it's so fascinating because I I
mean I if I have a line of work I would
say it's programming and if you ask me
like for the last I don't know 20 years
what I would recommend for people I
would I would tell them yeah go there's
this you will always have a job if
you're a programmer because there's more
and more computers and all this kind of
stuff and uh it pays well
but then you you realize these large
language models come along and they're
really damn good at generating code yeah
so it's over night you could be
surprised like wow wa what is the
contribution of the human really but
then you start to think okay it does
seem that humans have ability like you
said to deal with novel situations in
the case of programming it's the ability
to kind of come up with novel ideas to
solve problems it's it seems like like
machines aren't quite yet able to do
that and when the stakes are very high
when it's life critical as it is in
surgery especially neurosurgery then it
starts the the stakes are very high for
a robot to actually replace a human but
it's fascinating that in this case of
neuralink there's a uh human robot
collaboration yeah yeah it's I do the
parts I can't do and it does the parts I
can't do um and we we are friends
uh I I saw that there's a lot of
practice going on so I mean everything
in New link is is tested extremely
rigorously but one of the things I saw
that there's a proxy on which the
surgeries are performed yeah so this is
both for the robot and for the human for
everybody involved in the entire
pipeline yep what's that like practicing
the surgery it's pretty intense uh so
there's no analog to this in human
surgery uh human surgery is sort of this
artisanal craft that's handed down
directly from Master to pupil over the
generations yes I mean literally the way
you learn to be a surgeon on humans is
by doing surgery on humans I mean first
you
watch uh your professors do a bunch of
surgery and then finally they put you
know the trivial parts of the surgery
into your hands and then the more comp
Le Lex parts and as your understanding
of the the point and the purposes of the
surgery increases you get more
responsibility in the perfect condition
doesn't always go well in neural Link's
case the approach is a bit different um
we of course practiced as far as we
could on animals we did hundreds of
animal
surgeries um and when it came time to do
the first human uh we had a just a
amazing team of engineers
build incredibly lifelike models one of
the engineers Fran Romano in particular
built built a pulsating brain in a
custom 3D printed skull that matches
exactly the the patients
Anatomy including their face and uh
scalp characteristics and
so when I was able to practice that I
mean it's as close as it really
reasonably should get
uh to to being the real thing in all the
details including you know the having a
a Manakin body attached to this custom
head and so when we were doing the
practice surgeries we'd wheel that body
into the CT scanner and take a mock CT
scan and wheel it back in and conduct
all the normal safety checks verbally
you know stop this patient we're
confirming his identification is
mannequin number blah blah blah and then
opening the brain in exactly the right
spot using standard operative
neuronavigation equipment standard
surgical drills in in the same o that we
do all of our practice surgeries in at
nurlink and having the skull open and
have the brain pulse which adds a degree
of difficulty for the robot to you know
perfectly precisely plan and insert
those electrodes to the right depth and
location
and
so uh yeah we we uh kind of broke new
ground on how extensively we practiced
for this surgery so there was a historic
moment a big milestone uh for
nink in part for Humanity with uh the
first human getting a neuralink implant
in January of this year uh take me
through the
surgery uh on Noland what did he feel
like to be part of this yeah well we um
we're lucky to have just incredible
Partners at the baron neurologic
Institute they
are uh I think the premier Neurosurgical
Hospital in the world
uh
they they made everything as easy as
possible for the trial uh to get going
and and helped us immensely uh with
their expertise on how to uh how to
arrange the details it was a much more
high pressure surgery in some ways I
mean even though
the you know the outcome wasn't
particularly in question in terms of our
participants
safety the number of observers you know
the number of people there's conference
rooms full of people watching live
streams in the
hospital um rooting for this to go
perfectly and that just adds pressure
that is not typical for uh even the most
intense production
neurosurgery say removing a tumor or you
know placing deep brain stimulation
electrodes and it had never been done on
a human before there were unknown
unknowns um and
so uh definitely a a moderate pucker
Factor there for the whole team uh not
knowing if we were going to encounter
say a degree of brain movement that was
unanticipated or uh a degree of brain
sag that took the brain far away from
the skull and made it difficult to
insert or some other unknown unknown
problem fortunately everything uh went
well and that that surgery was one of
the
smoothest uh outcomes we could have
imagined were you nervous I mean you're
bit of quarterback and like in the Super
Bowl kind of situation extremely nervous
uh extremely I was very pleased when it
went well and then and when it was over
um looking forward to number two yeah
even with all that practice all of that
just you've never been in a situation
that's so high stakes in terms of people
watching yeah and we should also
probably mention given how the media
works a lot of
people um you know maybe in a dark kind
of way hoping it doesn't go well well I
think wealth is easy to hate um or Envy
or or whatever and uh I think there's a
whole industry around driving
clicks and bad news is great for clicks
and so any way to take an event and turn
it into bad news uh is going to be
really good for for clicks it just sucks
because I think in it puts pressure on
people it discourages people
from from trying to solve really hard
problems because to solve hard problems
you have to go into the unknown you have
to do things that haven't been done
before and you have to take risks yeah
uh calculated risks you have to do all
kind of safety precautions but risks
nevertheless and uh I just wish there
would be more celebration of that of the
risk taking versus like yeah people just
waiting on the on on the sidelines like
waiting for failure yeah and then
pointing out the failure uh yeah it
sucks but you know in this case it's
it's it's really great that everything
went just flawlessly but it's
unnecessary pressure I would say now
that there is a human with literal skin
in the game you know there's a
participant who whose well-being rides
on this doing well you have to be a
pretty bad person to be rooting for that
to go wrong yeah um and so you know
hopefully people look in the mirror and
and realize that at some
point so did you get to actually front
row seat like watch the robot work like
what uh you get to see the whole thing
yeah I mean I you know because an MD
needs to be charge of all of the medical
decision- making throughout the process
um I unscrubbed from the
surgery after exposing the brain and
presenting it to the robot and
um place the targets on the robot uh
inter software interface that tells the
robot where it's going to insert each
thread that was done um with you know my
hand on the mouse for whatever that's
worth so you were the one placing the
targets yeah oh cool so like it you know
the the the
robot uh with a computer vision provides
a bunch of candidates and you kind of
finalize the decision right uh you know
they the the software Engineers are
amazing on this team and so they
actually provided an interface where you
can essentially use a lasso tool and
select a a prime area of brain real
estate and it will automatically avoid
the blood vessels in that region and
automatically place a bunch of targets
so you you know that
allows you know the human robot operator
to select uh really good areas of brain
and make dense applications of Targets
in that in those regions the regions we
think are going to have the most um High
Fidelity representations of finger
movements and arm movement
intentions I've seen like images of this
and for me with OCD it's for some reason
a really doesn't uh I think there's a
subreddit called oddly satisfying yeah
love that
subreddit It's oddly satisfying to see
the different Target sites avoiding the
blood
vessels and uh also maximizing like the
usefulness of those locations for the
signal it just feels good it's like ah
as as a person who has a visceral
reaction to the brain bleeding I can
tell you it's yes especially it's
extremely satisfying watching the
electrodes themselves go into the brain
and not cause
bleeding yeah
yeah so uh you said the feeling was of
relief when everything went perfectly
yeah how deep in the brain can you
currently go and uh eventually go let's
say on the neuralink side is it seems
the deeper you go in the brain the more
challenging it
becomes yeah so talking broadly about
neurosurgery we can get
anywhere uh it's routine for me to put
deeper brain stimulating
electrodes uh near the very bottom of
the brain uh entering from the top and
passing about a 2mm wire all the way
into the bottom of the brain and that's
not revolutionary a lot of people do
that uh and we can do that with very
high Precision I I use a robot uh from
Globus to do that surgery um you know
several times a month uh it's it's
pretty routine what are your eyes in
that situation what what are you seeing
what's what kind of Technology can you
use to visualize where you are to light
your way yeah so it's a cool process on
the software side you take a
pre-operative MRI that's extremely high
resolution data of the entire brain you
put the patient to sleep put their head
in a frame that holds the skull very
rigidly and then you take a CT scan of
their head while they're asleep with
that frame on
and then merge uh the MRI and the CT in
software you have a a plan based on the
MRI where you can see these nuclei deep
in the brain you can't see them on CT
but if you trust the merging of the two
images then you indirectly know on the
CT where that is and therefore
indirectly know where in reference to
the titanium frame screwed to their head
those targets are and so this is 60s
technology to manually compute
trajectories given the entry point and
Target uh and dial in some goofy looking
titanium um
actuators uh with manual manual
actuators with little tick marks on
them the modern version of that is to
use a robot uh you know just like a a
little CA arm you might see it building
cars at the Tesla Factory this small
robot arm can show you the trajectory
that you intended from the preop MRI and
establish a very rigid holder through
which you can drill a small hole in the
skull and pass a small rigid wire deep
into that area of the brain that's
Hollow and put your electrode through
that Hollow wire and then remove all of
that except the electrode uh so you end
up with the electrode very very
precisely placed far from the skull
surface now that's standard
technology um that's already you know
been out in the world for for a
while neuralink right now is focused
entirely on cortical targets surface
targets uh because there's no trivial
way to get say hundreds of wires deep
inside the brain without doing a lot of
damage so your question what do you see
well I see an MRI on a screen I can't
see
everything that that DBS electr is
passing through on its way to that deep
Target and so it's accepted with this
approach that there's going to be about
one in a hundred patients who have a a
bleed somewhere in the
brain uh as a result of passing that
wire blindly into the the Deep part of
the
brain that's not an acceptable safety
profile for neuralink we uh start from
the position that we want this to be
dramatically maybe two or three orders
of magnitude safer than that uh safe
enough really that you know you or I
without a profound medical problem might
on our lunch break someday say yeah sure
I'll get that I've been meaning to
upgrade to the latest
version and so that the safety
constraints given that are high and so
we haven't uh settled on a final
solution for arbitrarily approaching
deep Targets in the brain it's
interesting because like you have to
avoid blood vessels somehow you have to
maybe there's creative ways of doing the
same thing like mapping out high
resolution geometry of blood vessels and
then you can go in
blind but like how do you map out that
in a way that's like super stable it's
there's a lot of interesting challenges
there right yeah but there's a lot to do
on the surface Lu exactly so we've got
Vision on the surface um you know we we
actually have made a huge amount of
progress
sewing uh electrodes into the spinal
cord uh as a potential workaround for a
spinal cord injury that would allow a
brain mounted implant to Translate motor
intentions to a spine mounted implant
that can affect muscle contractions in
previously paralyzed arms and legs
that's just incredible so like the
effort there is to try to bridge the
brain to the spinal cord to the
periphery peripheral nervous so uh how
hard is that to do we have that working
in uh in very crude forms in animals
that's amazing yeah we've done it so
similar to like with Nolan where he's
able to digitally move the cursor here
you're
doing uh the same kind of communication
but with the actual defectors that you
have yeah that's fascinating yeah so we
have anesthetized animals doing grasp
and moving moving their legs and an sort
of walking pattern uh again early days
uh but uh the future is bright for this
kind of thing and and people with
paralysis uh should look forward to that
bright future they're going to have
options yeah and there's a lot of sort
of uh intermediate or extra options
where you take like an Optimus robot
like the uh the arm and to be able to
control the arm yeah the the the fingers
the hands of the arm sure as a
prosthetic are getting better too
exoskeletons yeah so that that goes hand
in hand although I didn't quite
understand until thinking about a deep
doing more research about
neuralink how much you can do on the
digital side so this digital telepathy
yeah I I didn't quite understand that
you can really map the
intention as you described in the hand
knob area that you can map the intention
just imagine it think about it that
intention can be mapped to actual action
in the digital world right and now more
and more so much can be done in in the
digital world that it it it can
reconnect you to to the outside world it
can allow you to have freedom have
Independence if you're a quadriplegic
yeah that's really powerful like you can
go really far with that yeah our first
part participant is he's incredible he's
breaking World Records left and right
and he's having fun with it it's great
um just going back to the surgery your
whole
journey you uh mentioned to me offline
you have surgery on Monday so you're
like you're doing surgery all the time
yeah maybe the ridiculous question what
does it take to get good at surgery
practice repetitions you just same with
anything else you know there's a million
ways of people saying the same thing and
selling books saying it but do you call
it 10,000 hours do you call it you know
spend some chunk of your life some
percentage of your life focusing on this
obsessing about getting better at it um
repetitions uh humility recognizing that
you aren't perfect at any stage along
the way uh recognizing you've got
improvements to make in your Technique
being open to feedback and coaching from
people with a different perspective how
to do it um and then um just the
constant will to do
better uh that fortunately you know if
you're not a sociopath I think your
patients bring that with them to the
office visits every day they you know
force you to want to do better all the
time yeah just step up I mean it's a
real human being a real human being that
you can help yeah so every surgery even
if it's the same exact surgery is there
a lot of variability between that
surging and a different person yeah a
fair bit I mean a good example for us is
that the angle of the skull relative to
the normal plane of the body
axis of the skull over hand knob uh is
pretty wide variation I mean some people
have really flat skulls and some people
have really steeply angled skulls over
that area and that has you know
consequences for or how their head can
be fixed in in uh in sort of the frame
that we use um and how the robot has to
approach the skull and um yeah people's
people's bodies are built as differently
as you know the people you see walking
down the street as as much variability
in body shape and size as you see there
we see in brain anatomy and skull
Anatomy um there are some people who
we've had to kind of exclude from our
trial for having skulls that are too
thick or too thin or scalp that's too
thick or too thin um I think you know we
have like the middle 97% or so uh of
people but you can't account for all
human anatomy variability how
much like mushiness and mess is there CU
I uh you know taking biology classes the
diagrams are always really clean and
crisp Neuroscience the pictures of
neurons are always was really nice and
very um but whenever I look at pictures
of like real brains they're all I I
don't know what is going on yeah uh so
how much our biological systems in
reality like how hard is it to figure
out what's going on not too bad uh once
you really get used to this you know
that's where experience and and skill
and uh education really come into play
is if you stare at a thousand brains
it becomes easier to kind of mentally
peel back the say for instance blood
vessels that are obscuring the susai and
gyri you know kind of the wrinkle
pattern of the surface of the brain
occasionally when you're when you're
first starting to do this and you open
the
skull it doesn't match what you thought
you were going to see based on the
MRI uh and with more experience you you
learn to kind of peel back that layer of
blood vessels and see the underlying
pattern of wrinkles in the brain and use
that as a landmark for where you are the
wrinkles are a landmark so like yeah so
I was describing hand knob earlier
that's a pattern of the wrinkles in the
brain it's sort of this sort of Greek
letter Omega shaped area of the brain so
you could recognize the hand knob area
like if if I show you a thousand brains
and give you like one minute with each
you'd be like yep that's that sure and
so there is some uniqueness to that area
of the brain like in terms of the
geometry the topology of the thing
yeah where is it about in the it's so
you have this strip of brain running
down the top called the primary motor
area and I'm sure you've seen this
picture of the homunculus laid over the
surface of the brain the weird little
guy with huge lips and giant
hands uh that guy sort of lay with his
legs uh up at the top of the brain and
and face arm uh areas farther down and
and then some kind of mouth lip tongue
areas uh farther down and so the hand is
right in there and then the areas that
control speech at least on the on the
left side of the brain in most people
are are just below that and so uh any
muscle that you voluntarily move in your
body um the vast majority of that
references that strip or those
intentions come from that strip of brain
and the the wrinkle uh for hand knob is
right in the middle of that and vision
is back here yep also on close to the
surface vision's a little deeper uh and
so you know this gets to your question
about how deep can you get um to do
Vision we can't just do the surface of
the brain we have to be able to go in uh
not not as as deep as we'd have to go
for DBS but maybe a centimeter deeper
than we're used to for hand
insertions uh and so that's you know
work in progress that's a a new set of
challenges to overcome by the way you
mentioned uh the Utah aray and I just
saw a picture of that and that thing
looks terrifying
yeah it's because of it's rigid and then
if you look at the threads they're
flexible what can you say that's
interesting to you about the flex
that kind of approach of the the
flexible threads to to deliver the
electrodes next to the neurons yeah I
mean the the goal there comes from
experience I mean we stand on the
shoulders of people that made Utah rays
and and used Utah Rays for decades
before we ever even came
along um neuralink arose partly this
approach to technology arose out of a
need
recognized after Utah Rays would fail
routinely
because the rigid electrodes those
spikes that are literally hammered using
an air hammer into the
brain uh those spikes generate a bad
immune response that
encapsulates the the electrode spikes in
uh Scar Tissue essentially and so one of
the projects that was being worked on in
in the Anderson Lab at Caltech when I
got there was to to see if you could use
chemo therapy to prevent the formation
of scar like you know things are pretty
bad when you're jamming a bed of nails
into the brain and then treating that
with
chemotherapy to try to prevent Scar
Tissue it's like you know maybe we've
gotten off track here guys maybe there's
a fundamental redesign necessary and so
nurl Link's approach of using highly
flexible tiny
electrodes avoids a lot of the bleeding
avoids a lot of the immune response that
ends up happening uh when rigid
electrodes are pounded into the brain
and so what we see is our electrode
longevity and
functionality uh and the and the health
of the brain tissue immediately
surrounding the electrode uh is
excellent I mean it goes on for for
years now in our animal models what do
most people not understand about the
biology of the brain we mention the
vasculature that's really interesting I
think the most interesting maybe
underappreciated
fact uh is that it really does control
almost everything I
mean I don't know for out of the blue
example imagine you you want a lever on
fertility you want to be able to turn
fertility on and off I mean it there are
legitimate Targets in the brain itself
to modulate
fertility say um blood pressure you want
to modulate blood pressure they're
legitimate tar Targets in the brain for
doing
that um things that aren't immediately
obvious as brain
problems are potentially solvable in the
brain um and so I think it's an under
explored area for primary treatments of
of all the things that bother people
that's a really fascinating way to look
at it like there's a lot of conditions
we might think have nothing to do with
the brain but they might just be
symptoms of something that actually
started in the brain the actual source
of the problem the primary source is the
is something in the brain yeah not not
always I mean you know there kidney
disease is real uh but um there are
levers you can pull in the brain that
affect all of the all of these systems
there's knobs
yeah onoff switches and knobs in the
brain from which this all or originates
yeah uh would you have a neuralink chip
implanted in your brain yeah
um I
think use case right now
is use a mouse right I can already do
that and so there's no value proposition
uh on safety grounds alone sure I would
do it tomorrow you know you say the use
case of the
mouse is after like researching all this
and part of is just watching Nolan have
so much
fun if you can get that bits per second
like really high with a the mouse like
being able to interact because if you
think about the the way the on the
smartphone the way you swipe that was
transformational yeah how we interact
with a thing it's subtle you don't
realize it but you're able to touch a
phone and to uh scroll with your finger
that's like that changed everything that
people were sure you need a keyboard to
type
and that uh there's a lot of HCI aspects
to that that changed how we interact
with Compu computers so there could be a
certain rate of speed with the mouse
that would change everything yes like
you might be able to just click around a
screen extremely fast and
that if it I I seem must have gotten the
neur link for much more rapid
interaction with the digital devices
yeah I think recording speech intentions
from the brain might might change things
as well you know the value proposition
for the average person
um a keyboard is a pretty clunky human
interface requires a lot of training
it's you know highly variable in the
maximum performance that the average
person can uh can
achieve uh I think taking that out of
the equation and just having a
natural you know word to computer
interface uh might change things for a
lot of people it'd be hilarious if if
that is the reason people do it even if
you have speech to text that's extremely
accurate it currently isn't right but it
say gotten super accurate it'd be
hilarious if people went for neuralink
just so you avoid the embarrassing
aspect of speaking like looking like a
douchebag speaking to your phone in
public which is a real like that's a
real constraint yeah I mean with a bone
conducting case uh that can be an
invisible headphone say um and the
ability to think words into software and
have it respond to
you um you know that starts to sound
sort of like embedded super intelligence
you know if you can silently ask for the
Wikipedia article on any subject and
have it read to you without any
observable change happening in the
outside
world uh you know for one thing
standardized testing is obsolete
yeah if it's done well on the ux side it
could change I don't know if it
transforms Society but it really uh can
create a kind of shift in the way we
interact with digital devices and the
way that a smartphone did yeah I would
um just having to look into the safety
of everything involved I would totally
try it so it doesn't have to go to some
like incredible thing where you have it
connects to your vision or to some other
like you connects all over your brain
that could be like just connecting to
the hand
knob uh you might have a lot of
interesting interaction human computer
interaction possibilities yeah that's
really interesting yeah and the
technology on the academic side is
progressing at light speed here I think
there was a really amazing paper out of
UC Davis Sergey stavis lab that
basically made a initial solve of speech
decode it was something like 125 5,000
words uh that they were getting with you
know very high accuracy which is so
you're just thinking the word yeah
thinking the word and you're able to get
it yeah oh
boy like you have to have the intention
of speaking it right so like do that
inner voice man it's so amazing to me
that you can do the intention to Signal
mapping all you have to do is just
imagine yourself doing it
and if if you get the feedback that it
actually worked you can get really good
at that like your brain will first of
all adjust and you develop like any
other skill yeah like touch typing you
develop in that same kind of way that is
that is really to me it's just really
fascinating yeah to be able to even to
play with that honestly like I would get
a new link just to be able to play with
that just to play with the capacity the
capability of my mind to learn this
skill it's like learning the skill of
typing or learning the skill of moving a
mouse it's another skill of moving the
mouse not with my physical body but with
my mind I can't wait to see what people
do with it I feel like we're we're
cavemen right now we're we're like
banging rocks with a stick and thinking
that we're making music um at some point
when these are more widespread there's
going to be the equivalent of a of a
piano that you know someone someone can
make art with their brain in a way that
we didn't even
anticipate um I'm looking forward to it
give it to like a teenager like anytime
I think I'm good at something I'll
always go to like I don't know even even
uh even with the the bit per second of
playing a video game you realize you
give it to a teen you give a your link
to a teenager just a large number of
them the kind of stuff you they get good
at stuff they're going to get like
hundreds of uh bits per second yeah even
just with the current technology
probably probably just uh cuz it's also
addicting how like the the the number go
up aspect of it of like improving and
training cuz it is it's almost like a
skill and plus there's a software on the
other end that adapts to you and
especially if the adapting procedure
algorithm becomes better and better and
better you like learning together yeah
we're scratching the surface on that
right now there's so much more to do so
on the complete other side of it you
have an RFID chip yeah implanted in you
yeah this so I here nice so this is
subtle thing it's a passive device that
you
use for unlocking like a a safe with top
secrets or what what is what do you use
it for what's the story behind it I'm
not the first one there's there's this
whole community of weirdo biohackers
that uh have done this stuff and I think
one of the early use cases was storing
you know private crypto wallet keys and
and whatever um I dabbled in that a bit
and and had some fun with it um you have
some bigcoin implanted in your body
somewhere you can't tell where yeah yeah
actually yeah uh it was you know the
modern day equivalent of finding change
in the sofa cushions after I I put some
orphan crypto on there that I thought
was worthless and forgot about it for a
few years went back and found that some
community of people loved it uh and had
propped up the value of it and so it had
gone up 50 fold so there was a lot of
change in those
cushions that's hilarious but the the
primary use case is mostly as a as a
tech demonstrator you know it it has my
business card on it you can scan that in
uh by touching it to your phone it opens
the front door to my house you know
whatever simple stuff it's a cool step
it's a cool leap to implant something in
your body I mean it has perhaps that's
it's a similar leap to a neur link
because for a lot of people that kind of
notion of putting putting something
inside your body something electronic
inside a biological system is a big leap
yeah we have a kind of a mysticism
around the barrier of our skin we're
completely fine with knee Replacements
hip replacements you know uh dental
implants um but uh you know there's a
mysticism still around the inviable
barrier that the skull represents and I
think that needs to be treated like any
other uh pragmatic barrier you know it's
the question
isn't how how incredible is it to open
the skull the question is you know what
benefit can we provide so from all the
surgeries you've done from everything
you understand the
brain how much does neuroplasticity come
into play how adaptable is the brain for
example just even in the case of healing
from surgery or adapting to the
post-surgery situation the answer that
is sad for me
and uh other people of my demographic is
that you know plasticity decreases with
age healing decreases with age I have
too much gray hair to uh to be
optimistic about that there are
theoretical ways to increase plasticity
using electrical
stimulation uh nothing that is you know
totally proven out as a robust enough
mechanism to offer widely to people but
um yeah I think I think there's cause
for optimism that we might find
something useful in terms of say an
implanted electrode that improves
learning um certainly there's been some
really amazing work recently from uh
Nicholas Schiff Jonathan Baker you know
and others uh who have a a cohort of
patients with moderate traumatic brain
injury who have had electrodes placed in
the Deep nucleus in the brain called the
central median nucleus or just near
Central median nucleus and when they
apply small amounts of electricity to
that part of the brain it's almost like
electronic caffeine they're able to
improve people's attention and focus um
they're able to improve how well people
can perform a task I think in one case
someone who was unable to work after the
device was turned on they were able to
get a job uh and that's sort of you know
one of the Holy
Grails uh for me with
neuralink and other Technologies like
this is from a purely utilitarian
standpoint um can we can we make people
able to take care of themselves and
their families economically again can we
make it so someone who's fully dependent
and even maybe requires a lot of
caregiver resources can we put them in a
position to be fully independent taking
care of themselves giving back to their
communities um I think I think that's a
very compelling uh proposition and what
motiv motivates a lot of what I do and
what a lot of the people at neuralink
are working for it's just a cool
possibility that if you put a neur link
in there that the brain adapts like the
the other part of the brain adapts too
yeah and integrates it the the the
capacity of the brain to do that is
really interesting probably unknown to
the degree to which you can do that but
you're now connecting an external thing
to it especially uh once it's doing uh
stimulation like
the the biological brain and the uh the
electronic brain outside of it working
together like the possibilities there
really interesting still unknown but
interesting it feels like the brain is
really good at adapting to whatever yeah
but of course it is a system that by
itself is
already uh like everything serves the
purpose and so you don't want to mess
with it too much yeah it's like
you know eliminating a species from a
from an ecology you know you don't know
what the delicate interconnections and
dependencies
are um the brain is certainly a delicate
complex beast and we don't
know uh you know every potential
Downstream consequence of of a single uh
change that we make do you see yourself
doing uh so mentioned P1 surgeries of P2
P3 P4 P5 five just well more and more
and more humans I think you know it's a
certain kind of brittleness or you know
a failure on the company's side if we
need me to do all the
surgeries um I think something that I
would very much like to work towards is
a process that is so simple and so
robust on the surgery side that
literally anyone could do it um we want
to get away from requiring
intense expertise or intense
experience uh to to have this
successfully done and make it as as
simple and translatable as possible I
mean I would love it if every
neurosurgeon on the planet had no
problem doing this um I think we're
probably far from a regulatory
environment that would
allow uh people that aren't
neurosurgeons to do this but uh not
impossible all right I'll sign up for
that did you ever anthropomorphize the
the robot R1 like do you do you give it
a name do you see it as like a friend
that's like working together with you I
mean to a certain degree it's or an
enemy who's going to take the
job to a certain degree it's it's yeah
it's complex relationship uh all the
good relationships are it's funny when
in the middle of the surgery there's a
part of it where I stand should
basically shoulder-to-shoulder with the
robot um and so you know if you're in
the room reading the body language you
know that's it's my brother in arms
there we're we're working together on
the same problem
um yeah I'm not threatened by
it keep telling yourself that
yeah um how have all the surgeries that
you've done over the
years the people you've helped and the
the stakes the high stakes that you've
mentioned how how is that uh change your
understanding of life and death
yeah
um you know it gives you a very visceral
sense and this may sound trit but it
gives you a very visceral sense that
death is inevitable you know on one
hand you know you you are as a
neurosurgeon you're deeply involved in
these like just hard to Fathom
tragedies um you know young parents
dying leaving you know a four-year-old
behind to
say
uh and and on the other hand you know it
takes the sting out of it a bit
because you see how just mind-numbingly
Universal death is there's zero
chance that I'm going to avoid it uh I
know you know techno optimists right now
and Longevity Buffs right now would
disagree on that
0.00% estimate uh but I don't see any
chance that our generation is going to
avoid it entropy is a powerful force and
we are very ornate delicate brittle DNA
machines that aren't up to the cosmic
ray bombardment that we're subjected to
so on the one hand every human that has
ever lived
died or will
die uh on the other hand it's
just one of the hardest things to
imagine um inflicting on anyone that you
love is is having them gone I mean I'm
sure you've had friends that aren't
living anymore and it's it's hard to
even think about them um and
so uh I wish I
had you know uh arrived at the point of
Nirvana Where you know death doesn't
have a sting I'm not worried about it
but um I can at least say that I'm
comfortable with the certainty of it uh
if
not having found out how to take the the
tragedy out of it when I think about you
know my kids uh either not having me or
or me not having them or my wife um
maybe I've come to accept the
intellectual certainty of it but
uh it may be the pain that comes of
losing the people you love but I don't
think I've come to understand the
existential aspect of it like that this
is going to end and I don't mean
like uh in
some uh trite way I mean like it
certainly feels like it not going to end
like you live life like it's not going
to end right and the fact that this
light that's shining this Consciousness
is is is going to uh no longer be one
moment maybe today it's like a it it
fills me when I really am able to load
all that in with Ernest Becker's Terror
like it's a real fear I think people
aren't always honest with how terrifying
it is yeah um I think the more you are
able to really think through it the more
terrifying it is it's it's not such a
simple thing oh well this the way life
is and if you really can load that
in uh it's hard but I think that's why
the stoics did it because it like helps
you get your together and be like
this well the like the moment every
single moment you're alive is just
beautiful and it's terrifying that it's
going to end and it's and it's like you
like almost like you're shivering in the
cold a child helpless this kind of
feeling yeah and then it makes you when
you have warmth when you have the safety
when you have the love to really
appreciate it uh I feel like sometimes
in your
position when you mentioned armor just
to see
death it might make you not be able to
see that the the finiteness of life
because if you kept looking at that it
might break you so it it's good to know
that you're kind of still struggling
with that there's the the neurosurgeon
and then there's a human yeah and the
human is still able to struggle with
that and feel the the fear of that and
the pain of that yeah you know it
definitely makes you ask the question of
how long how many time how many of these
can you see and uh and not say I can't
do this
anymore
um but I mean you said it well I think
it gives you an opportunity to just
appreciate that you're alive
today and
uh you know I've got I've got three kids
and an amazing wife
and I'm really happy things are good I
get to help on a project that I think
matters I think it moves us forward I'm
a very lucky person it's the early steps
of a
potentially uh gigantic leap for
Humanity it's a really interesting one
and it's cool cuz like you you read
about all this stuff in history where
it's like the early days I've been
reading uh before going to the Amazon I
would read about
explorers uh they would go and explore
even the Amazon jungle for the first
time it's just those are the early steps
yeah or early steps into space early
early steps in any discipline in in
physics and Mathematics and it's cool
cuz this is like the on the grand scale
these are the early steps into delving
deep into the human brain so not just
observing the brain but be able to
interact with the human brain yeah it's
going to help a lot of people but it
also
might help us understand what the hell's
going on in there yeah I think
ultimately we want to give people more
levers that they can pull right like you
want to give people
options if you can give someone a dial
that they can
turn on how happy they
are I think that makes people really
uncomfortable
but um now talk about major depressive
disorder talk about people that are
committing suicide at an alarming rate
in this
country
and try to justify that
queasiness in those in that light of you
can give people a knob to take away
suicidal ideation suicidal intention I
would I would give them that knob I
don't know how you justify by not doing
that you can think about like all the
suffering that's going on in the world
like every single human being that's
suffering right now it's like a it would
be a glowing red dot the more suffering
the more it's glowing you just see the
map of human suffering and any
technology that allows you to dim the
that light of
suffering uh on a grand scale is is
pretty exciting because there's a lot of
people suffering and most of them suffer
quietly and we turn
our uh we we look away too often uh and
we we should remember those are
suffering cuz once again most of them
are suffering quietly well and you know
on a grander scale the fabric of society
you know people have a lot of complaints
about how our social fabric is working
or not working how our politics is
working or not
working uh
those things are made of neurochemistry
too in in aggregate right like our
politics is composed of individuals with
human
brains and the way it works or doesn't
work is potentially
tunable uh in the sense that I don't
know say remove our addictive behaviors
or tune our addictive behaviors for
social media or our addiction to outrage
our addiction to sharing the most angry
political tweet we can
find um I don't think that leads to a
functional
society
and uh if if you
had options for people to moderate
that maladaptive Behavior U there could
be huge benefits to society maybe we
could all work together a little more
harmoniously toward useful ends there's
a sweet spot like you mentioned you
don't want to completely remove all the
Dark Side of human nature cuz those kind
of uh are somehow necessary to make the
whole thing work but there's a sweet
spot yeah I agree we got to you got to
suffer a little just not so much that
you lose hope yeah when you all the
surgeries you've done have you seen
Consciousness in there ever was there
like a glowing light you know I have
this sense that uh I never found it okay
never removed it you know like like a
dementor in Harry Potter um I have this
sense that Consciousness is a lot less
magical than our instincts want to claim
it is
um it it seems to me like a useful
analog for thinking about what
Consciousness is in the
brain um you know is that we we have a
really good intuitive understanding of
what it means to say t touch your skin
and know what's being
touched um I think Consciousness is just
that level of sensory mapping applied to
the the thought processes in the brain
itself so what I'm saying is
consciousness is the sensation of some
part of your brain being active so you
you feel it working you feel the part of
your brain that thinks of red things or
winged
creatures or the taste of coffee you
feel those parts of your brain being
active the way that I'm feeling my palm
being touched MH right and that sensory
system
that feels the brain working is
consciousness so brilliant it's the same
way it's a sensation of touch when
you're touching a thing Consciousness is
the sensation of you feeling your brain
working your brain thinking your brain
perceiving which isn't which isn't like
a warping of SpaceTime or some Quantum
Field Effect right it's nothing magical
people always want to ascribe to
ious something truly different uh and
there's this awesome long history of
people looking at whatever the latest
Discovery in physics is to explain
Consciousness um because it's the most
magical the most out there thing that
you can think of and and people always
you know want to do that with
Consciousness I don't think that's
necessary it's just a you know a very
useful and gratifying way of feeling
your brain work and as we said as one
heck of a brain yeah everything we see
around us everything we love everything
that's beautiful it's came from brains
like these it's all electrical activity
happening inside your
skull and uh I for one am uh Greatful
there people like you that are uh
exploring all the ways that it works and
all the ways it can be made
better thank you so much for talking
today it's been a joy thanks for
listening to this conversation with
Matthew McDougall and now dear friends
here's Bliss Chapman brain interface
software lead at
neurolink you told me that you've met
hundreds of people with spinal cord
injuries or with ALS and that your
motivation for helping at neural link is
grounded in wanting to help them can you
describe this motivation yeah first just
a thank you to all the people I've
gotten a chance to speak with for
sharing their stories with me I don't
think there's any world really in which
I can share their stories in as powerful
way as they can but uh just I think to
summarize at a very high level What I
Hear over and over again is that people
with uh ALS or severe spinor injury in a
place where they basically can't move
physically anymore really at the end of
the day are looking for Independence and
that can mean different things for
different people for some folks it can
mean the ability just to be able to
communicate again independently without
needing to wear something on their face
without needing a caretaker to be able
to put something in their mouth for some
folks it can mean independent to be able
to work again to be able to navigate a
computer digitally efficiently enough to
be able to get a job to be able to
support themsel to be able to move out
and ultimately be able to supports after
their family maybe isn't there anymore
to take care of them and uh for some
folks it's as simple as just being able
to respond to their kid in time before
they you know run away or get interested
in something else and these are deeply
personal and and sort of very human
problems and what strikes me again and
again when talking with these folks is
that this is actually an engineering
problem this is a problem that with the
right Resources with the right team we
can make a lot of progress on and uh at
the end of the day I think that's a
deeply inspiring message and something
that makes me excited to get up every
day so it's both an engineering problem
in terms of a BCI for example that can
give them capabilities where they can
interact with the world but also on the
other side
it's an engineering problem for the rest
of the world to make it more accessible
for people living with quadriplegia yeah
and I I'll take a Broadview sort of lens
on this for a second I think I'm very in
favor of anyone working in this problem
space so beyond BCI I'm I'm happy and
excited and willing to support in any
way I can folks working on ey tracking
systems working on you know speech
detect systems working on head trackers
or Mouse sticks or quad sticks and I've
met many engineers and folks in the
community that do exactly those things
and I think for the people who were
trying to help it doesn't matter what
the complexity of the solution is as
long as the problem is solved and I want
to emphasize that there can be many
solutions out there that can help with
these problems and uh BCI is one of a
collection of of such Solutions so BCI
in particular I think offers several
advantages here and I think the folks
that recognize this immediately are
usually the people who have spawner crit
injury or some form of paralysis usually
you don't have to explain to them why
this might be something that could be
helpful it's usually pretty self-evident
but for the rest of us folks that don't
live with severe Spa cour injury or who
don't know somebody with ALS uh it's not
often obvious why you would want a brain
implant to be able to connect and
navigate a computer and it's
surprisingly nuancing to the degree that
I've learned a huge amount just working
with Noland in the first narland
clinical trial and understanding from
him in his words why this device is
impactful for him and it's a Nuance
topic it can be the case that even if
you can achieve the same thing for
example with a mouse stick when
navigating a computer he doesn't have
access to that Mouse stick every single
minute of the day he only has access
when someone is available to put it in
front of him and so a BCI can really
offer a level of of Independence and
autonomy that if it wasn't literally
physically part of your body it' be hard
to achieve in any other way so there's a
lot of fascinating aspects to what it
takes to get no one to be able to
control a cursor on the screen with his
mind uh you texted me something that I
just love you said I was part of the
team that interviewed and selected P1 I
was in the operating room doing the
first human surgery monitoring live
signals coming out of the brain I work
with the user basically every day to
develop new ux paradigms decoding
strategies and I was part of the team
that figured out how to recover useful
BCI to New World Record levels when the
signal quality degraded we'll talk about
I think every aspect of that but um just
zooming out what was it like to be part
of that part part of that team and part
of that historic I would say historic
first yeah I think for me this is
something I've been excited about for
close to 10 years now and so to be able
to be even just some small part of
making it a reality is extremely
exciting a
couple maybe special moments during that
whole process that I'll never really
truly forget one of them is during the
actual
surgery uh you know at that point in
time I I know Nolan quite well I know
his family and so I think the the
initial reaction when uh Nolan is rolled
into the operating room is just oh
kind of reaction but at that point
muscle memory kicks in and you sort of
go into uh you let your body just do the
all the all the talking and I have the
lucky job in that particular procedure
to just be in charge of monitoring the
implant so my job is to sit there to
look at the signals coming off the
implant to look at the live brain data
streaming off the device as threads are
being inserted into the brain and just
to basically observe and make sure that
nothing is going you know wrong or that
there's no red flags or fault conditions
that we need to go and investigate or
pause the surgery to uh did he bug and
uh because I had that sort of spectator
view of the surgery I had a slightly
removed perspective than I think most
folks in the room I got to sit there and
think to myself wow you know that brain
is moving a lot you know when you when
you look inside little craniectomy that
we stick the threads in you know one
thing that most people don't realize is
the brain moves the brain moves a lot
when you breathe when your when your uh
heart beats and you can see it visibly
so you know that's something that I
think was a surprise to me and very very
exciting
uh to be able to see someone's brain who
you physically know and have talked with
that length actually pusing and moving
inside their skull and they used that
brain to talk to you previously and now
it's right there moving y uh actually I
didn't realize that in terms of the
thread sending so the the neuralink
implant is active during surgery so and
one thread at a time you're able to
start seeing the signal yeah so that's
part of the way you test that the thing
is working yeah so actually in the in
the operating room right after we sort
of um finished the all the thread
insertions I started collecting what's
called broadband data so Broadband is uh
basically the most raw form of signal
you can collect from a nurlink electrode
it's uh essentially a measurement of the
local field potential or the yeah the
voltage essentially measured by that
electrode and uh we have a certain mode
in our in our application that allows us
to visualize where detected spikes are
so it visualizes sort of where uh in the
Broadband signal in it's very very raw
form of the data a neuron is actually
spiking and so one of the these moments
that I'll never forget as part of this
whole clinical trial is seeing live in
the operating room while he's still
under anesthesia beautiful spikes being
shown in the application just streaming
live to a device I'm holding in my hand
so this is no signal processing the raw
data and then the signals processings on
top of it you're seeing the spikes
detected right
yeah and that's a ux too cuz that looks
beautiful as well during that procedure
there was actually a lot of cameramen in
the room so they also were curious and
wanted to see there's several
neurosurgeons in the room who are all
just excited to see robots taking their
job and uh they're all you know crowded
around a small little iPhone watching
this live brain data stream out of his
uh his brain what was that like seeing
the robot do some of the surgery so the
computer vision aspect where it detects
all
the all the spots that avoid the the
blood vessels and then obviously with
the human supervision then actually
doing the really high Precision uh
connection of the threads to the brain
yeah it's a good question my answer is
going to be uh pretty lame here but it
was boring yeah I've seen it uh so many
times yeah that's exactly how you want
surgery to be you want it to be boring
yeah because I've seen it so many times
I've seen the the robot do this surgery
literally hundreds of times and so it
was just one more time yeah all the
practice surgeries and the proxies and
this is just another day y so what about
when uh Nolan woke up well do do you
remember
a moment where uh he was able to move
the cursor not move the cursor but get
signal from the brain such that it was
able to show that there's a connection
yeah yeah so we are uh quite excited to
move as quickly as we can and Nolan was
really really excited to get started he
wanted to get started actually the day
of surgery but uh we we waited till the
next morning very patiently it's a long
night um and the next morning in the ICU
where he was uh recovering he uh wanted
to get started and actually start to
understand what kind of signal we could
measure from his brain and maybe for
folks who are not familiar with um the
neuralink system we implant the nurlink
system or the nurlink implant in the
motor cortex so the motor cortex is
responsible for representing things like
motor intent uh s if you imagine closing
and opening your hand that kind of
signal representation would be present
in the motor cortex if you imagine
moving your arm back and forth or
wiggling a pinky this sort of signal can
be present in the motor cortex so one of
the ways we start to sort of map out
what kind of signal do we actually have
access to in any particular individual's
brain is through this task called body
mapping and body mapping is where you
essentially present a visual to the user
and you say hey imagine doing this and
the visual is you know a 3d hand opening
and closing or index finger modulating
up and down and uh you ask the user to
imagine that and obviously you can't see
them do this because they're paralyzed
so you can't see them actually move
their arm but while they do this task
you can record neural activity and you
can basically offline model and check
can I predict or can I detect the
modulation corresponding with those
different actions and so we did that
task and we realized hey there's
actually some modulation associated with
some of his hand motion which was a
first indication that okay we can
potentially use that modulation to do
useful things in the world uh for
example control a computer cursor and he
started playing with it you know the
first time we showed him it and we
actually just took the same live view of
his brain activity and put it in front
of him and we said hey you tell us
what's going on uh you know we're not
you you're able to imagine different
things and we know that it's modulating
some of these neurons so you figure out
for for us what that is actually
representing and so he played with it
for a bit he was like I don't quite get
it yet he played for a bit longer and he
said oh when I move this finger I see
this particular Don start to fire more
and I said okay prove it do it again and
so he said okay 3 two 1 boom and the
minute he move you can see like
instantaneously this neuron is firing
single neuron I I can tell you the exact
channel number if you're interested it's
stuck in my brain now forever but that
single uh Channel firing was a beautiful
indication that it was behaviorally
modulated neural activity that could
then be used for Downstream tasks like
decoding a computer cursor and when you
say single channel is that associated
with a single electrode yeah so Channel
electrode are interchangeable and
there's a 1,24 of those 1,24 yeah it's
incredible that that works that really
when I was um learning about all this
and like loading it in it was just
blowing my mind that the intention you
can visualize yourself moving the finger
that can turn into a signal and the fact
that you can then skip that step and
visualize the cursor moving or have the
intention of the cursor moving and that
leading to a signal that can then be
used to move the cursor this there is so
many exciting things there to learn
about the brain about the way the brain
works the very fact of their existing
signal that can be used is really
powerful yep but it feels like that's
just like the beginning of figuring out
how that signal could be used really
really effectively
I should also just uh there's so many
fascinating details here but you
mentioned the body mapping step uh at
least in the version I saw that Nolan
was showing off there's like a super
nice interface like a graphical
interface but like it just felt like I
was like in the future cuz it it like uh
you know I guess it visualizes you
moving the hand and there's a very like
like a sexy polished interface that that
hello yeah I don't know if there's a
voice component but it just felt like uh
it's like when you wake up in a really
nice video game and this is a tutorial
at the beginning of that video game this
is what you're supposed to do it's cool
no I mean the future should feel like
the future but it's not easy to pull
that off I mean it needs to be simple
but not too simple yeah and I think the
ux design component here is uh
underrated for BCI uh development and
general there's a whole interaction
effect between the ways in which you
visualize uh an instruction to the user
and the kinds of signal you can get back
and that quality of sort of your
behavioral alignment to the neural
signal is a function of how good you are
at expressing to the user what you want
them to do and so yeah we spend a lot of
time thinking about the ux uh of how we
build our applications of how the
decoder actually functions the control
surfaces it provides to the user all
these little Details Matter a lot so
maybe it'd be nice to get into a little
bit more detail of what the signal looks
like and what the decoding looks like so
there's a uh N1 implant
that has like we mentioned uh 1,24
electrodes and that's collecting raw
data raw signal what does that signal
look like and uh what are the different
steps along the way before it's
transmitted and what is transmitted all
that kind of stuff yeah Yep this is
going to be a fun one let's go uh so uh
maybe before diving into what we do it's
worth understanding what we're trying to
measure because uh that dictates a lot
of the requirements for the system that
we build and what we're trying to
measure is really individual neurons
producing action potentials an action
potential is you can think of it like a
little electrical impulse that you can
uh detect if you're close enough and by
being close enough I mean like within
let's say 100 microns of that cell and
100 microns is a very very tiny distance
and so the number of neurons that you're
going to pick up with any given
electrode is just a small radius around
that electrode and the other thing worth
understanding about the underlying
biology here is that when neurons
produce an action potential the the
width of that action potential is about
1 millisecond so from the start of the
spike to the end of the spike that whole
width of that uh sort of characteristic
feature of a neuron firing is 1
millisecond wide and if you want to
detect that an individual spike is
occurring or not you need to sample that
signal or sample the local field
potential nearby that uh neuron much
more frequently than once a millisecond
you need to sample many many times per
millisecond to be able to detect that
this is actually the characteristic
waveform of a neuron producing an action
potential and so we sample across all24
electrodes about 20,000 times a second
20,000 times a second means for given 1
millisecond window we have about 20
samples that tell us what that exact
shape of that action potential looks
like MH and once we've sort of sampled
at super high rate the underlying
electrical field nearby uh these cells
we can process that signal into just
where do we detect a spike or where do
we not sort of a binary signal one or
zero do we detect a spike in this one
millisecond or not
and we do that because the actual
information character carrying uh uh
sort of Subspace of neur activity is
just when are spikes occurring
essentially everything that we care
about for decoding can be captured or
represented in the frequency
characteristics of Spike trains meaning
how often are spikes firing in any given
window of time and so that allows us to
do sort of a crazy amount of compression
from this very rich high density uh you
know signal to something that's much
much more sparse and compressible that
can be sent out over a wireless uh radio
like a Bluetooth communication for
example quick tangents here you
mentioned electrode
neuron there's a local neighborhood of
neurons
nearby how difficult is it to like
isolate from where the spike came from
yeah so there's a whole field of sort of
academic Neuroscience work on exactly
this problem of basically given a single
electrode or given a electrodes
measuring a set of neurons how can you
sort of sort Spike sort which spikes are
coming from what uh neuron and this is a
problem that's pursued in academic work
because you care about it for
understanding what's going on in the
underlying sort of uh Neuroscience of
the of the brain if you care about
understanding how the brain is
representing information how that's
evolving through time then that's a very
very important question to to understand
for sort of the engineering side of
things at least at the current scale if
the number of neurons per electrode is
relatively small you can get away with
basically ignoring that problem
completely you can think of it like sort
of a random projection of neurons to
electrodes and there may be in some
cases more than one neuron per electrode
but if that number is small enough those
signals can be thought of as uh sort of
a union of the two and for many
applications that's a totally reasonable
trade-off to make and can simplify the
problem a lot and as you sort of scale
out Channel count the uh relevance of
distinguishing individual neurons
becomes less important because you have
more overall signal and you can start to
rely and sort of
correlations or coari structure in the
data to help understand when that
channel is firing what does that what
does that actually represent because you
know that when that channel is firing in
concert with these other 50 channels
that means move left but when that same
channel is firing with concert with
these other 10 channels that means move
right okay so you have to do this kind
of Spike detection on
board and you have to do that super
efficiently so fast and not use too much
power because you don't want to be
generating too much heat so it have to
be a super simple signal processing step
yeah um is there some wisdom you can
share about what it takes to overcome
that challenge yeah so we've tried many
different versions of basically turning
this raw signal into uh sort of a
feature that you might want to send off
the device and I'll say that I don't
think we're at the final step of this
process this is a long journey we have
something that works clearly today but
there can be many approaches that we
find in the future that are much better
than what we do right now so some
versions of what we do right now and
there's a lot of academic her to these
ideas so I don't want to you know claim
that these are original nurlink ideas or
anything like that but uh one of these
ideas is basically to build a sort of
like a convolutional filter almost if
you will that slides across the signal
and looks for a certain template to be
matched that template consists of sort
of How deep the spike modulates how much
it recovers and what the duration and
window of time is that the whole process
takes and if you can see in the signal
that that template is matched within
certain bounds then you can say okay
that's a spike one reason that approach
is super convenient is that you can
actually Implement that extremely
efficiently in Hardware which means that
you can run it uh in low power across
1,24 channels all at once another
approach that we've recently started uh
exploring and this can be combined with
the spike detection approach something
called Spike band power and the benefits
of that approach are that you may be
able to pick up some signal from neurons
that are maybe too far away to be
detected as a spike because the farther
away you are from an electrode the
weaker that actual Spike waveform will
look like on that electrode so uh you
might be able to pick up you know
population level activity of things that
are you know maybe slightly outside the
normal recording radius what what
neuroscientist sometimes refer to as the
hash of activity the other stuff that's
going on yeah uh and you can look at
sort of across many channels how that uh
sort of background noise is behaving you
might be able to get more juice out of
the signal that way but it comes at a
cost that signal is now a floating Point
representation which means it's more
expensive to send out over a power it
means you have to find different ways to
compress it that are different than you
can apply to Binary signals so there's a
lot of different challenges associated
with these different modalities so also
in terms of communication you're limited
by the amount of data you can send yeah
so and also because you're currently
using the Bluetooth protocol you have to
batch stuff
together but you have to also do this
keeping the latency crazy low like crazy
low anything to say about the latency
yeah this is a passion project of mine
so uh I want to build the best mouse in
the world yeah I don't want to build
like the you know the Chevrolet Spark or
whatever of electric cars I want to
build like the Tesla Roadster version of
of a mouse and I really do think it's
quite possible that within you know 5 to
10 years that most Esports competitions
are dominated by people with paralysis
this is like a very real possibility for
number of reasons one is that they'll
have access to the the best technology
to play video games effectively the
second is they have the time to do so so
those two factors together are
particularly potent for uh esport
competitors unless
uh people without paralysis are also
allowed to implant NE right which is it
is another way to interact with a
digital uh device and there's some
there's something to that if if it's a
fundamentally different experience more
efficient experience even if it's not
like some kind of full-on high bandwidth
communication if it's just ability to
move the
mouse uh 10x faster like the bits per
second if I can achieve a bis per second
at 10x what I can do with the mouse
that's a really interesting possibility
what they can do especially as you get
really good at it uh with training it's
definitely the case that you have a
higher ceiling of performance like you
because you don't have to buffer your
intention through your arm through your
muscle you get just by nature of having
a brain implant at all like 75
millisecond lead time on any action that
you're actually trying to take and
there's some Nuance of this like there
there's evidence that the motor cortex
you can sort of plan out sequences of
actions so you may not get that whole
benefit all the time but for sort of
like Reaction Time style uh games where
you just want to somebody's over here
snipe them you know that kind of thing
uh you actually do have just an inherent
Advantage because you don't need to go
through muscle so the question is just
how much faster can you make it and
we're already you know faster than uh
you know what you would do if you're
going through muscle from a latency
point of view and we're in the early
stage of that I think we can push it
sort of our end to end latency right now
from brain Spike to cursor movement is
about 22 milliseconds if you think about
uh the best mice in the world the best
gaming mice that's about 5 milliseconds
is of latency depending on how you
measure depending how fast your screen
refreshes there's a lot of
characteristics that matter there but
yeah and the rough time for like a
neuron in the brain to actually impact
your uh command of your hand is about 75
millisecond so if you look at those
numbers you can see that we're already
like you know competitive and slightly
faster than what you'd get by actually
moving your moving your hand and this is
something that you know if you ask Nolan
about it when he moved the cursor for
the first time we asked him about this
this something I was super curious about
like what does it feel like when you're
modulating you know a click intention or
when you're trying to just move the
cursor to the right he said it moves
before he is like actually intending it
to which is kind of a surreal thing it's
something that uh you know I would love
to experience myself one day what is
that like to have the thing just be so
immediate so fluid that it feels like
it's happening before you're uh actually
intending it to move yeah I suppose
we've gotten used to that latency that
natural latency that happens uh so is
the currently the bottom like the
communication so like the Bluetooth
communication is that what's the actual
bottle like I mean there's always going
to be a bottle neck what's the current
Bott on like yeah a couple things so
kind of hilariously Bluetooth uh low
energy protocol has uh some restrictions
on how fast you can communicate so the
protocol itself establishes a standard
of you know the most frequent sort of
updates you can send are on the order of
7.5 milliseconds and uh as we push
latency down to the level of sort of
individual spikes impacting control that
level of of resolution that kind of
protocol is going to become a limiting
factor at some scale um another sort of
important Nuance to this is that it's
not just the uh neur link itself that's
part of this equation if you start
pushing latency sort of below the level
of how fast screens refresh then you
have another problem like you need your
whole system to be able to uh be as
reactive as the sort of limits of what
the technology can offer like you need
the screen like 120 HZ just doesn't you
know work anymore if you're trying to
have something respond at something
that's you know at the level of 1
millisecond that's a really cool
challenge I also like that for a t-shirt
the uh the best mouse in the world tell
me on the receiving end so the decoding
step now we we figured out what the
spikes are got them all together now
we're sending that over uh to the
app what's the decoding step look like
yeah so maybe first what is decoding I
think there's probably a lot of folks
listening that just have no clue what
what it means to decode brain activity
actually even if we zoom out beyond that
what is the app so there's a there's an
implant that's wirelessly communicating
with any digital device that has an app
installed yep so maybe can you tell me
at high level what the app is what the
software is outside of the uh the brain
yeah so maybe working backwards from the
goal the goal is to help someone with
paralysis in this case Noland be able to
navigate his computer independently and
we think the best way to do that is to
offer them the same tools that we have
to navigate our software because we
don't want to have to rebuild an entire
software ecosystem for the brain at
least not yet maybe someday you can
imagine there's uxs that are built
natively for BCI but in terms of what's
useful for people today I think we most
people would prefer to be able to just
control mouse and keyboard inputs to all
the applications that they want to use
for their daily jobs for communicating
with their friends Etc and so the job of
the application is really to translate
this Wireless stream of brain data
coming off the implant into control of
the computer and we do that by
essentially building a mapping from
brain activity to sort of the hid inputs
to the the actual Hardware so hid is
just the protocol for communicating like
input device events so for example move
Mouse to this position or press this key
down and so that mapping is
fundamentally what the app is
responsible for but there's a lot of
nuance of how that mapping works that we
spent a lot of time to try to get right
and we're still in the early stages of a
long journey to figure out how to do
that optimally uh so one part of that
process is decoding so decoding is this
process of taking the statistical
patterns of brain data that's being
channeled across this Bluetooth
connection to the application and
turning it into for example of mouse
movement and that decoding step you can
think of it in a couple different parts
so similar to any machine learning
problem there's a training step and
there's an inference step the training
step in our case is a very uh intricate
behavioral uh process where the user has
to imagine doing different actions so
for example they'll be presented a
screen with a cursor on it and they'll
be asked to push that cursor to the
right then imagine pushing that cursor
to the left push it up push it down and
we can basically build up a pattern or
using any sort of modern ml method uh a
mapping of given this brain data and
that imagin behavior map one to the
other and then test time you take that
same pattern matching system in our case
it's a deep neural network and you run
it and you take the live streamer brain
data coming off their implant you decode
it by pattern matching to what you saw
at calibration time and you use that for
a control of the computer now a couple
like sort of rabbit holes that I think
are quite interesting one of them has to
do with how you build that best template
matching system because there's uh a
variety of Behavioral challenges and
also debugging challenges when you're
working with someone who's paralyzed
because again fundamentally you don't
observe what they're trying to do you
can't see them attempt to move their
hand and so you have to figure out a way
to instruct the user to do something and
validate that they're doing it correctly
such that then you can Downstream build
with confidence the mapping between the
neural spikes and the intended action
and by doing the action correctly what I
really mean is at the level of
resolution of what neurons are doing so
if in Ideal World you could get a signal
of Behavioral intent that is ground
truth accurate at the scale of sort of 1
millisecond resolution soltion then with
high confidence I could build a mapping
from my neuros spikes to that behavioral
intention but the challenge is again
that you don't observe what they're
actually doing and so there's a lot of
nuance to how you build user experiences
that give you more than just sort of a
course on average correct representation
of what the user intending to do if you
want to build the world's best Mouse you
really want it to be as responsive as
possible you want it to be able to do
exactly what the user intending at every
sort of Step along the way not just on
average be correct when you're trying to
move it from left to right and building
behavioral sort of calibration game or
or sort of software experience that
gives you that level of resolution is
what we spend a lot of time working so
the calibration process the interface
has to encourage Precision meaning like
whatever it does it should be super
intuitive that the next thing it the
human is going to likely do is exactly
that intention that you need and only
that intention yeah and you don't have
any feedback except that may be speaking
to you
afterwards what they actually did you
can't oh yeah right so that's a that's
fundamentally that is really exciting ux
challenge because that's all on the ux
it's not just about being friendly or
nice or usable it's like user experience
is how it works it's how it works for
the calibration and calibration at least
at this stage of neuralink is like
fundamental to the operation of the
thing and and not just calibration but
continued Cali celebration essentially
yeah and maybe you said something that I
think is worth exploring there a little
bit you said it's you know primarily a
ux challenge and I think a large
component of it is but there is also a
very interesting machine learning
challenge here which has given some you
know uh data set including some on
average correct behavior of asking the
user to move up or move down move right
move left and given a data set of neural
spikes is there a way to infer in some
kind of semi-supervised or entirely
unsupervised way what that high
resolution version of their intention is
and if you think about it like there
probably is because there are enough
data points in the data set enough
constraints on your model that there
should be a way with the right sort of
formulation to let the model figure out
itself for example at this millisecond
this is exactly how hard they're pushing
upwards and at this millisecond this is
how hard they're trying to push upwards
it's really important to have very clean
labels yes so like the problem because
much harder from the machine learning
perspective the labels are noisy that's
correct and and then to get the clean
labels that's a ux challenge correct
although um clean labels I think maybe
it's worth exploring what that exactly
means I think any given labeling
strategy will have some number of
assumptions it makes about what the user
is attempting to do those assumptions
can be formulated in a loss function or
they can be formulated in terms of
humanistics that you might use to just
try to estimate or guesstimate what the
user is trying to do and what really
matters is how accurate are those
assumptions for example you might say
hey user push upwards and follow the
speed of this cursor and you're curis
might be that they're trying to do
exactly what that cursor is trying to do
another competing juristic might be
they're actually trying to go slightly
faster at the beginning of the movement
and slightly slower at the end and those
competing characteristics may or may not
be accurate reflections of what the user
is trying to do another version of the
task might be hey user imagine moving
this cursor a fixed offset so rather
than follow the cursor just try to move
it exactly 200 pixels to the right so
here's the cursor here's the target okay
cursor disappears tried to move that now
invisible cursor 200 pixels to the right
and the Assumption in that case would be
that the user can actually modulate
correctly that position offset but that
position offset assumption might be a
weaker assumption and therefore
potentially you can make it more
accurate than these heris that are
trying to guesstimate at each
millisecond what the user is trying to
do so you can imagine different tasks
that make different assumptions about
the the nature of the user intention and
those assumptions being correct is what
I would think of as a clean label for
that step what are we supposed to be
visualizing there's a cursor and you
want to move that cursor to the right or
the left up and down or maybe move them
by a certain
offset so that's one way is that the
best way to do calibration so for
example an alternative crazy way that
probably is playing a role here as a
game like web grid MH where you're just
getting a very large amount of data the
person playing a game where if they are
in the state of flow maybe you can get
clean signal as a side effect Y is that
or is it is that not an effective way
for initial calibration yeah great
question there's a lot to unpack there
so uh the first thing I would draw a
distinction between a sort of open loop
versus close loop so open loop what I
mean by that is the user is sort of
going from zero to one they have no
model at all and they're trying to get
to the place where they have some level
of control at all in that setup you
really need to have some task that gives
the user a hint of what you want them to
do such that you can build its mapping
again from brain data to to Output then
once they have a model you could imagine
them using that model and actually
adapting to it and figuring out the
right way to use it themsel and then
retraining on that data to give you sort
of a boost in performance M there's a
lot of challenges associated with both
of these techniques and we can sort of
rabbit hole into both of them if if
you're interested but the sort of
challenge with the open loop task is
that the user themselves doesn't get
propri receptive feedback about what
they're doing they don't you know
necessarily perceive themsel or feel you
know the mouse under their hand when
they're using an open loop or when
they're trying to do an open loop
calibration they're being asked to
perform something like imagine if you
sort of had your whole right arm numbed
and you stuck it in a box and you
couldn't see it so you had no visual
feedback and you had no appropri
acceptive feedback about what the
position or activity of your arm was and
now you're asked okay given this thing
on the screen that's moving from left to
right match that speed and you basically
can try your best to you know invoke
whatever that imagined action is in your
brain that's moving the cursor from left
to right but in any situation you're
going to be inaccurate and maybe
inconsistent in how you do that task and
so that's sort of the fundamental
challenge of open loop the challenge
with Clos Loop is that once the users
given a
model uh and they're able to start
moving the mouse on their own they're
going to very naturally adapt to that
model and that co-adaptation between the
model learning what they're doing and
the user learning how to use the model
may not find you the best sort of global
Minima it maybe that your first model
was noisy in some ways or um you know
maybe just had some like Quirk there's
some like part of the data distribution
it didn't cover super well and the user
now figures out because they're you
brilliant user like Nolan they figure
out the right sequence of imagin motion
motions or the right angle they have to
hold their hand at to get it to work and
they'll get it to work great but then
the next day they come back to their
device and maybe they don't remember
exactly all the tricks that they used
the previous day and so there's a
complicated sort of feedback cycle here
that can uh that can emerge and can make
it a very very difficult debugging
process okay there's a lot of really
fascinating things there uh yeah
actually just to stay on the on the
closed
loop I I've uh
seen situations this actually happened
uh watching uh psychology gr crd
students they use piece of software when
they don't know how to program
themselves they use piece of software
that somebody else wrote and has a bunch
of
bugs and they figure out like and
they've been using it for years yeah
they figure out ways to walk around oh
that just happens like nobody H nobody
like considers maybe we should fix this
they just adapt and that's a really
interesting notion that we just had we
were really good at adapting but you
need to still
that might not be the optimal yeah okay
so how do you solve that problem do you
have to restart from scratch every once
in a while kind of thing yeah it's a
good question um first and foremost I
would say this is not a solved problem
and for anyone who's you know listening
in Academia who works on bcis I would
also say this is not a problem that's
solved by simply scaling Channel count
so this is you know maybe that can help
and you can get sort of richer covariant
structures that you can use to exploit
when trying to come up with good
labeling strategies but if you know
you're interested in problems that
aren't going to be solved inherently by
scaling Channel account this is one of M
yeah so how do you solve it it's not a
solve problem that's the first thing I
want to make sure it gets across the
second thing is any solution that
involves Clos Loop uh is going to become
a very difficult debugging problem and
one of my sort of generalistic for
choosing what problems to tackle is that
you want to choose the one that's going
to be the easiest to debug MH because if
you can do that uh even if the ceiling
is lower you're going to be able to move
faster because you have a tighter
iteration Loop debugging the problem and
in the open loop setting there's not a
feedback cycle debug with the user in
the loop and so there's some reason to
think that that should be an easier
debugging problem the other thing that's
worth understanding is that even in the
Clos Loop setting there's no special sof
or magic of how to infer what the user
is truly attempting to do in the Clos
Loop setting although they're moving the
cursor on the screen they may be
attempting something different than what
your model is outputting so what the
model is outputting is not a signal that
you can use to retrain if you want to be
able to improve the model further you
still have this very complicated
guesstimation or unsupervised problem of
figuring out what is the true user
intention underlying that signal and so
the open loop problem has the nice
property of being easy to debug and the
second nice property of it has all the
same information content as the closeup
scenario um another thing I want to I
want to mention and call out is that
this problem doesn't need to be solved
in order to give useful control to
people um you know even today with the
solutions we have now and that Academia
has built up over over decades the level
of control that can be given to a user
you know today is quite useful it
doesn't need to be solved to get to that
that level of control but again I want
to build the world's best Mouse I want
to make it you know so good that it's
not even a question that you want it and
uh to build the world's best Mouse the
Superhuman version you really need to uh
nail that problem in a couple maybe
details of previous studies that we've
done internally that I think are very
interesting to understand when thinking
about how to solve this problem the
first is that even when you have ground
truth data of what the user is trying to
do and you can get this with an
able-bodied monkey a monkey that has an
neuralink device implanted and moving
them to control a computer even with
that ground TR data set it turns out
that the optimal thing to predict to
produce high performance BCI is not just
the direct control of the mouse you can
imagine you know building data set of
what's going on in the brain and what is
the mouse exactly doing on the table and
it turns out that if you build the
mapping from neuros spikes to predict
exactly what the mouse is doing that
model will perform worse than a model
that is trained to predict sort of
higher level assumptions about what the
user might be trying to do for example
assuming that the monkey is trying to go
in straight line to the Target M it
turns out that making those assumptions
is actually more effective in producing
a model than actually predicting the
underlying hand move so the the
intention not like the physical movement
or whatever yeah there's a obviously a
really strong correlation between the
two but the intention is a more powerful
thing to be chasing right well that
that's also super interesting I mean the
intention itself is fascinating because
yes with the BCI here in this case with
the digital telepathy you're acting on
the attention not the action which is
why there's an experience of like
feeling like it's happening before you
meant for it to happen that is so cool
and that is why you could achieve like
super human performance probably in
terms of the control of the mouse so the
for open loop just to clarify so
whenever the a person is tasked to like
move the mouse to the right you said
there's not feedback
so they don't get to get that
satisfaction of like actually getting it
to move
right so you you could imagine giving
the user feedback on the screen but uh
it's difficult because at this point you
don't know what they're attempting to do
so what what can you show them that
would basically give them a signal of
I'm doing this correctly or not
correctly so let's take this very
specific example like maybe your
calibration task looks like you're
trying to move the cursor a certain
position offset so your instructions to
the user are hey the cursor is here now
when the cursor disappears IM manag to
moving it 200 pixels from where it was
to the right to be over this Target in
that kind of scenario you could imagine
coming up with some sort of consistency
metric that you could display to the
user of okay I know what the spike train
looks like on average when you do this
action to the right maybe I can produce
some sort of probabilistic estimate of
How likely is that uh to be the action
you took given the latest trial or
trajectory that you that you imagined
and that could give the user some sort
of feedback of how consistent are they
across different trials you could also
imagine that if the user is prompted
with that kind of uh consistency metric
that maybe they just become more
behaviorally engaged to begin with
because the task is kind of boring when
you don't have any feedback at all and
so there may be benefits to the you know
the user experience of showing something
on the screen even if it's not accurate
just because it keeps the user motivated
to try to increase that number or push
it upwards so there's a p psychology
element here yeah absolutely and again
all of that is ux challenge how much
signal drift is there hour to hour day
to day week to week month to month how
often do you have to recalibrate because
of the signal drift yeah
uh so this is uh a problem we've worked
on both with nhp non-human primates
before our clinical trial and then also
with Noland during the clinical trial uh
maybe the first thing that's worth
stating is what the goal is here so the
goal is really to enable the user to
have a plug-and-play experience where I
guess they don't have to plug anything
in but a play experience where they uh
you know can use the device whenever
they want to however they want to and uh
that's really what we're aiming for and
so there can be a set of solutions that
get to that state without um considering
this stationarity problem so maybe the
first solution here that's important is
that they can recalibrate whenever they
want this is something that um that
Nolan has the ability to do today so he
can recalibrate the system you know at 2
am in the middle of the night without
his you know caretaker or parents or
friends around to help push a button for
him the other uh important part of the
solution is that when you have a good
model calibrated that you can continue
using that without needing to
recalibrate it so how often he has to do
this recalibration T depends really on
his appetite for performance there are
uh we observe sort of a degradation
through time of how well any individual
model works but this can be mitigated
behaviorally by the user adapting their
control strategy it can also be
mitigated through a combination of sort
of software features that we we provide
to the user for example we let the user
adjust exactly how fast the cursor is
moving uh we call that the gain for
example the gain of how fast the cursor
reacts to Any Given input intention they
can also adjust the smoothing how smooth
the output of that cursor in tension
actually is they can also adjust the
friction which is how easy is it to stop
and hold still and all these software
tools allow the user a great deal of
flexibility and troubleshooting
mechanisms to be able to solve this
problem for themselves by the way all
this is done by looking to the right
side of the screen selecting the mixer
and in the mixer you have it's it's like
DJ mode DJ mode for your BCI so I mean
it's a really well done interface it's
really really well done and so yeah
there's that bias uh that there's a
cursor drift that Nolan talked about in
a stream uh although he said that uh you
guys were just playing around with it
with him and they're constantly
improving so that could have been just a
snapshot of that particular moment
particular day but he said that there
was uh this cursor drift and this bias
that could be removed by him I guess
looking to the right side of the screen
or left side of the screen to kind of
adjust the bias that's one interface
action I guess to adjust the bias yeah
so this is actually an idea idea that
comes out of Academia um there there is
some prior work with uh uh sort of
BrainGate clinical TR participants where
they pioneered this idea of bias
correction the way we've done it I think
is yeah it's very przed very uh uh
beautiful user experience where the user
can essentially um Flash the cursor over
to the side of the screen and it opens
up a window where they can actually uh
sort of adjust or tune exactly the the
bias of the cursor so bias maybe for
people who aren't familiar is just sort
of what is the default motion of the
cursor if you're imagining nothing and
it turns out that that's one of the
first um first sort of qualia of the
cursor control experience that's
impacted by neur aity quality of the
cursor experi I don't know how else to
describe it like you know I'm not the
I'm not the guy very poetic I love it
the quality of the cursor experience
yeah I mean it's it sounds poetic but it
is uh deeply true there is an experience
when it works well it is a joyful a
really pleasant experience and when it
doesn't work well it's a very
frustrating experience that's actually
the art of
ux it's like you have the possibility to
frustrate people or the possibility to
give them
joy and at the end of the day it really
is truly the case that ux is how the
thing works and so it's not just like
what's showing on the screen it's also
you know what control surfaces does a
dcard provide the user like we want them
to feel like they're in the F1 car not
like the you know some like minivan
right you and that really truly is how
we think about it um Nolan himself is an
F1 fan so um we refer to oursel as a
pick crew he really is truly the the F1
driver and there's different you know
control surfaces that that different
kinds of cars and airplanes provide the
user and we take a lot of inspiration
from that when designing how the cursor
should behave and maybe one Nuance of
this is you know even details like when
you move a mouse on a MacBook trackpad
the sort of response curve of how that
uh input that you give the trackpad
translates to cursor movement is
different than how it works with a mouse
when you move on the trackpad there's a
different response function a different
curve to how much a movement translates
to input to the computer than when you
do it physically with the mouse and
that's because somebody sat down a long
time ago when they're designed the
initial input systems to any computer
and they thought through exactly how uh
it feels to use these different systems
and now we're designing sort of the next
generation of this input system to a
computer which is entirely done via the
brain and there's no proceptive feedback
again you don't feel the mouse in your
hand you don't feel the keys under your
fingertips and you want a control
surface that still makes it easy and
intuitive for the user to understand the
state of the system and how to achieve
what they want to achieve and ultimately
the end goal is that that ux is
completely Fades into the background it
becomes something that's so natural and
intuitive that is subconscious to the
user and they just should feel like they
have basically direct control over the
cursor just does what they want it to do
they're not thinking about the
implementation of how to make it do what
they want it to do it's just doing what
they want it to do is there some kind of
things along the lines of like Fitz law
where you should move the mouse in a
certain kind of way that maximizes your
chance to hit the target uh I don't even
know what I'm asking but I'm hoping the
intention of my question will land on on
a found answer no uh is there some kind
of understanding of the laws of ux when
it
comes uh to the context of somebody
using their brain to control it like
that's different than actual with a
mouse I think we're in the early stages
of discovering those laws so I wouldn't
claim to have solved that problem yet
but uh there's definitely some things
we've learned that uh make it uh easier
for the user to get stuff done mhm and
it's pretty straightforward when you
when you verbalize it but it takes a
while to actually get to that point when
you're in the process of debugging the
stuff in the trenches one of those
things is that
the any any machine Learning System you
build has some number of errors and uh
it matters how those errors translate to
the downstream user experience for
example if you're developing a search
algorithm in your photos if you search
for you know your friend Joe and it
pulls up a photo of your friend
Josephine maybe that's not a big deal
because the cost of a of an error is not
that high in uh a different scenario
where you're trying to you know detect
Insurance F or something like this and
you're directly sending someone to court
because of some machine learning model
out but then the errors make a lot more
uh sense to be careful about you want to
be very thoughtful about how those
errors translate to Downstream effects
the same is true in BCI so for example
if you're building a model that's
decoding a velocity output from the
brain versus an output where you're
trying to modulate the left click for
example these have sort of different
trade-offs of how precise you need to be
before it becomes useful to the end user
for velocity it's okay to be on average
correct because the output of the model
is integrated through time so if the
user is trying to click at position a
and they're currently at position B
they're trying to navigate over time to
get between those two points and as long
as the output of the model is on average
correct they can sort of steer through
time with the user control Loop in the
in the mix they can get to the point
they want to get to the same is not true
of a click for a click you're performing
it almost instantly at the scale of you
know neurons firing and so you want to
be very sure that that click is correct
because a false click can be very
destructive to the user they might
accidentally close the tab that they're
trying to you know do something in and
lose all their progress they might
accidentally like you know hit some send
button on some text that there only like
half composed and reads funny after you
uh so you know there's different sort of
cost functions associated with errors in
this space and part of the ux design is
understanding how to build a solution
that is when it's wrong still useful to
the end user that's so fascinating that
assigning
cost to every action when uh an error
occurs so every action if an error
occurs has a certain
cost and incorporating that into how you
interpret the intention mapping it to
the action is really important I didn't
quite until you said it realize there's
a cost to like sending the text early
it's like a very expensive cost it's
super annoying if you accidentally like
if you're a cursor imagine if your
cursor misclicked every once in a while
that's like super obnoxious and the
worst part of it is usually when the
user is trying to click they're also
holding still because they're over the
target they want to hit and they're
getting ready to click which means that
in the data sets that we build on
average is the case that sort of low
speeds or desire to hold still it's
correlated with when the user is
attempting to click wow that is really
fascinating it's also it's also not the
case you know people think that oh click
is a binary signal this must be super
easy to decode well yes it is but the
bar is so much higher for it to become a
useful thing for the user
and there's ways to solve this I mean
you can sort of take the compound
approach of well let's just give the
like Let's Take 5 Seconds to click let's
take a huge window of time so we can be
very confident about the answer but
again world's best Mouse the world's
best Mouse doesn't take a second to
click or 500 milliseconds to click it
takes five milliseconds to click or less
and so if you're aiming for that kind of
high bar then you really want to solve
the underlying problem so maybe this is
a good place to ask about how to measure
performance this whole bits per second
what uh can you like explain what you
mean by that maybe a good place to start
is to talk about web grid as a game as a
good illustration of the measurement of
performance yeah maybe I'll take one
zoom out step there which is just
explaining why uh we care to measure
this at all so again our goal is to
provide the user the ability to control
their computer as well as I can and
hopefully better and that means that
they can do it at the same speed as what
I can do it means that they have access
to all the same functionality that I
have including you know all those little
details like command tab command space
you know all this stuff they need to be
able to do it with their brain and with
the same level of reli AB ility is what
I can do with my muscles and that's a
high bar and so we intend to measure and
quantify every aspect of that to
understand how we're progressing towards
that goal there's many ways to measure
BPS by this isn't the only way but uh we
present the user a gr of targets and
basically we compute uh a score which is
dependent on how fast an accur they can
select and then how small are the
targets and the more targets that are on
the screen the smaller they are the more
information you you present per click
and so uh if you think about it from
information Theory point of view you can
communicate across different information
theoretic channels and one such channel
is a typing interface you could imagine
that's built out of a grid just like a
software keyboard on the screen and uh
bits per second is a measure that's
competed by taking the log of the number
of targets on the screen uh you can
subtract one if you care to model a
keyboard because you have to subtract
one for the delete key on the keyboard
but log of the number of targets on the
screen times the number of correct
selections minus incorrect divided by
some time window for example 60 seconds
and that's sort of the standard way to
measure uh a cursor control task in
Academia and all credit in the world
goes to this great Professor Dr sh
of Stanford who came up with that task
and he's also one of my Inspirations for
being in the field so um all the credit
in the world to him for coming up with a
standardized metric to facilitate this
kind of bragging rights that we have now
to say that noan is the best in the
world at this at this task with his PCI
it's very important for Progress that
you have standardized metrics so people
can compare across different techniques
and approaches how well does this do so
yeah big big kudos to him and to all all
the team at Stanford um yeah so for
Noland and for me playing this task uh
there's also different modes that you
can configure this task the web grid
task can be presented as just sort of a
left click on the screen or you could
have you know targets that you just
dwell over or you could have targets
that you left right click on you could
have targets that are left right click
middle click scrolling clicking and
dragging you know you can do all sorts
of things within this this General
framework but the simplest purest form
is just blue targets show up on the
screen blue means left click that's the
simplest form of the game and uh the
sort of Prior records here in uh
academic work and uh at Nur link
internally with sort of nhps uh have all
been matched or beaten by by Nolan with
his nurlink device so sort of prior to
nurlink the sort of world record for a
human using device is uh somewhere
between 4.2 to 4.6 BPS depending on
exactly what paper you read and how you
interpret it um Nolan's current record
is 8.5 BPS and again the sort of median
neural Linker performance is 10 BPS so
you can think of it roughly as he 85%
the level of control of a median neural
Linker using their cursor to slot blue
Targets on the screen and uh yeah I
think
there's a very interesting journey ahead
to get us to that same level of 10 BPS
performance it's not the case that sort
of the tricks that got us from you know
4 to 6 BPS and then 6 to 8 BPS are going
to be the ones that get us from 8 to 10
and uh in my view the core challenge
here is really the labeling problem it's
how do you understand at a very very
fine resolution what the user is
attempting to do and uh yeah I highly
encourage folks in Academia to uh to
work on this problem what's the journey
with Nolan on that quest of increasing
the BPS on web Grid in March you said
that he selected
89,4 185 Targets in web grid y so he
loves this game he's really serious
about improving his performance in this
game so what is that journey of trying
to figure out how to improve that
performance how much can that be done on
the decoding side how much can that be
done on the calibration side how much
can that be done on the Nolan side of
like figuring out how
to convey his intention more cleanly
yeah no this is a great question so in
my view one of the primary reasons why
Nolan's performance is so good is
because of Nolan Nolan is extremely
focused and very energetic he'll play
web grid sometimes for like four hours
in the middle of the night like from 2
a.m. to 6 a.m. he'll be playing web grid
just because he wants to push it to the
limits of what he can do and uh you know
this is not us like asking him to do
that I want to be clear like we're not
saying hey you should play webg tonight
we just gave him the game as part of our
research you know and he is able to play
independently and practice whenever he
wants and he really pushes hard to push
it the technology is the absolute limit
and he used it as like you know his job
really to make us be the bottleneck and
boy has he done that well uh and so that
the first thing to acknowledge is that
you know he was extremely motivated to
make this work I've also had the
privilege to meet other you know
clinical trial participants from brain
gain and other trials and they very much
share the same attitude of like they
they they view this as their life's work
to uh you know Advance the technology as
much as they can and uh if that means
fting Targets on the screen for 4 hours
2 a.m. to 6: a.m. then so be it and uh
there's something extremely admirable
about that that's worth uh calling out
okay so now how do you how do you sort
of get from where he started which is no
cursor control at PPS so I mean when he
started there's a huge amount of
learning to do on his side and our side
to figure out uh what's the most
intuitive control for him and the most
intuitive control for him is uh sort of
you have to find the set intersection of
what do we have the signal to decode so
we don't pick up you know every single
neuron in the motor cortex which means
we don't have repres for every part of
the body so there may be some SS that we
have better sort of decode performance
on than others for example on his left
hand we have a lot of difficulty
distinguishing his left ring finger from
his left middle finger but on his right
hand we have a good you know good
control and good modulation detected
from the neurons were able to record for
his pinky and his thumb and his index
finger so you can imagine how these
different uh you know subspaces of
modulated activity intersect with what's
the most intuitive for him and this has
evolved over time so once we gave him
the ability to calibrate models on his
own he was able to go and explore
various different ways to imagine
controlling the cursor for example he
could imagine controlling the cursor by
wiggling his wrist side to side or by
moving his entire arm but I think at one
point he did his feet you know he tried
like whole bunch of stuff to explore the
space of what is the most natural way
for him to control the cursor that at
the same time is easy for us to decode
real just to clarify it's through the
body mapping procedure that you're able
to figure out which finger he can move
uh yes yes that's one way to do it um
maybe one Nuance of the when he's doing
it he can imagine many more things than
we represent in that visual on the
screen so we show him sort of abstractly
here's a cursor you figure out what
works the best for you and we obviously
have hints about what will work best
from that body mapping procedure of you
know we know that this particular action
we can represent well but it's really up
to him to go and explore and figure out
what works the best but at which point
does he no longer visualize the movement
of his body and he's just visualizing
the movement of the cursor yeah how
quickly does he go from how quickly does
it get there so this happened on a
Tuesday I remember this day very clearly
because at some point during the during
the day uh it looked like he wasn't
doing super well like it looked like the
model wasn't performing super well and
he was like getting distracted but he
actually it wasn't the case like what
actually happened was he was trying
something new where he was just
controlling the cursor so he wasn't
imagining moving his hand anymore he was
just imagining I don't know what it is
some like abstract intention to move the
cursor on the screen and uh I cannot
tell you what the difference between
those two things are I truly cannot he's
tried to explain it to me before I
cannot uh you know give a first- person
account of what that's like but the
expletives that he uttered in that
moment where uh you know enough to
suggest that it was a very qualitatively
different experience for him to just
have direct neural control over a
cursor I wonder if there's a way through
ux to encourage a human being to
discover that because he discovered it
like you said uh to me that he's a
Pioneer so he discovered that on his own
through all this uh the process of
trying to trying to move the cursor with
different kinds of
intentions but that is clearly a really
powerful thing to arrive at which is to
let go of trying to control the fingers
and the hand and control the actual
digital device with your mind that's
right ux is how it works and the ideal
ux is one that it's the user doesn't
have to think about what they need to do
in order to get it done they just it
just does it
that is so fascinating but I wonder on
the on the biological side how long it
takes for the brain to adapt yeah so is
it just simply
learning like highle software or is
there like a neuroplasticity component
where like the the brain is adjusting
slowly yeah I the truth is I don't know
um I'm very excited to see with sort of
the second participant that we implant
what the you know what the journey is
like for them because we'll have learned
a lot more potentially we can help them
understand and explore that direction
more quickly this is something I didn't
you know this wasn't me prompting Nolan
to go try this he was just exploring how
to use his device and figured it out
himself but now that we know that that's
a possibility that maybe there's a way
to you know for example hint the user
don't try super hard during calibration
just do something that feels natural or
just directly control the cursor you
know don't imagine explicit action and
from there we should be able to
hopefully understand how this is for
somebody who has not experienced that
before maybe that's the default mode of
operation for them you don't have to go
through this into mediate phase of
explicit emotions or maybe if that
naturally happens for people you can
just occasionally encourage them to
allow themselves to move the cursor
right actually sometimes just like with
a form in a mile just the knowledge that
that's possible pushes you to do it yeah
enables you to do it and then it becomes
trivial and then it also makes you
wonder this is the cool thing about
humans if once there's a lot more human
participants they will discover things
that are possible yes and share their
experiences each other and that because
of them sharing it they'll be able to do
it m uh all of a sudden that's that's
unlocked for everybody y because just
the knowledge sometimes is the thing
that enables it to do it yeah I me just
coming on that too like there's we've
probably tried like a thousand different
ways to do various uh aspects of
decoding and now we know like what the
right Subspace is to continue exploring
further again thanks to Nolan and the
many hours he's put into this and so
even just that help like help constraint
sort of the beam search of different
approaches that we could explore really
helps accelerate for the next person you
know the set of things that we'll get to
try on day one how fast we hopefully get
them to useful control how fast we can
enable them to use it independently and
to get value out of the system so yeah
massive hats off to to Noland and and
all the participants that came before
him uh to make this technology a reality
so how often are the updates to the
decoder because Nolan mentioned like
okay there's a new update that we're
working on and that in the Stream he
said he plays the snake game because
it's like super hard it's a good way for
him to test like how good the date
is so and he says like sometimes the
update is a a step backwards it's like
it's a constant like iteration so how
often like what does the update entail
is it mostly on the decoder side yeah
couple comments so one is it's probably
worth drawing distinction between sort
of research sessions where we're
actively trying different things to
understand like what the best approach
is versus sort of independent use where
we wanted to have you know ability to
just go use a device how anybody would
want to use their MacBook and uh so what
he's referring to is I think usually in
the context of research session where
we're trying you know many many
different approaches to you know even
unsupervised approaches like we talked
about earlier to to try to come up with
better ways to estimate his true
intention and more accurately decoded
and uh in those scenarios I mean we try
in any given session he'll sometimes
work for like eight hours a day and so
that can be you know hundreds of
different models that we would try in
that day like a lot of different things
um now it's also worth noting that we
update the application he uses quite
frequently I think you know sometimes up
to like four or five times a day we'll
update his application with different
features or or bug fixes or feedback
that he's given us so he's been able to
he's a very articulate person who uh is
part of the solution he's not a
complaining person he says hey here's
this thing that I've I've discovered is
is not optimal in my flow here's some
ideas how to fix it let me know what
your thoughts are let's figure out how
to how to solve it and it often happens
that those things are addressed within
you know a couple hours of him giving us
his feedback because that's the kind of
iteration cycle we'll have and so
sometimes at the beginning of the
session he'll give us feedback and at
the end of the session he's he's giving
us feedback on the next iteration of
that of that of that process that set up
that's fascinating cuz one of the things
you mentioned that there was 271 pages
of notes taken from the BCI sessions and
this was just in March so one of the
amazing things about human beings that
they can provide especially ones who are
uh smart and excited and all like
positive and Good Vibes like noan that
they can provide feedback continuous
feedback yeah it also requires just to
brag on the team a little bit I work
with a lot of exceptional people and it
requires the team being absolutely laser
focused on the user and what will be the
best for them and it requires like a
level of commitment of okay this is what
the user feedback was I have all these
meetings we're going to skip that today
and we're going to do this you know that
level of focus commitment is uh I would
say under underappreciated in the world
and also uh you know you obviously have
to have the talent to be able to execute
on these things effectively and uh yeah
we have that in in loads yeah and this
is such a interesting space of ux design
because because you have there's so many
unknowns
here and I can tell ux is difficult
because of how many people do it
poorly it's just not a trivial thing
yeah it's also you know ux is not
something that you can always solve by
just constant iterating on different
things like sometimes you really need to
step back and think globally am I even
like the right sort of Minima to be
chasing down for a solution like there's
a lot of problems in which sort of fast
iteration cycle is the
the predictor of how successful you will
be as a good example like in a in an RL
simulation for example the more
frequently you get reward the faster you
can progress it's just an easier
learning problem the more frequently you
get feedback but ux is not that way I
mean users are actually quite often
wrong about what the right solution is
and it requires a deep understanding of
the technical system and what's possible
combined with what the problem is you're
trying to solve not just how the user
express it but what the true underlying
problem is to actually get to the right
place yeah that's the old like story of
Steve Jobs like rolling in there like
yeah the user is a good is a useful
signal but it's not a perfect signal and
sometimes you have to remove the floppy
disc drive or whatever the I forgot all
the crazy stories of Steve Jobs like
making wild uh design decisions but
there some some of his
aesthetic that some of it is about the
love you put into the design which is
very much as Steve Job J Johnny I type
thing but when when you have a human
being using their brain to interact with
it there it also is deeply about
function it's not just aesthetic Y and
that you have to empathize with with a
human being before you while not always
listening to them
directly like you have to deeply
empathize it's fascinating it's really
really fascinating and at the same time
iterate right but not iterate in small
ways sometimes a
complete like rebuilding the design he
said that noan said the early days the
ux sucked yeah but you improved quickly
what was that Journey like yeah I mean
I'll give one concrete example so uh he
really wanted to be able to Read Manga
this is something that he I mean yeah it
sounds like a simple thing but it's
actually a really big deal for for him
and he couldn't do it with this mouse
stick it just it wasn't accessible you
can't scroll with the mouse sck on his
iPad and the on the website that he
wanted to be able to use to read the the
new mang so might be a good quick pause
to say the mouth stick is the thing he's
using holding a stick in his mouth to
scroll on a tablet right yeah it's
basically you can imagine it's a stylus
that you hold between your teeth it's
basically a very long stylus and it's
it's exhausting it's it hurts and it's
inefficient yeah and maybe it's also
worth calling out there are other
alternative assistant Technologies but
uh the particular situation Nolan's in
and this is not uncommon and I think
it's also not well understood by folks
is that you know he's relatively
so he'll have muscle spasms from time to
time and so any assistant technology
that requires him to be positioned
directly in front of a camera for
example an eye tracker or anything that
requires him to put something in his
mouth just as a nogo because he'll
either be shifted out of frame when he
has a spasm or if he has something in
his mouth it'll stab him in the in the
face you know if he spasms too hard so
these kind of considerations are
important when thinking about what
advantages a PCI has in someone's life
if if it fits ergonomically into your
life in a way that you can use it
independently when your caretaker's not
there wherever you want to either in the
bed or in the chair depending on you
know your comfort level and your desire
to have pressure Source you know all
these factors matter a lot in how good
the solution is in that users uh in that
user's life so one of these very fun
examples is scroll so again manga is
something he wanted to be able to read
and
uh there's many ways to do scroll with
the BCI you can imagine like different
gestures for example the user could do
that would move the move the page but
scroll is a very fascinating uh control
surface because it's a huge thing on
this on the on screen in front of you so
any sort of Jitter in the model output
any sort of air in the model output
causes like a an earthquake on the
screen like you really don't want to
have your manga page that you're trying
to read be shifted up and down a few
pixels just because you know your scroll
decoder is not completely accurate and
so this was an example where uh we had
to figure out how to formulate the
problem in a way that the errors of the
system whenever they do occur and we'll
do our best to minimize them but
whenever those errors do occur that it
doesn't interrupt the qualia again of
the experience that the user is is
having it doesn't interrupt their flow
of reading their book and so what we
ended up building is this really
brilliant um feature this is uh teammate
named Bru who worked on this really
brilliant work called quick scroll and
quick scroll basically looks at the
screen and it identifies where on the
screen are scroll bars and it does this
by deeply integrating with maest to
understand where are the the scroll bars
actively present on the screen using the
sort of accessibility tree that's
available to uh to ma apps and we
identified where that those scroll bars
are and we provided a BCI scroll bar and
the BCI scroll bar looks similar to a
normal scroll bar but it behaves very
differently in that once you sort of
move over to it your cursor sort of
morphs onto it it sort of attaches or
latches onto it and then once you push
up or down in the same way that You' use
a push to control you know the normal
cursor uh it actually moves the screen
for you so it's basically like remapping
the velocity to a scroll action and the
reason that feels so natural and
intuitive is that when you move over to
attach to it it feels like magnetic so
you're like sort of stuck onto it and
then it's one continuous action you
don't have to like switch your imagine
movement you sort of snap onto it and
then you're good to go you just
immediately can start pulling the page
down or pushing it up and even once you
get that right there's so many little
nuances of how the scroll Behavior Works
to make it natural and intuitive so one
example is momentum like when you scroll
a page with your fingers on the screen
you know you you actually have some like
flow like it doesn't just stop right
when you lift your finger up the same is
true with BCI scroll so we had to spend
some time to figure out what are the
right nuances when you don't feel the
screen under your fingertip anymore what
is the right sort of dynamic or what's
the right amount of page give if you
will uh when you push it to make it flow
the right amount for the user to have uh
a natural experience reading their book
and there's a million I mean there's I
could tell you like there's so many
little minua of how exactly that scroll
works that we spent probably like uh a
month getting right to make that feel
extremely natural and uh and easy for
the user to navigate I mean even the
scroll on a smartphone with your finger
feels extremely natural and pleasant
and it probably takes a extremely long
time to get that right and actually the
same kind of
visionary uh ux design that we were
talking about don't always listen to the
users but also listen to them and also
have like Visionary big like throw
everything out think from first
principles but also not yeah yeah by the
way it just makes me think that scroll
bars on the
desktop probably have stagnated and
never taken that like cuz uh the snap
same as like Snap gri snap to scroll bar
action you're talking about is something
that could potentially be extremely
useful in the desktop setting y even
just for users to just improve the
experience because the current scroll
bar experience in the desktop is
horrible y it's hard to find hard to
control there's not a momentum there's
uh and the intention should be clear
when I start moving towards a scroll bar
there should be a snaping to the scroll
bar action but of course you know uh
maybe I'm I'm okay paying that cost but
there's hundreds of millions of people
paying that cost non-stop but anyway uh
but in this case this is necessary
because there's an extra cost paid by
Nolan for the jittering this so you have
to switch between the scrolling and the
reading there has to be a phase shift
between the two like when you're
scrolling you're scrolling right right
so that is one drawback of the current
the current approach um maybe one other
just sort of case study here so again ux
is how it works and we think about that
holistically from like the even the
feuture detection level of what we
detect in the brain to how we design the
decoder what we choose to decode to then
how it works once it's being used by the
user so another good example in the sort
of how it works once they're actually
using the decoder uh you know the output
that's displayed on the screen is not
just what the decoder says it's also a
function of uh you know what's going on
on the screen so we can understand for
example that you know when you're trying
to close a tab that very small stupid
little X that's extremely tiny which is
hard to get precisely hit if you're deal
with sort of a noisy output of the
decoder we can understand that that is a
small little X you might be trying to
hit and actually make it a bigger Target
for you similar to how when you're
typing on your phone if you're uh you
know used to like the iOS keyboard for
example it actually adapts the target
size of individual keys based on an
underlying language model so it'll
actually understand that if I'm typing
hey I'm going to see
L it'll make the E key bigger because it
knows Lex is the person I'm going to go
see and so that kind of you know
predictiveness can make the experience
much more smooth even without you know
improvements to the underlying decoder
or
uh or feature detection part of the
stack so we do that with a feature
called magnetic targets we actually
index the screen and we understand okay
these are the places that are you know
very small targets might be difficult to
hit here's the kind of cursor Dynamics
around that location that might be
indicative of the user trying to select
it let's make it easier let's blow up
the size of it in a way that makes it
easier for the user to sort of snap onto
that Target so all these little details
they matter a lot in helping the user be
independent in their day-to-day living
so how much of the work on the decoder
is generalizable to P2 P3 P4 P5
PN H how do you improve the decoder in a
way that's
generalizable yeah great question so the
underlying uh signal we're trying to
decode is going to look very different
in P2 than in P1 for example channel
number 345 is going to mean something
different in user one than it will user
two just because that electrode that
corresponds with Channel 345 is going to
be in next to a different neuron in user
one versus user two but the approaches
the methods the user experience of how
do you get the right sort of behavioral
pattern from the user to associate with
that neural signal we hoped it will
translate over over multiple generations
of users and beyond that it's very very
possible in fact quite likely that we've
overfit to sort of Nolan user experience
desires and preferences and so what I
hope to see is that uh you know when we
get a second third fourth participant
that we find sort of what the right wide
minimas are that cover all the cases
that make it more intuitive for everyone
and hopefully there's a
cross-pollination of things where oh we
didn't think about that with this user
because you know they can speak but with
this user who just can fundamentally not
speak at all this user experience is not
optimal and that will actually those
improvements that we make there should
hopefully translate then to even people
who can speak but don't feel comfortable
doing so because they're in a public
setting like their doctor's office so
the the actual mechanism of open loop
labeling and then closed loop labeling
would be the same and hopefully can
generalize across the different users as
they're doing the calibration
step and the calibration step is pretty
cool I mean that in itself the the
interesting thing about web grid which
is like Clos loop it's like
I love it when there's like uh there
used to be kind of an idea of human
computation which is using actions that
human would want to do anyway to get a
lot of signal from yeah and like webg
great is that like a nice video game
that also serves as great calibration
it's so funny this is I've heard this
reaction so many times before sort of
the you know first user was implanted we
had an internal perception that the
first user would not find this fun yeah
and so we thought really quite a bit
actually about like should we build
other games that like are more
interesting for the user so we can get
this kind of data and help facilitate
research that's you know for long
durations stuff like this turns out that
like people love this game yeah I always
loved it but I didn't know that that was
a shared
perception yeah just in case it's not
clear web grid is there's a a grid of
let's say 35 by
35 uh cells and one of them lights up
blue and you have to move your mouse
over that and click on it and if you
miss it and it's red and I play this
game for so many hours so many hours and
what's your record you said my I think I
have the highest at nurlink right now my
record is 17 BPS 17 BPS which about if
you imagine that 35 by 35 grid you're
hitting about 100 trials per minute so
100 correct Selections in that one
minute window so you're averaging about
you know between 500 600 milliseconds
per selection so one one of the reasons
I think I struggle with that game is I'm
such a keyboard person so everything is
done with via keyboard if if I can avoid
touching the mouse it's great so how can
you explain your h
performance I have like a whole ritual I
go through when I play web GD so it's
ESS actually like a diet plan associated
with this like it's a whole thing so the
first I have to fast for 5 days I have
to go up to the mountain actually it
kind I mean the fasting thing is
important so this is like you know focus
is the mind yeah it's true so what I do
is I I actually I don't eat for a little
bit beforehand and then I'll actually
eat like a ton of peanut butter right
before I play and I get this is a real
thing this is a real thing yeah and then
it has to be really late at night this
is again a night owl thing I think we
share but it has to be like you know
midnight 2: a.m. kind of time window and
I have a very specific like physical
position I'll sit in which is uh I used
to be I was homeschooled growing up and
so I did most of my work like on the
floor uh just like in my bedroom or
whatever and so I have a very specific
situation on the floor on the floor that
I sit and play and then you have to make
sure like there's not a lot of weight on
your elbow when you're playing so you
can move quickly and then I turn the
gain of the cursor so the speed of the
cursor way way up so it's like small
motions that actually move the cursor
are you moving with your wrist or you
you never I move with my fingers so I my
wrist is almost completely still I'm
just moving my fingers yeah you know
those just in a small tangent yeah the
which I've been meaning to go down this
Rabbit Hole of people that um set the
world record in Tetris those folks
they're playing there's a there's a way
to did you see this seen like the like
all the fingers are moving yeah you you
could you could find a way to do it
where like it's using a loophole like a
bug that you can do some incredibly fast
stuff so it's it's along that line but
not quite but you do realize there'll be
like a few programmers right now
listening to this who fast and eat
peanut butter please please break my
record I mean the reason I did this
literally was just because I wanted the
bar to be high for the team like I
wanted the the number that we aim for
should not be like the median
performance it should be like it should
be able to beat all of us at least like
that should be the minimum bar what do
you think is possible like 20 yeah I
don't know what the limits I mean the
limits you can calculate just in terms
of like screen refresh rate and like
cursor immediately jump into the next
Target but there's I mean I'm sure
there's limits before that with just
sort of reaction time and visual
perception and things like this um I'd
guess it's in the below 40 but above 20
somewhere in there it's probably the
right the right number to be thinking
about it also matters like how difficult
the task is you could imagine like some
people might be able to do like 10,000
Targets on the screen and maybe they can
do better that way um so there's some
like task optimizations you could do to
try to boost your performance as well
what uh do you think it takes for Nolan
to be able to do above 85 to keep
increasing that number you said like
every increase in the number might
require different yeah different
improvements in the system yeah I think
the nature of this work is I the first
the first answer that's important to say
is I don't know um this is you know edge
of the research so again nobody's gotten
to that number before so what's next is
going to be a you know heris a guess
from my part um what we've seen
historically is that different parts of
the staff come bottlenecks at different
time points so you know when I first
joined nlink like three years ago or so
one of the major problems was just the
latency of the Bluetooth connection it
was just like the radio on the device
wasn't super good it was an earlier
rision of the implant and uh it just
like no matter how good your decoder was
if your thing is updating every 30
milliseconds or 50 milliseconds it's
just going to be choppy and uh no matter
how good you are that's going to be
frustrating and lead to uh challenges so
you know at that point it was very clear
that the main challenge is just get the
data off the device in a very reliable
way such that you can enable the next
challenge to be to be tackled and then
you know at some point it was um you
know actually the modeling challenge of
how do you uh just build a good mapping
like the supervised learning problem of
you have a bunch of data and you have a
label you're trying to predict just what
is the right like neurod decoder
architecture and hyperparameters to
optimize that that was a problem for a
bit and once you solve that it became a
different bottleneck um I think the next
bottleneck after that was actually just
sort of software stability and
reliability um you know if you have
widely varying sort of inference latency
uh in your in your system or your you
know your app just lags out every once
in a while it decreases your ability to
maintain and get in a state of flow and
it basically just disrupts your control
experience and so there's a variety of
different software bugs and uh
improvements we made that basically
increased the performance of the system
made it much more reliable much more
stable and led to a state where we could
reliably collect data to build better
models with so that was a problem for a
while is just sort of like the software
stack itself um if I were to guess right
now uh there's sort of two major
directions you could think about for
improving BPS further um the first major
direction is labeling so labeling is
again this fundamental challenge of
given uh a window of time where the user
is expressing some behavioral intent
what are they really trying to do at the
at the granularity of every
millisecond and that again is a task
design problem it's a ux problem it's a
machine learning problem it's a software
problem sort of touches all those
different domains the second uh thing
you can think about to improve BPS
further is either completely changing
the thing you're decoding or just
extending the number of things that
you're decoding so this is serving the
direction of functionality basically you
can imagine giving more clicks for
example left click a right click a
middle click uh different actions like
click and drag for example and that can
improve the effective bit rate of your
communication prothesis if you're trying
to uh allow the user to express
themselves through any given
Communication channel you can measure
that with bits per second but what
actually matters at the end of the day
is how effective are they at navigating
their computer and so from the
perspective of the downstream task that
you care about functionality and
extending functionality is something
we're very interested in because not
only can It improve the sort of number
of BPS but it can also improve the
downstream sort of Independence that the
user has and the skill and efficiency
with which they can operate their
computer
would the number of threads increasing
also potentially help yes short answer
is yes it's a bit nuanced how that curve
uh or how that manifests in uh in the
numbers so what you'll see is that if
you sort of plot a curve of number of
channels uh that you're using for decode
verse either the offline metric of how
good you are decoding uh or the online
metric of sort of uh in practice how
good is the user using this device you
see roughly a log curve so as you move
further out in number of channels you
get a corresponding sort of logarithmic
Improvement in control quality and
offline validation
metrics the important Nuance here is
that each Channel corresponds with a
specific uh you know represented
intention in the brain so for example if
you have a channel 254 it might
correspond with moving to the right
channel 256 might mean mve to the left
if you want to expand the number of
functions you want to control
uh you really want to have a broader set
of channels that covers a broader set of
imagin movements you can think of it
like uh kind of like Mr Potato Man
actually like if you had a bunch of
different imagine movements you could do
how would you map those imagine
movements to input to a computer uh you
could imagine you know handwriting to
Output characters on the screen you
could imagine just typing with your
fingers and have that output text on the
screen you could imagine Different
Finger modulations for different clicks
you could imagine wiggling your big nose
for uh opening some some menu or
wiggling your you know your big toe to
have like command tab occur or something
like this so it's really uh the amount
of different actions you can take in the
world depends on how many channels you
have and the information content that
they
carry all right so that's more about the
number of actions so actually as you
increase the number of threads that's
more
about increasing uh the number of
actions you're able to perform one other
Nuance there that is worth mentioning so
again our goal is really to enable a
user with paralysis to control the
computer as fast as I can so that's BPS
uh with all the same functionality I
have which is what we just talked about
but then also as reliably as I can yeah
and that last point is very related to
channel count discussion so as you scale
out number of channels the relative
importance of any particular feature of
your model input to the output control
of the user diminishes which means that
if the sort of neural nonstationarity
effect is per Channel or if the noise is
independent such that more channels
means on average less output effect then
your reliability of your system will
improve so one sort of core thesis um
that at least I have is that scaling
Channel count should improve the
reliability system without any
work on the decoder itself can you
Linger on the reliability here so first
of all when you say nonstationarity of
the signal which aspect are you
referring to yeah so maybe let's talk
briefly what the actual underlying
signal looks like so again I I spoke
very briefly at the beginning about how
when you imagine moving to the right or
imagine moving to the left neurons might
fire more or less and their frequency
content of that signal at least in the
motor cortex it's very correlated with
the output intention the behavioral uh
task that the user is doing you could
you can imagine actually this is not
obvious that rate coding which is the
name of that um phenomena is like the
only way the brain could represent
information you can imagine many
different ways in which the brain could
encode uh intention and there's actually
evidence like in bats for example that
there's temporal codes so timing codes
of like exactly when particular neurons
fire is the the mechanism of information
uh representation but at least in the
motor cortex there's substantial
evidence that it's uh rate coding or at
least one like first order of fact is
that it's R coding so then if the brain
is representing information by changing
the sort of frequency of a neuron firing
what really matters is sort of the Delta
between sort of the Baseline state of
the neuron and what it looks like when
it's modulated and what we've observed
and what has also been observed in
academic work is that that Baseline rate
sort of the if you're to Tar the scale
if you imagine uh that analogy for like
measuring you know flour or something
when you're baking that Baseline state
of how much the pot weighs is actually
different dayto day mhm and so if what
you're trying to measure is how much
rice is in the pot you're going to get a
different measurement different days
because you're measuring with different
pots so that basine rate shifting is
really the thing that uh at least from A
first order description of the problem
is what's causing this Downstream bias
there can be other effects not linear
effects on top of that but at least a
very first order description of the
problem that's what we observe today is
that the Baseline firing rate of any
particular neuron or observed on a
particular channel is changing so can
you just adjust to the Baseline to make
it relative to the Baseline nonstop yeah
this is a great question so um with
monkeys we we have found various ways to
do this um one example way to do this is
you ask them to do some behavioral task
like play the game with a joystick you
measure what's going on in the brain you
compute some mean of what's going on
across all the input features and you
subtract that in the input when you're
doing your BCI session Works super well
for whatever reason that doesn't work
super well with Nolan I actually don't
know the full reason why but I can
imagine several several explanations um
one such explanation could be that the
context effect difference between some
open loop task and some closed loop task
is much more significant with um Nolan
than it is with monkey maybe in this
open loop task he's you know watching
The Lex Freeman podcast while he's doing
the task or he's whistling and listening
to music and talking with his friend and
ask his mom what's for dinner while he's
doing this task and so the the exact
sort of difference in context between
those two states may be much larger and
thus lead to a bigger S generalization
gap between the features that you're
normalizing at sort of open loop time
and what you're trying to use at close
loop time that's interesting just on
that point it's kind of incredible to
watch noan be able to do uh to multitask
to do multiple tasks at the same time to
be able to move the miles cursor
effectively while talking and while
being nervous because he's talking front
of kicking my ass in chest too yeah
kicking your ass and not wor and talk
trash while doing it so all at the same
time and yes if you're trying to
normalize to the Baseline that might
throw everything
off boy is that interesting maybe one
comment on that too for folks that
aren't familiar with assisted technology
I think there's a common belief that you
know well why can't you just use an eye
tracker or something like this for
helping somebody move a mouse on the
screen and it's it's a really a fair
question and one that I actually did was
not confident before s Nolan that this
was going to be a profoundly
transformative technology for people
like him and uh I'm very confident now
that it will be but the reasons are
subtle it really has to do with
ergonomically how it fits into their
life even if you can just offer the same
level of control as what they would have
with an ey tracker or with a mouse sck
but you don't need to have that thing in
your face you don't need to be position
a certain way you don't need your
caretaker to be around to set it up for
you you can activate it when you want
how you want wherever you want that
level of Independence is so gamechanging
for people it means that they can text a
friend at night privately without their
mom needing to be in the loop it means
that they can like open up you know and
browse the internet at 2: a.m. when
nobody's around to set their their iPad
up for them this is like a profoundly
gamechanging thing for folks in that
situation and this is even before we
start talking about folks that you know
may not be able to communicate at all or
ask for help when they want to this be
the potentially the only link that they
have to the outside world and uh yeah
that one doesn't I think need
explanation of why that's so impactful
you mentioned neural
decoder how much machine learning is in
the decoder how much magic how much
science how much
art how difficult is it to come up with
a decoder that figures out what these uh
sequence of spikes mean yeah good
question uh there's a couple different
ways to answer this so maybe I'll zoom
out briefly first and then I'll go down
one of the rabbit holes so the zoomed
out view is that building the decoder is
really the process of building the data
set plus compiling it into the weights
and uh each of those steps is important
uh the direction I think of further
Improvement is primarily going to be in
the data set side of how do you
construct the optimal labels for the
model but there's an entirely separate
challenge of then how do you compile it
the best model and so I'll go briefly
down the second one down the second
Rabbit Hole one of the main challenges
with designing the optimal model for BCI
is that offline metrics don't
necessarily correspond to online metrics
M uh it's fundamentally a control
problem the user is trying to control
something on the screen and the exact
sort of user experience of how you
output the intention uh impacts your
ability to control so for example if you
just look at validation loss as
predicted by your model there can be
multiple ways to achieve the same
validation loss not all of them are
equally controllable by the end user and
so the you know it might be as simple as
saying oh you could just add auxiliary
loss terms that like help you capture
the thing that actually matters but this
is a very complex Nuance process so how
you turn the labels into the model is uh
more of a Nuance process than just like
a standard supervised learning problem
one very fascinating uh anecdote here
we've tried many different sort of
neural network architectures that
translate brain data to uh velocity
outputs for example and one uh example
that's stuck in my brain from a couple
years ago now uh is we at one point we
were using just fully connected networks
to decode the brain activity we tried a
Ab test where we were measuring uh the
relative performance in online control
sessions of uh sort of 1D convolution
over the input signal so if you imagine
per Channel you have a sliding window
that's producing some uh convolve
feature for each of those input
sequences for every single Channel
simultaneously you can actually get
better validation metrics meaning you're
fitting the data better and it's
generalizing better on offline data if
you use this convolutional architecture
you're reducing parameters it's sort of
a standard uh uh standard procedure when
you're dealing with time series data now
it turns out that when using that model
online the controlability was was worse
was far worse even though the offline
metrics were better and uh there can be
many ways to interpret that but what
that taught me at least was that hey
it's at least the case right now that if
you were to just throw a bunch of comput
at this problem and you were trying to
sort of hyper parameter optimize or you
know let some gbt model hard code or
come up with or invent many different
solutions if you were just optimizing
for loss it would not be sufficient
which means that there's still some
inherent modeling Gap there's still some
Artistry left to be uncovered here of
how to get your model to scale with more
compute and that may be fundamentally
labeling problem but there may be other
components to this as well is it uh data
constrainted at this time like the which
is what it sounds like
like how do you get a lot of good labels
yeah I think it's data quality
constrained not necessarily data
quantity
constrainted but even like even just the
quantity I mean because it has to be
trained on the on the interaction
I guess there's not that many
interactions yeah so it depends what
version of this you're talking about so
if you're talking about like let's say
the simplest example of just 2D velocity
then I think yeah data quality is the
main thing if you're talking about how
to build a sort of multifunction output
that lets you do all the inputs the
computer that you and I can do then it's
actually a much more sophisticated
Nuance modeling challenge because now
you need to think about not just when
the user is left clicking but when
you're building the left click model you
also need to be thinking about how to
make sure it doesn't fire when they're
trying to right click or they're trying
to move the mouse so one examp of an
interesting bug from like sort of week
one of uh BCI with Nolan was when he
moved the mouse uh The Click signal sort
of dropped off a cliff and when he
stopped the click in went up so again
there's a contamination between the the
two the two inputs another good example
was at one point he was trying to do uh
sort of a left click and drad and the
minute he started moving the left click
signal dropped off a cliff so again
because there's some contamination
between the two signals you you need to
come up with some way to either in the
data set or in the model build
robustness against this kind of uh you
think of it like overfitting but really
it's just that the model has not seen
this kind of variability before so you
need to find some way to help the model
with that this is super cool cuz I it
feels like all of this is very solvable
but it's hard yes it is fundamentally an
engineering challenge this is important
to emphasize and it's also important to
emphasize that it may not need
fundamentally new techniques which means
that you know people who work on let's
say unsupervised speech classification
using CTC loss for example with internal
toi they could potentially have very
applicable skills to this
so what things are you excited about in
uh the future
development of the software stack on the
neur link so everything we've been
talking about the decoding the ux I
think there's some I'm excited about
like something I'm excited about from
the technology side and some I'm excited
about understanding how this technology
is going to be best situated for
entering the world so I'll work
backwards on the technology entering the
world side of things I'm really excited
to understand how this device works for
folks that uh you know cannot speak at
all that have no ability to sort of
bootstraps into useful control by voice
command for example and are extremely
Limited in their current capabilities I
think that will be an incredibly useful
signal for us to understand I mean
really what is an existential Ty for all
startups which is product Market fit
does this device have the capacity and
potential to transform people's lives in
the current state and if not what are
the gaps and if there are gaps how do we
solve them most most efficiently so
that's what I'm very excited about for
the next year or so of clinical trial
operations the on the technology side uh
I'm quite excited about basically
everything we're doing I think uh it's
going to be awesome the most prominent
one I would say is is scaling Channel
count so right now we have a th000
channel device the next version will
have between 3 and 6,000 channels and I
would expect that curve to continue in
the future and it's unclear what set of
problems will just Disappear Completely
at that scale and what set of problems
will remain and require further focus
and so I'm excited about the clarity of
gradient that that gives us in terms of
the user experiences we choose to focus
our time and resources on and also in
terms of the you even things as simple
as nonstationarity like does that
problem just completely go away at that
scale or do we need to come up with new
creative uis still even at that point um
and also when we get to that time point
when we start expanding out
traumatically the set of functions that
you can output from one brain how to
deal with all the nuances of both the
user experience of not being able to
feel the different keys under your
fingertips but still need to be able to
modulate all of them in synchrony to
achieve the thing you want and uh again
you don't have that prop set to feedback
loop so how can you make that intuitive
for a user to control a high dimensional
control surface without feeling the
thing physically I think that's going to
be a super interesting problem uh I'm
also quite excited to understand uh you
know do these scaling laws continue like
as you scale Channel count how much
further out do you go before that
saturation point is is truly hit and
it's not obvious today I think we only
know what's in the sort of interpolation
space we only know what's between Z and
1024 but we don't know what's beyond
that um and then there's a whole sort of
like range of interesting sort of
Neuroscience and brain questions which
is when you stick more stuff in the
brain in more places you get to learn
much more quickly about what those brain
regions represent and so I'm excited
about that fundamental Neuroscience
learning which is also important for
figuring out how and to most efficiently
insert electrodes in the future so yeah
I think all those Dimensions I'm really
really excited about and that doesn't
even get close to touching the sort of
software stack that we work on every
single day and what we're working on
right now yeah it uh seems virtually
impossible to me that uh a thousand
electrodes is where it saturates it
feels like this would be one of those uh
silly Notions in the future where
obviously you should have millions of
electrodes and this and this is where
like the true breakthroughs happen yeah
uh you tweeted oh some thoughts are most
precisely described in poetry why do you
think that
is I think it's because the the
information bottleneck of language
is uh pretty
steep and yet you're like you're able to
reconstruct on the other person's in the
other person's brain more effectively
without being literal like if you if you
can express a sentiment such that in
their brain they can reconstruct the the
actual true underlying meaning and
beauty of the thing that you're trying
to get across the S the generator
function in their brain is more powerful
than What language can express and
so the the mechanism of poetry is really
just to uh feed or seed that generator
function so being literal sometimes is a
suboptimal compression for the for the
thing you're trying to convey
and it's actually in the process of the
user going through that generation that
they understand what what you mean like
that's the that's the beautiful part
it's also like when you look at a
beautiful painting like it's not the the
pixels of the painting that are
beautiful it's the thought process that
occurs when you see that the the
experience of that that actually is a
thing that matters yeah it's resonating
with some deep
yeah thing within you that the artist
also experienced and was able to convey
that through the pixels and that's
actually going to be relevant for for
for fullon telepathy
you know it's like if you just read the
Poetry
literally that doesn't say much of
anything interesting it requires a human
to interpret
it so it's the combination of the human
mind and all the experiences that a
human being has within the context of
the collective intelligence of the human
species that makes that poem make sense
and they load that in and so in that
same way the signal that carries from
Human to Human uh meaning might not may
seem trivial but may actually carry a
lot of
power uh because of the complexity of
the human mind and the receiving
end yeah that's interesting I poetry
still doesn't who was it I think uh
Yoshi first said
uh uh something
about all the people that think we've
achieved AGI EX explain
why humans like music oh yeah and and
until until the AGI Likes music you
haven't achieved AGI or something like
do you not think that's like some next
token entropy surprise kind of thing
going on there I don't know I don't know
either I I listen to a lot of classical
music and also read a lot of poetry and
uh yeah I do wonder if like there is
some element of the next token surprise
Factor going on there yeah maybe cuz I
mean like a lot of the the tricks in
both poetry and music are like basically
you have some repeated structure and
then you do like a Twist like it's like
okay verse or like Clause 1 2 3 is one
thing and then Clause 4 is like okay now
we're on the next theme yeah and they
kind of play with exactly when the
surprise happens and the expectations of
the user and that's even true like
through history as musicians evolve
music they take like some know and
structure that people are familiar with
and they just tweak it a little bit like
they tweak it and add a surprising
element this is especially true in like
in classical music Heritage but that's
what I'm Wonder like is it all just
entropy like the the uh so so bra so
breaking structure or breaking symmetry
is something that humans seem to like
maybe as simple as that yeah and I mean
great artists copy uh and they also you
know knowing which rules to break is the
important part and that fundamentally it
must be about the The Listener of the
piece like which rulle is the right one
to break is about the user or the
audience member perceiving that as
interesting uh what do you think is the
meaning of human
existence there's a TV show I really
like called The West Wing
and in uh In The West Wing there's a
character he's the president of the
United States who's uh having a
discussion about the Bible with one of
their
colleagues and uh the colleague says
something about you know the Bible says
X Y and Z and uh the President says yeah
but it also says ABC and the person says
well do you believe the Bible to be
literally true and the President
says yes but I also think that neither
of us are smart enough to understand
it I think to like the analogy here for
the meaning of life is that largely we
don't know the right question to ask and
so I'm I think I'm very aligned with uh
sort of The
Hitchhiker's guided the Galaxy version
of this question which is basically if
we can ask the right
questions it's much more likely we find
the meaning of human existence and so in
the short term as a heuristic in the
sort of search policy space we should
try to increase the diversity of uh
people asking such questions or
generally of Consciousness and conscious
being asking such
questions um so again I think I'll take
the I don't know card here but say I do
think there are meaningful things we can
do that improve the likelihood of
answering that question it's interesting
how much value you assign to the task of
asking the right
questions that's
the that's the main thing it's not the
answers is the questions this point by
the way is driven
home uh in a very painful way when you
try to communicate with someone who
cannot speak because a lot of the time
the last thing to go is they have the
ability to somehow you know wiggle a lip
or move something that allows them to
say yes or no and in that situation it's
very obvious that what matters is are
you asking them the right question to be
able to say yes or no to wow that's
powerful well Bliss thank you for
everything you do and thank you for
being you and thank you for talking
today thank you thanks for listening to
this conversation with bliss Chapman and
now dear friends here's Nolan our boss
the first human being to have a
neuralink device implanted in his
brain you had a diving accident in 2016
that left you paralyzed with no feeling
from the shoulders down how did that
accident change your life it was sort of
a freak thing that happened imagine
you're running into the ocean um
although this is a lake but you're
running into the ocean and you get to
about waist high and then you kind of
like dive in take the rest of the plunge
under the wave or something that's what
I did um and then I just never came back
up not sure what happened uh I did it
running into the water with a couple of
guys and so my idea of what happened is
really just that I took like a stray
fist elbow knee foot something to the
side of my head uh the left side of my
head was sore for about a month
afterward so must have taken a pretty
big knock and then uh they both came up
and I didn't and so I was face down in
the water for a while I was conscious um
and then eventually just you know
realized I couldn't hold my breath any
longer and I keep saying took a big
drink um people I don't know if they
like that I say that it seems like I'm
making light of it all but um this is
kind of how I am and I don't know
like I'm a
very relaxed sort of stressfree person I
rolled with the
punches for a lot of this I kind of took
it in stride it's like all right well
what can I do next how can I improve my
life even a little bit um on a
day-to-day basis at first just trying to
find some way to heal as much of my body
as possible um to try to get healed to
try to get off a ventilator um learn as
much as I could so I could somehow
survive um once I left the
hospital um and then thank God I had
like my family around me if I didn't
have my parents uh my siblings then I
would have never made it this far
they've done so much for me um more than
like I can ever than them for honestly
and a lot of people don't have that a
lot of people in my situation their
families either aren't capable of
providing for them or honestly just
don't want to and so they get placed
somewhere and you know in some sort of
home uh so thankfully I had my family I
have a great group of friends a great
group of buddies from college who have
all rallied around me and we're all um
still Incredibly Close people always say
you know if you're lucky you'll end up
with one or two friends from high school
that you keep throughout your life I
have uh about 10 10 or 12 from high
school that have all stuck around and we
still get together all of us twice a
year um we call it the spring series and
the fall series um this last one we all
did uh we dressed up like X-Men so I did
a Professor Xavier and it was freaking
awesome it was so good so yeah I have
such a great support system around me
and so you know being a quadriplegic
isn't that bad I get waited on um all
the time people bring me food and drinks
and I get to sit around and watch as
much TV and movies and Anime as I want I
get to read as much as I want um I mean
it's it's great it's beautiful to see
that you see the Silver Lining and all
of this uh was just going back do you
remember the moment when you first
realized you're paralyzed from NE down
yep I was face down in the water um
right when I whatever something hit my
head I um tried to get up and I realized
I couldn't move and it just sort of
clicked I'm like all right I'm paralyzed
can't move what do I do um if I can't
get up I can't flip over can't do
anything then I'm going to drown
eventually um and I knew I couldn't hold
my breath forever so I just held my
breath and thought about it for maybe 10
15 seconds um I've heard from other
people that like look onlookers I guess
the two girls that pulled me out of the
water were two of my best friends they
were lifeguards um and one of them said
that um it looked like my body was sort
of shaking in the water like I was
trying to flip over and stuff um but I
knew I knew immediately and I just kind
of I realized that that's like what my
situation was from here on out maybe if
I got to the hospital they'd be able to
do something when I was in the hospital
like right before surgery I was trying
to calm uh one of my friends down I had
like brought her with me from college to
camp and she was just balling over me
and I was like hey it's going to be fine
like don't worry um I was cracking some
jokes to try to lighten the mood um the
nurse had called my mom and I was like
don't tell my mom um she's just going to
be stressed out call her after I'm out
of surgery cuz at least she'll have some
answers then like whether I live or not
really um and I didn't want her to be
stressed through the whole thing but I
knew and then when I first woke up after
surgery um I was super drugged up uh
they had me on fentanyl like three ways
which was awesome um I don't I don't
recommend it but um I saw I saw some
crazy stuff uh on that Fentanyl and it
was still the best I've ever felt uh on
drugs um medication sorry on medication
um and uh I remember the first time I
saw my mom in the hospital I was just
balling I had like ventilator in um like
I couldn't talk or anything and uh I
just started crying because it was more
like seeing her not that I mean the
whole situation obviously was pretty
rough but uh it was just like seeing her
face for the first time was pretty hard
but um yeah I just I never had like a
moment of you know man I'm
paralyzed this sucks I don't want to
like be around anymore it was always
just I hate that I have to do this but
like sitting here and wallowing isn't
going to help so immediate acceptance
yeah yeah has there been low point along
the way yeah yeah sure um I mean there
are days when I don't really feel like
doing anything not So Much Anymore like
not for the last couple years I don't
really feel that way I've
um more so just wanted to try to do
anything possible to make my life better
at this point um but at the beginning
there were some ups and downs there were
some really hard things to adjust to um
first off just like the first couple
months the amount of pain I was in was
really really hard I mean I remember
screaming at the top of my lungs in the
hospital because I thought my legs were
on fire and obviously I can't feel
anything but it's all nerve pain and so
that was a really hard night I asked
them to give me as much pain meds as
possible they're like you've had as much
as you can have so just kind of deal
with it go to a happy place sort of
thing so that was a pretty low Point um
and then every now and again it's hard
like realizing things that I wanted to
do in my life that I won't be able to do
anymore um you know I always wanted to
be a husband and father and I just don't
think that I could do it now as a
quadriplegic maybe it's possible but I'm
not sure I would ever um put you know
someone I love through that um like
having to take care of me and stuff um
not being able to you know go out and
play sports I was a huge athlete growing
up so that was pretty hard um just
little things too when I realize I can't
do them anymore like there's something
really special about being able to hold
a book and smell a book like the feel uh
the texture the smell like as you turn
the pages like I just love it I can't do
it anymore and it's little things like
that um the two-year Mark was pretty
rough two years is when they say you
will um get back BAS basically as much
as you're ever going to get back as far
as movement and sensation goes and so
for the first two years that was the
only thing on my mind was like try as
much as I can to move my fingers my
hands my feet everything possible to try
to get sensation movement back and then
when the 2year mark hit so um June 30th
2018 I was I was really sad that that's
kind of where I was
um and then just randomly here and there
but I was never like depressed for long
periods of time just it never seemed
worthwhile to me what gave you strength
my faith my faith in God uh was a big
one my understanding that it was all for
a purpose and even if that purpose
wasn't anything involving neuralink even
if that purpose was you know
there's there's a story in the Bible
about job and I think it's a really
really popular story about how job you
know has all of these terrible things
happen to him and he Praises God
throughout uh the whole
situation I thought and I think a lot of
people think for most of their lives
that they are job that they're the ones
going through something terrible and
they just need to you know praise God
through the whole thing and everything
will work out at some point after my
accident I realized that I
might not be job that I might be you
know one of his children that gets
killed or kidnapped or taken from him
and so it's about terrible things that
happen to those around you who you love
so maybe you know in this case my mom
would be job and she has to get through
something extraordinarily hard and I
just need to try and make it as best as
possible for her because um she's the
one that really going through this
massive trial um and that gave me a lot
of strength and obviously my family um
my family and my friends they they give
me all the strength that I need uh on a
day-to-day basis so makes things a lot
easier having that great support system
around me from everything I've seen of
you online your streams and uh the way
you are today I really admire let's say
your unwavering positive outlook on life
has that always been this way
yeah yeah I've I mean I've just
always thought I could do anything I
ever wanted to do there was never
anything too big like whatever I set my
mind to I felt like I could do it um I
didn't want to do a lot I wanted to like
travel around and be sort of like a
gypsy and like go work odd jobs I had
this dream of traveling around Europe
and being like I don't know a Shepherd
in like Wales or Ireland and then going
to being a fisherman in Italy uh doing
all these things for like a year like
it's such like cliche things but I just
thought it would be so much fun to go
and travel and do different things and
so um I've always just seen the best in
people around me too and I've always
tried to be good to people and growing
up with my mom too she's like the most
positive energetic person in the world
and we're all just people people like uh
I just get along great with people um I
really enjoy meeting new people and so
um I just wanted to do everything um
this is It's kind of just how I've been
it's just great to see that cynicism
didn't take over given everything you've
been through yeah that's uh was that
like a deliberate choice you made that
you're not going to let this keep you
down yeah a bit also like I just it's
just kind of how I am I just like I said
I roll with the punches with everything
I always used to tell people like I
don't stress about things much um and
whenever I'd see people getting stressed
just say you know like it's not hard
just don't stress about it and like
that's all you need to do uh and they're
like that's not how that works like it
works for me like just don't stress and
everything will be fine like everything
will work out obviously not everything
always goes well and it's not like it
all works out for the best all the time
but I just don't think stress has had uh
any place in my life since I was a
kid what was the experience like of you
being selected to be the first human
being to have a neuralink device
implanted in your brain were you scared
excited no no it was cool
um like I was I was never afraid of it I
to think through a lot should I should I
do this um like be the first person I
could wait until number two or three and
get a better version of the neuralink
like the first one might not work maybe
um it's actually going to kind of suck
um it's going to be the worst version
ever in a person so why would I do the
first one like I've already kind of been
selected I could just tell them you know
like okay find someone else and then
I'll do number two or three like I'm
sure they would let me they're looking
for a few people anyways but ultimately
I was like I don't know there's
something about being the first one to
do something it's pretty cool I always
thought that if I had the chance that I
would like to do something for the first
time um this seemed like a pretty good
opportunity um and I was I was never
scared I think my
like Faith had a huge uh part in that I
always felt like God Was preparing me
for something
um I almost wish it wasn't this because
I had many conversations with God about
not wanting to do any of this as a
quadriplegic I told him you know I'll go
out and talk to people I'll go out and
travel the world and talk to you know
stadiums thousands of people give my
testimony I'll do all of it but like
heal me first don't make me do all this
in a chair that sucks um and I guess he
won that argument I didn't really have
much of a choice I always felt like
there was
something going on and to see
how I guess easily I made it through the
interview process and how quickly
everything happened um how the star sort
of aligned with all of this it it just
told me like as the surgery was getting
closer it just told me that you know it
it was all meant to happen it was all
meant to be and so I shouldn't be afraid
of anything that's to come and so I
wasn't I kept telling myself like you
know you say that now but as soon as the
surgery comes you're probably going to
be freaking out like you're about to
have brain surgery and brain surgery is
a big deal for a lot of people but it's
a even bigger deal for me like it's all
I have left the amount of times I've
been like thank you God that you didn't
take my brain and my personality and my
ability to think um my like love of
learning like my character everything
like thank you so much like as long as
you left me that then I think I can get
by and I was about to let people go like
root around and they're like hey we're
going to go like put some stuff in your
brain like hopefully it works out um and
so it was it was something that gave me
pause but like I said how smoothly
everything went I never expected for a
second that anything would go wrong plus
the more people I met on the borrow side
and on the nuring side they're just the
most impressive people in the world like
I
can't speak enough to how much I trust
these people with my life and how
impressed I am with all of them and to
see the excitement on their faces to
like walk into a room and roll into a
room and see all of these people looking
at me like we're just we're so excited
like we've been working so hard on this
and it's finally happened
it's super infectious and um it just
makes me want to do it even more and to
help them achieve their dreams like I
don't know it's so it's so rewarding and
I'm so happy for all of them honestly
what was the uh day of surgery like
what's uh when did you wake up what' you
feel yeah minute by minute yeah were you
freaking out no no I thought I was going
to but as surgery approached the night
before the morning of I was just excited
like I was like let's make this happen I
think I said that uh something like that
to Elon on the phone uh beforehand we
were like U FaceTiming and I was like
let's rock and roll and he's like let's
do it uh I I don't know I just I wasn't
scared so we woke up I think we had to
be at the hospital at like 5:30 a.m. I
think surgery was at like 700 a.m. so we
woke up pretty early I'm not sure much
of us slept that night um um got to the
hospital 5 :30 went through like all the
pre op stuff everyone was super nice uh
Elon was supposed to be there in the
morning um but something went wrong with
his Planes so we ended up FaceTiming uh
that was cool had one of the greatest
onliners of my life after that phone
call um hung up with him there were like
20 people around me and I was like I
just hope he wasn't too Star Struck
talking to me nice and yeah good well
done yeah yeah did you write that ahead
of time or just came it just came to me
I was like this is this seems right you
know went into surgery um I asked if I
could pray right beforehand so I like
prayed over the room I asked God if you
would like be with my mom in case
anything happened to me and uh just to
like calm her nerves out there uh woke
up played a bit of a prank on my mom uh
I don't know if you've heard about it
yeah I read about it yeah uh she was she
was not happy uh can you take me through
the prank and yeah this is something you
regret doing that no no no not one bit
um it was something it was something I I
had talked about ahead of time with my
buddy Bane I was like I would really
like to play a prank on my mom um uh
very specifically my mom she's very
gullible um I think she had knee surgery
once even and um after she came out of
knee surgery um uh she was super groggy
she's like I can't feel my legs and my
dad looked at her he was like you don't
have any legs like they they had they
had to amputate both your legs and we
just do very mean things to her all the
time um I'm so surprised that she still
loves us um but right after surgery I
was really worried that I was going to
be too like groggy like not all there I
had had anesthesia once before and it it
messed me up like I could not function
um for a while afterwards and I
um I like said a lot of things that I
was like I was really worried that I was
going to start I don't know like
dropping dropping some bombs and I
wouldn't even know I wouldn't remember
um so I was like like please God don't
let that happen and please let me be
there enough to do this to my mom um and
so she walked in uh after surgery it was
like the first time they had been able
to see me after surgery
and she just looked at me she said hi
like how are you how are you doing how
do you feel and I looked at her and just
this very I think the anesthesia helped
very like groggy sort of confused look
on my face it's like who who are you and
she just started looking around the room
like at the surgeons at the doctors like
what did you do to my son like you need
to fix this right now tear started
streaming I saw how much she was
freaking out I was like I can't let this
go on and so I was like Mom Mom I'm fine
like uh it's all right and uh still she
was not happy about it she uh still says
she's going to get me back someday but I
mean I I don't know I don't know what
that's going to look like it's a
lifelong battle Yeah Yeah but it was
good in some sense it was a
demonstration that you still got that's
that's all I wanted to that's all I
wanted it to be and I knew that doing
something super mean to her like that
would show her yeah to show that you're
still there you love her yeah exactly
exactly it's a dark way to do it but I
love it yeah uh what was the first time
you were able to feel that you can use
the neuralink device to affect the world
around you yeah um the first little
taste I got of it was uh actually not
too long after surgery um some of the
neuralink team had brought in um like a
little iPad uh a little tablet screen
and they' put up eight different um
channels um and that were recording some
of my neuron spikes um and they put it
in front of me they're like this is like
real time your brain firing I like
that's super cool um my first thought
was I mean if they're firing now let's
see if I can affect them in some way so
I started trying to like wiggle my
fingers and I just started like scanning
through the channels and one of the
things I was doing was like moving my
index finger up and down and just saw
this yellow Spike on like top row like
third box over or something I saw this
yellow Spike every time I did it and I
was like oh that's cool and everyone
around me was just like what what are
you seeing I was like look look at this
one look at like this top Row third box
over this yellow Spike like that's me
right there there there and everyone was
freaking out they started like clapping
I was like that's super
unnecessary like this is what's supposed
to happen right like so you're imagining
your yourself moving each individual
finger one at a time and then seeing
like you can notice something and then
when you did the index finger you're
like oh yeah I was I was wiggling kind
of all of my fingers to see if anything
would happen there was a lot of other
things going on but that big yellow
Spike was the one that stood out to me
like I'm sure that if I would have
stared at it long enough I could have
mapped out maybe a hundred different
things but the big yellow Spike was the
one that I noticed maybe you could speak
to what it's like to sort of wiggle your
fingers to like to to imagine that the
that that the mental the cognitive
effort required to sort of wiggle your
index finger for example how easy is
that to do pretty easy for me uh it's
something
that at the very beginning after my
accident they told me to try and move my
body as much as possible even if you
know you can't just keep trying because
that's going to create new like neural
Pathways or Pathways in my spinal cord
to like reconnect these things um to
hopefully regain some movement someday
that's fascinating yeah I know it's it's
bizarre but I that's part of the
recovery process is to keep trying to
move your body yep and day as much as
you can and the nervous system does its
thing it's starts reconnecting it'll
start reconnecting um for some people
some people it never works some people
they'll do it like for me I got some
bicep control back um and that's about
it I can if I uh try enough I can wiggle
some of my fingers not like on command
it's more like if I try to move say my
right Pinky and I just keep trying to
move it after a few seconds it'll wiggle
um so I know there's stuff there like I
know like and that happens with you know
a few different of my fingers and stuff
um but yeah that's that's what they tell
you to do um one of the people at the
time when I was in the hospital came in
and told me for one guy who had
recovered um most of his control what he
thought about every day was actually
walking like the act of walking um just
over and over again so I try that for
years I try just imagining walking which
is it's hard it's hard to imagine like
all of the steps that go into well
taking a step like all of the things
that have to move like all of the
activations uh that have to happen along
your leg in order for one step to occur
but you're not just imagining you're
like doing it right I'm trying yeah so
it's like it's
imagining over again what I had to do to
take a step because it's not something
any of us think about we just you want
to walk and you take a step um you don't
think about all of the different things
that are going on in your body so I had
to recreate that in my head as much as I
could and then I practice it over and
over and over so it's not like a third
person perspective as a first person
perspective you're like it's not like
you're imagining yourself walking you're
like literally doing this everything all
the same stuff as if you're walking yeah
which which was hard it was hard at the
beginning like frustrating hard or like
actually cognitively hard like which way
uh it was both um
there's a there's a scene in one of the
Kill Bill movies actually uh oddly
enough where she is like paralyzed I
don't know from like a drug that was in
her system and then she like finds some
way to get into the back of a truck or
something and she stares at her toe and
she says move like move your big toe and
uh after you know a few seconds on
screen she does it and she did that with
every one of her like body parts until
she could move again
I did that for years just stared at my
body and said move your index finger
move your big toe um sometimes
vocalizing it like out loud sometimes
just thinking it I tried every different
way to do this to try to get some
movement back and it's hard because it
it actually is like taxing like
physically taxing on my body which is
something I would have never expected
because it's not like I'm moving but it
feels like there's a buildup of I don't
know the the only way I can describe it
is there are like signals that aren't
getting through from my brain um down
because of my there's that Gap in my
spinal cord so brain down and then from
my hand back up to the brain and so it
feels like those signals um get stuck in
whatever body part that I'm trying to
move and they just build up and build up
and build up until they burst um and
then once they burst I get like this
really weird sensation of everything
sort of like dissipating back out to
level and then I do it again um it's
also just like a fatigue thing like a
muscle fatigue but without actually
moving your muscles it's very very
bizarre and then you know uh if you try
to stare at a body part or think about a
body part and move for two three four
sometimes eight hours it's very taxing
on your mind it's takes a lot of focus
um it was a lot easier at the beginning
because I wasn't able to like control a
TV in my room or anything I wasn't able
to um control any of my environment so
for the first few years a lot of what I
was doing was staring at walls and so um
obviously I did a lot of thinking and I
tried to move a lot just over and over
and over again so you never gave up Sort
of hope there just training hard
essentially yep and I still do it I do
it like subconsciously and I think that
uh that helped a lot with things with
neuralink honestly it's something that I
talked about the other day at the All
Hands that I did at nerling Austin
facility Welcome to Austin by the way
yeah hey thanks man I I went to school
hey thanks thanks man the the
gigafactory was super cool I went toool
cool at Texas A&M so I've been around
for um so you should be saying welcome
to me welcome to Texas Le yeah I get you
um but yeah I was talking about how a
lot of what they've had me do especially
at the beginning um well I still do it
now um is body mapping so like there
will be a visualization of a hand or an
arm on the screen and I have to do that
motion and that's how they sort of train
um the algorithm to like understand what
I'm trying to do and so it it made
things very uh seamless um for me I
think that's really really cool so it's
it's it's amazing to know cuz I I've
learned a lot about the body mapping
procedure yeah like with the with the
interface and everything like that it's
cool to know that you've been
essentially like training to be like
world class at that task yeah yeah I I I
don't know if other quadriplegics like
other paralyzed people give up I hope
they don't um I hope they keep trying
because I've heard other paralyzed
people say like don't ever stop they
tell you two years but um you you just
never know you the human body's capable
of amazing things so um I've heard other
people say don't give up uh like I think
one girl had um spoken to me through
some family members and said that she
had been paralyzed you know for 18 years
and she'd been trying to like wiggle her
index finger for all that time and she
finally got it back like 18 years later
so like I know that it's possible and
I'll never give up doing it I just I do
it when I'm lying down like watching TV
I'll find myself doing it kind of just
almost like on its own it's just
something I've gotten so used to doing
that I don't know I I don't think I'll
ever stop that's really awesome to hear
cuz I think it's one of those things
that can really pay off in in the long
term cuz like it is training you're not
VIs seen the results of that training at
the moment but like there's that like
Olympic level nervous system getting
getting ready for something honestly was
like something that I think nurlink gave
me that um I can't I can't think them
enough for like I can't show my
appreciation for it enough was being
able to visually see that what I'm doing
is actually having some effect yeah um
it's a huge part of the reason why like
I know now that I'm going to keep doing
it forever because before nuring I was
doing it every day and I was just
assuming that things were happening like
it's not like I knew I wasn't getting
back any Mobility or um sensation or
anything so I could have been running up
against a brick wall for all I knew and
with nurlink I get to see like all the
signals happening real time and I get to
see that you know what I'm doing can
actually be mapped you know when we
started doing like click calibrations
and stuff when I go to click my index
finger for a left click that it actually
recognizes that like it it changed how I
think about what's possible with like
retraining my body to move and so yeah
I'll I'll never give up now and also
just the signal that there's still a
Powerhouse of brain there that's like
that's and as the technology develops
that brain is I mean that's the most
important thing about the human body is
the brain and it can do a lot of the
control so what did it feel like when
you first could wiggle the index finger
and and saw the environment respond like
that little yeah where everybody was
being way too dramatic according to you
yeah it was very cool I mean it was cool
but it I keep telling this to people it
made sense to me like it made sense that
you know there are signals still
happening in my brain and that as long
as you had something near it that could
measure those that could record those
then you should be able to like
visualize it in some way like see it
happen and so that was not very
surprising to me I was just like oh cool
like we we found one like we found
something that works um it was cool to
see that their technology worked um and
that everything that they had worked so
hard for was like going to pay off um um
but I hadn't like moved a cursor or
anything at that point I hadn't like
interacted with a computer or anything
at that point um so it it it just made
sense it was cool like like I I I didn't
really know much about BCI at that point
either so I didn't know like what sort
of Step this was actually making um like
I didn't know if this was like a huge
deal or if this was just like okay this
is you know it's cool that we got this
far but we're actually hoping for
something like much better down the road
it's like okay I just thought that they
knew that it turned on so I was like
cool like this is this is cool well did
you like read up on the specs of the
hardware you get installed like the
number of threads kind I knew all of
that but it's all like It's All Greek to
me I was like okay threads 64 threads 16
electrodes 1,24
channels okay like like that that that
math checks out uh sounds right yeah
when was the first time you were able to
move a milous cursor I know it must have
been within the first maybe week a week
or two weeks that I was able to like
first move the cursor and again like it
kind of made sense to me like it it
didn't seem like that big of a deal like
it it it was like okay well how do I
explain this when everyone around you
starts clapping for something that
you've done it's it's easy to say okay
like I did something cool like that was
that was impressive in some way um what
exactly that meant what it was hadn't
really
like set in for me um so again I knew
that me trying to move a body part um
and then that being mapped um in some
sort of like machine learning algorithm
to be able to um identify like my brain
signals and then take that and give me
cursor control that all kind of made
sense to me I don't know like all the in
ins and outs of it but I was like there
are still signals in my brain firing
they just can't get through because
there's like a gap in my spinal cord and
so they just they can't get all the way
down and back up but they're still there
so when I move the cursor for the first
time I was like that's cool but I
expected that that should happen like it
made sense to me um when I moved the
cursor for the first time um with just
my mind without like physically trying
to move so I guess I can get into that
just a little bit like the difference
between attempted movement and imagine
movement yeah that's a fascinating
difference from one to the other yeah
yeah yeah so like attempted movement is
me physically trying to attempt to move
say my hand I try to attempt to move my
hand to the right to the left forward
and back um and that's all attempted
attempt to you know like lift my finger
up and down attempt to kick or something
um I'm physically trying to do all of
those things even if you can't see it
like I'm this would be like me
attempting to like shrug my shoulders or
something that's all attempted movement
um that all that's what I was doing for
the first couple of weeks when they were
going to give me cursor control when I
was doing body mapping it was attempt to
do this attempt to do that when um near
was telling me um
to like imagine doing it it like kind of
made sense to me but it's not something
that people practice like if you started
school um as a child and they said okay
write your name with this pencil and so
you do that like okay now imagine
writing your name with that pencil kids
would think uh like I guess like that
kind of makes sense and they would do it
um but that's not something we're taught
it's all like how to do things
physically we think about like thought
experiments and things but that's not
like that's not like a physical action
of doing things it's more like what you
would do in certain situations so
imagine movement it it never really
connected with me like I guess you could
maybe describe it as like a Prof
professional athlete like has swinging a
baseball bat or swinging like a golf
club like imagine what you're supposed
to do but then you go right to that and
physically do it like you then you get a
bat in your hand and then you do what
you've been imagining and so I don't
have that like connection so telling me
to imagine something versus attempting
it it just there wasn't a lot that I
could do there um mentally I just kind
of had to accept what was going on and
try um but the attempted moving thing it
all made sense to me like if I try to
move then there's a signal being sent in
my brain and as long as they can pick
that up then they should be able to map
it to what I'm trying to do and so when
I first moved the cursor like that it it
was it was like yes this should happen
like I'm I'm not surprised by that well
can you clarify is there supposed to be
a difference between imagine movement
and attempted movement yeah just that in
Imagine movement you're not attempting
to move at all so it's you're like
visualizing doing and then theoretically
is that supposed to be a different part
of the brain that lights up in those two
different situations yeah not
necessarily I think all these signals
can still be represented in Moto cortex
but the the difference I think has to do
with the naturalness of imagining
something inverse got it attempting it
and sort the fatigue of that over time
and by the way on the mic is bliss uh so
like this is just different ways to
prompt you to kind of get to the thing
that you're around that yeah attemp to
movement does sound like the right thing
try yeah I mean it makes sense to me cuz
imagine for me I'll be I would start
visualizing like in my mind visualizing
attempted I would actually start trying
to like yeah there's a I mean I you know
I did like Combat Sports my whole life
like wrestling when I'm imagining a move
see I'm like moving my muscle exactly
like there's a there is a bit of an
activation almost versus like
visualizing yourself like a picture
doing it yeah it's something that I feel
like naturally anyone would do if you
try to tell someone to imagine doing
something they might close their eyes
and then start physically doing it um
but it it's just just click yeah it's
it's hard it was very hard at the
beginning but attempted worked attempted
worked it worked just like it should
work like work like a charm um remember
there was like one Tuesday we were
messing around and I think I get what
swear word you used but there's a swear
word that came out of your mouth when
you figured out you could just do the
direct cursor control yeah that's it it
blew my mind like no pun intended blew
my mind when I
first um moved the cursor just with my
thoughts and not attempting to move it's
something that I found um like over the
couple of weeks like building up to that
um that as I get better cursor controls
like the model uh gets better um then it
gets easier for me to like um like I
don't have to attempt as much to move it
and part of that is something that I had
even talked with them about um when I
was watching the signals of my brain one
day I was watching when I like attempted
to move to the right and I watched the
screen as like I saw the spikes like I
was seeing the spike the signal was
being sent before I was actually
attempting to move um I imagine just
because you know when you go to say move
your hand or any body part that signal
gets sent before you're actually moving
has to make it all the way down and back
up before you actually do any sort of
movement so there's a delay there and I
noticed that there was something going
on in my brain before I was actually
attempting to move
that um my brain was like anticipating
what I wanted to do and that all started
sort of um I don't know like percolating
in my brain like it just it was just
sort of there like always in the back
like that's so weird that it could do
that it kind of makes sense but I wonder
what that means um as far as like using
the neuralink and um you know and then
as
I was playing around with the attempted
movement and playing around with the
cursor and I saw that like as the cursor
control got better that it
was anticipating my movements um and
what I wanted it to do like cursor
movements what I wanted to do a bit
better and a bit better and then one day
I just randomly as I was playing web
grid I um like looked at a Target before
I had started like attempting to move I
was just trying to like get over like
train um my eyes to start looking ahead
like okay this is the target I'm on but
if I look over here to this target I
know I can like maybe be a bit quicker
getting there and I looked over and the
cursor just shot over it it was wild
like it I had to take a step back like I
was like this should not be happening
all day I was just smiling I was so
giddy I was like guys do you know that
this works like I can just think it and
it happens which like they' all
been saying this entire time like I
can't believe like you're doing all this
with your mind I'm like yeah but is it
really with my mind like I'm attempting
to move and it's just picking that up so
it doesn't feel like it's with my mind
but when I moved it for the first time
like that it was oh man it like it made
me think that this technology that what
I'm doing is actually
way way more impressive than I ever
thought it was way cooler than I ever
thought and it just open open up a whole
new world of possibilities of like what
could possibly happen with this
technology and what I might be able to
be capable of with it because you had
felt for the first time like this was
digital telepathy like you're
controlling a digital device with your
mind y I mean this a that's a real
moment of Discovery that's really cool
like you've discovered something I've
seen like scientists talk about like a
big aha moment you know like Nobel prize
winning they'll have this like
holy crap yeah like that's what that's
what it felt like like I didn't feel
like like I felt like I had discovered
something but for me maybe not
necessarily for like the World At Large
or like this field at large it just felt
like an aaot moment for me like oh this
works like obviously it works um and so
that's what I do like all the time now
uh I kind of intermix um the attempted
movement and uh imagined movement I do
it all like together because I found
that there is some interplay with it
that maximizes efficiency with the
cursor so it's not all like one or the
other it's not all just I only use
attempted or I only use like imagine
movements it's more I use them um in
parallel and uh I can do one or the
other I can just completely think about
um whatever I'm doing but um I don't
know I I like to play around with it I
also like to just experiment with these
things like every now and again I'll get
this idea in my head like hm I wonder if
this works and I'll just start doing it
and then afterwards I'll tell them by
the way I wasn't doing that like you
guys wanted me to um I was I I thought
of something and I wanted to try it and
so I did it seems like it works so maybe
we should like explore that a little bit
so I think that Discovery is not just
for you at least from my perspective
that's a discovery
for everyone else who ever uses in your
link that this is possible like I don't
think that's an obvious thing that this
is even possible it's like uh I was
saying to Bliss earlier uh it's like the
4minute mile people thought it was
impossible to run a mile in four minutes
and once the first person did it then
everyone just started doing it so like
just to show that it's possible that
paves the way to like anyone can now do
it that's the thing that's actually
possible you don't need to do the
attempted movement you just go Direct
that's crazy that is crazy it is crazy
yeah uh for people who don't know can
you explain how the link app works you
have an amazing stream on the topic your
first stream I think on X uh describing
the app uh can can you just describe how
it works yeah so it's just an app that
Nur link created um to help me interact
with a computer so on the link app uh
there are a few different settings and
different uh modes and things I can do
on it so there's like the body mapping
which we kind of touched on um there's a
calibration um calibration is how I
actually get cursor control so
calibrating what's going on in my brain
to uh translate that into cursor control
so it will pop out um models what what
they use I think is like time so it
would be you know five minutes in
calibration will give me um so good of a
model and then if I'm in it for 10
minutes and 15 minutes uh the models
will progressively get better and um so
you know the longer I'm in it generally
the um better the models will get that's
really cool cuz you often refer to the
models the model is the thing that's
constructed once you go through the
calibration step and then you also
talked about some sometimes sometimes
you'll play like a really difficult game
like snake just to see how good the
model is yeah yeah so snake is kind of
like my litm best for models if I can
control snake decently well then I I
know I have a pretty good model so yeah
the link app has all of those it has web
Grid in it now um it's also how I like
connect to the computer just in general
um so uh they've given me a lot of like
voice controls with it at this point so
I can you know say like connect or
implant disconnect and um as long as I
have uh that charger handy then I can
connect to it so the charger is also how
I connect to the link app to connect to
the computer I have to have um the
implant charger uh over my head when I
want to connect to have it wake up cuz
the implant's in hibernation mode uh
like always when I'm not using it um I
think there's a setting to like wake it
up every you know so long so we could
set it to half an hour or 5 hours or
something if I just want it to wake up
uh periodically um so yeah I'll like
connect to the link app and then go
through all sorts of things uh
calibration for the day maybe body
mapping I have like I made them give me
like a little homework tab um because I
am very forgetful and I forget to do
things a lot um so I have like a lot of
data collection things uh that they want
me to do is the body mapping part of the
data collection or is that also part of
the yeah it is it's something that they
want me to do um daily which I've been
slacking on because I've been doing so
much media and traveling so much so I've
been you got super famous yeah I've I've
been a terrible um first candidate for
how much I've uh been slacking on my
homework um but yeah it's just something
that they want me to do every day to you
know track um how uh well the neuralink
is performing over time and have
something to give I imagine to give to
the FDA to you know create all sorts of
fancy charts and stuff and show like hey
this is what the neuralink this is how
it's performing you know day one versus
day 90 versus day 180 and things like
that what's the calibration step like is
it is it like move left move right it's
uh a bubble game so there will be like
yellow bubbles that pop up on the screen
at first it is open loop so open loop
this is something that I still don't
fully understand the open loop and
closed loop thing me and Bliss talked
for a long time about the difference
between the two from the on the
technical side so it' be great to hear
your okay your side of the story Loop is
basically um I have no control over the
cursor um the cursor will be moving on
its own across the screen and I am
following by intention um the cursor to
different Bubbles and then my um the
algorithm is training off of what like
the signals it's getting are as I'm
doing this there are a couple different
ways that they've done it they call it
Center out Target so there will be a
bubble in the middle and then eight
bubbles around that and the cursor will
go from uh the middle uh to one side so
say middle to left back to Middle to up
to Middle like up right and they'll do
that all the way around uh the circle
and I will follow that cursor um the
whole time and then it will train off of
my intentions what it is expecting my
intentions to be um throughout the whole
process can you actually speak to when
you say follow yes you don't mean with
your eyes you mean with your intentions
yeah so uh generally for calibration I'm
doing attempted movements uh because I
think it works better I think the better
models as I progress through calibration
um make it
easier um to use imagine movement wait
wait so calibrated on attempted movement
will create a model that makes it really
effective for you to then use the force
yes I've tried um doing calibration with
imagined movement and it just doesn't
work as well um for some reason so that
was the center out targets there's also
one where you know a random Target will
pop up on the screen and it's the same I
just like move I follow along um with
wherever the cursor is to that Target
all across the screen um I've tried
those with imagine movement and for some
reason models just don't
um they don't give
as high level as quality when we get
into Clos Loop um I haven't played
around with it a ton so maybe like the
different ways we're doing calibration
now might make it a bit better but what
I've found is there will be a point in
calibration where I can use uh imagine
movement before that point it doesn't
really work so if I do calibration for
45 minutes the first
15 minutes I can't use imagine movement
it just like doesn't work for some
reason um and after a certain point uh I
I can just sort of feel it I can tell it
moves different uh that's the best way I
can I can describe it like it's almost
as if it is anticipating what I am going
to do again before I go to do it um and
so using attempted movement for 15
minutes at some point I can kind of tell
when I like move my eyes to the next
Target that the cursor is starting to
like pick up like it's starting to
understand it's learning like what I'm
going to do so first of all it's really
cool that I mean you are a true Pioneer
in all of this you're like
exploring how to do every aspect of this
most effectively and there's just uh I
imagine so many lessons learn from this
so thank you for being a Pioneer in all
these kinds of different like super
technical ways and it's also cool they
hear that there's like a different like
feeling to the experience when it's
calibrated in different ways like just
cuz I mean I imagine your brain is doing
something different and that's why
there's a different feeling to it and
then try and Define the words and the
measurements to those feelings would be
also interesting but at the end of the
day you can also measure that your
actual performance on whether it's snake
or web grid you can see like what
actually works well and you're saying
for the open loop
calibration the attempted movement works
best for now yep yep so the so the open
loop you don't get the feedback that's
something that you did something yeah
I'm is that frustrating no no it makes
sense to me like uh we've done it with a
cursor and without a cursor in open loop
so sometimes it's just um say for like
the center out the um you'll start
calibration with a bubble lighting up
and I push towards that bubble and then
when that bubble you know when it's
pushed towards that bubble for say 3
seconds the bubble will pop and then I
come back to the middle um so I'm doing
it all Ju Just by my intentions like
that's what it's learning anyway so it
makes sense that as long as I follow
what they want me to do you know like
Follow the yellow brick road that it'll
all work out um you're full of great
references uh is the is the bubble game
fun like yeah they always feel so bad
making me do calibration like oh we're
about to do you know a 40-minute
calibration I'm like all right do you
guys want to do two of them um like I'm
always asking to like whatever they need
I'm more than happy to do and it's not
it's not bad like I get to lie there and
um or sit in my chair and like do these
things with some great people I get to
have great conversations I can give them
feedback um I can talk about all sorts
of things uh I could throw something on
on my TV in the background and kind of
like split my attention between them um
like it's not bad at all I don't like is
there score that you get like can you do
better on the bubble game no I would
love that um I I I would love Yeah
writing down uh s suggests from noan
that's uh make it more fun gamified yeah
that's one thing that I really really
enjoy about web grid is because I'm so
competitive um like the higher the
BPS the higher the score I know the
better I'm doing and so if I I think
I've asked at one point one of the guys
like if he could give me some sort of
numerical feedback for calibration like
I would like to know what they're
looking at like oh you know it is um we
see like this number while you're doing
calibration and that means at least on
our end that we think calibration is
going well um and I would love that
because I would like to know if what I'm
doing is going well or not but then
theyve also told like yeah not
necessarily like one to one it doesn't
actually mean that calibration is going
well in some ways um so it's not like
100% And they don't want to like skew
what I'm experiencing or want me to
change things based on that if that
number isn't always accurate to like how
the model will turn out or how like the
end result that's at least what I got
from it uh one thing I do uh I have
asked them in something that I really
enjoy um striving for is towards the end
of calibration there is like a time
between targets um and so I like to keep
like at the end that number as low as
possible so at the beginning it can be
you know four five six seconds between
me popping bubbles but towards the end I
like to keep it below like 1.5 or if I
could get it to like one second between
like bubbles because in my mind that
translates um really nicely to something
like web grid where I know if I can hit
a Target uh one every second that I'm
doing real real well there you that's a
way to get a score on the calibrations
like the speed how quickly can you get
from Bubble to Bubble yeah uh so there's
the open loop and then it goes to the
closed loop the closed loop can already
start giving you a sense because you're
getting feedback of like how good the
model is yeah so closed loop is when I
um first get cursor control and how
they've uh described it to me someone
who does not understand this stuff I am
the dumbest person in the room every
time I'm with any of
humility um is that I am closing the
loop so I am actually now um the one
that is like finishing the loop of
whatever this Loop is I don't even know
what the loop is they've never told me
they just say there is a loop and at one
point it's open and I can't control and
then I get control and it's closed so
I'm finishing the loop so how long the
calibration usually take you said like
10 15 minutes well yeah they're they're
trying to get that number down pretty
low um that's what we've been working on
a lot recently is getting that down is
uh low as possible so that way you know
if this is something that people need to
do on a daily basis or if something
people need to do on a um like every
other day basis or once a week they
don't want people to be sitting in
calibration for long periods of time I
think they wanted to get it down s
minutes or below um at least where we're
at right now it'd be nice if they you
never had to do calibration um so we'll
get there at some point I'm sure the
more we learn about the brain and um
like I think that's you know the dream
um I think right now for me to get like
really really good models um I'm in
calibration 40 or 45 minutes um and I
don't mind like I said they always feel
really bad but if it's going to get me a
model that can like break these records
on web grid I'll stay in it for flipping
two hours let's talk business so web
grid um I saw a presentation that where
Bliss said by March you selected 89,000
Target gets a web grid can you explain
this game what what what is web grid and
what does it take to be a worldclass
performer and web grid as you continue
to break World Records yeah
um it's like a gold medalist like well
you know I'd like to thank I'd like to
thank everyone who's helped me get here
my coaches my parents for driving me to
practice every day at 5: in the morning
um like to thank god um and just overall
my dedication to my the interviews with
athletes are always like that exact it's
like that template yeah so so um so web
grid is grid it it's it's literally just
a grid they can make it as big or small
as you can make a grid a single box on
that grid will light up and you go and
click it and it is a way for them to
Benchmark how good a BCI is so it's you
know pretty straightforward you just
click targets only one blue cell appears
and you're supposed to move the mouse to
there and click on it so I I like
playing on like bigger grids cuz it the
bigger the grid the like more BPS it's
bits per second um that you get every
time you click one so I'll say I'll play
on like a 35x 35 um grid and then one of
those little squares cell call it Target
whatever will light up and you move the
cursor there and you click it and then
you do that um
forever and you've been able to achieve
at first eight bits per second and You'
recently broke that yeah I'm I'm at 8.5
right now I would have beaten that
literally the day before I came to
Austin um but I had like a I don't know
like a 5-second lag right at the end and
um I just had to wait until the latency
calm down and then I kept clicking but
um I was at like
8.01 and then 5 Seconds of lag and then
the next like three targets I clicked
all stayed at 8.01 so if I would have
been able to click um during that time
of lag I probably would have hit I don't
know I might have hit nine so I'm there
I'm like I'm really close and then this
whole Austin trip has really gotten in
the way of my web grid playing ability
frustrating yeah so that's all you
thinking about right now yeah I know I
just I just want I want to do better at
nine I want to do better I want to hit
nine I think well I know nine is very
very achievable I'm right there um I
think 10 I could hit maybe in the next
month like I could do it probably in the
next few weeks if I really push I think
you and Elon are basically the same
person CU last time I did a podcast with
him he came in extremely frustrated that
he can't beat Uber Lilith as a Droid
that was like a year ago I think I
forget like solo and you I could just
tell there's some percentage of his
brain in entire time was thinking like I
wish I was right now
attempting I think he did it that night
he did it that night he stayed up and
did it that night which is crazy to me I
mean it's in a in a in a fundamental way
it's really inspiring and what you're
doing is inspiring in that way because I
mean it's not just about the game
everything you're doing there has impact
by striving to do well on web grid
you're helping everybody figure out how
to create the system all along like the
decoding the software the hardware the
calibration all of it how to make all of
that work so you can do everything else
really well yeah it's just really
fun well that's also that's part of the
thing is like making it fun yeah it's
addicting I'm I've joked about um like
what they actually did when they went in
and put this thing in my brain they must
have flipped a switch to make me uh more
susceptible to these kinds of games to
make me addicted to like web Grid or
something yeah do you know bliss's high
score yeah he said like 14 or something
17 oh boy 17.1 or something 177 a01 yeah
he told me he like does it on the floor
with peanut butter and he like fasts
it's it's it's weird it sounds like
cheating sounds like performance
enhancing uh noan like the first time
Nolan uh played this game he asked you
know how good are we at this game and I
think you told me right then you're
going to you're going to try to beat me
I'm going to get there someday I think I
I fully believe you I think I can I'm
excited for that yeah so I've been
playing first off with the dwell cursor
which really hampers my web grid playing
ability basically I have to wait3
seconds for every click oh so you can't
do the click so you have to you have to
so you click by dwelling you said three3
seconds which which sucks it really
slows down how much I'm able to like how
high I'm able to get I still hit like 50
I think I hit like 50
something trials net trials per minute
in that um which was pretty good um
because I'm able to like um there's one
of the settings is also like how slow
you need to be moving in order to
initiate a click to start a click so I
can tell sort of when I'm on that um
threshold to start initiating a click
just a bit early so I'm not fully
stopped over the Target when I go to
click I'm doing it like on my way to the
targets a little to try to time it just
right wow so you're slowing down yeah
just a just a hair right before the TS
this is like a lead performance okay but
that's still it's it sucks that there's
a ceiling of the three well there I can
get down to 0 2 and 0.1 Point one's what
yeah and I've played with that a little
bit too um I have to adjust a ton of
different parameters in order to play
with 0.1 and I don't have control over
all that on my end yet it also changes
like how the models are trained like if
I train a model like in web grid like a
bootstrap on a model which basically is
them uh training models as I'm playing
web grid um based off of like the web
grid data that I'm so like if I play web
grid for 10 minutes they can train off
that data specifically um in order to
get me a better model um if I do that
with. 3 versus 0.1 the models come out
different um the way that they um
interact it's just much much different
so I have to be really careful I found
that doing it with3 is actually better
in some ways unless I can do it with 01
and change all of the different
parameters then that's more ideal cuz
obviously point3 is faster than 0.1 so
uh I could I could get there I can get
there can you click using your brain for
right now it's the hover clicking with
the dwell cursor um we before all the
thread retraction stuff happened we were
calibrating clicks left click right
click that was um my previous ceiling um
before I broke the record again with the
dwell cursor was I think on a 35x 35
grid with left and right click and you
get more um BPS more bits per second
using multiple clicks because it's more
difficult oh because what is it the you
get you're supposed to do either a left
click or a like right click is it
different color like this yeah blue
targets for left click orange targets
for right click is what they had done so
uh my previous record of
7.5 with the blue and the orange targets
yeah which um I think if I went back to
that now um doing the click calibration
I would be able to and being able to
like initiate clicks on my own I think I
would break that 10 ceiling like in a
couple days max like yeah you'll start
making Bliss nervous about his 17 why do
you think we haven't given him the EXA
exactly uh so what would it feel like
with the retractions that there is uh
some of the threads retracted that
sucked it it was really really hard the
day they told me was the day of my big
neuralink tour at their Fremont facility
they told me like right before we went
over there it was really hard to hear my
initial reaction was all right go in fix
it like go in take it out and fix it the
first surgery was so easy like like I
went to sleep couple hours later I woke
up and here we are um I didn't feel any
pain didn't take like any um
um pain pills or anything so I just knew
that if they wanted to they could go in
and put in a new one like next day if
that's what it took cuz I just wanted I
wanted it to be better and I wanted not
to lose the capability I had so much fun
um playing with it for a few weeks for a
month I had like it had opened up so
many doors for me it had opened up so
many more possibilities that I didn't
want to lose it after mon I thought it
would have been a cruel twist of fate if
I had gotten to
see the view from like the top of this
mountain and then have it all come
crashing down after a month and I knew
like say the top of the mountain but uh
like I how I saw it was I was just now
starting to climb the mountain and I was
it like there was so much more that I
knew was possible and so to have all of
that be taken away was really really
hard um
but then on the drive over to the
facility I don't know like five minute
drive whatever it is um I talked with my
parents about it I prayed about it I was
just like you know I'm not going to let
this ruin my day I'm not going to let
this um ruin this amazing like tour that
they have set up for me like I want to
go show everyone how much I appreciate
all the work they're doing I want to go
like meet all of the people who have
made this possible and I want to go have
one of the best days of my life and I
did and it was amazing and it absolutely
was one of the best days I've uh ever
been privileged to experience and then
for a few days uh I was pretty down in
the dumps but uh for like the first few
days afterwards I was just like I didn't
know if it was ever going to work again
and then I just I made the decision that
it
even if I lost the ability to use the
neuralink even if I lost um even if I
like lost out on everything to come um
if I could keep giving them data in any
way then I would do that if I needed to
just do um like some the data collection
every day or body mapping every day for
a year then I would do it um because I
know that everything I'm doing helps
everyone to come after me and that's all
I wanted I guess the whole reason that I
did did this was to help people and I
knew that anything I could do to help I
would continue to do even if I never got
to use the cursor again then you know I
was just happy to be a part of it and
everything that I had done was just a
perk it was something that I got to
experience and I know how amazing it's
going to be for everyone to come after
me so might as well just
keep trucking along you know well that
said you were able to get to work your
way up to get the performance back so
this is like going from Rocky one to
Rocky two so when did you first
realize that this is possible and what
gave you sort of the strength the
motivation DET determination to do it to
increase back up and beat your previous
record uh yeah I was within a couple
weeks like again this feels like I'm
interviewing an
athlete this is great I like to thing my
parents uh the road the road back was
long and hard prob many difficulties
there were Dark
Days uh
uh it was it was a couple weeks uh I
think and then there was just a turning
point I think they had switched how um
they were measuring um the neuron spikes
in my brain like the Bliss help me out
uh yeah the way in which we were
measuring uh the behavior of individual
neurons yeah so we're switching from uh
sort of individual Spike detection to
something called Spike band power which
uh if you watch the previous segments
with either me or DJ you probably have
some content yeah okay so when when they
did that it was kind of like uh you know
light over the head like light bulb
moment like oh this works and um this
seems like like we can run with this and
I saw the um uptick performance
immediately like I could feel it when
they switched over I was like this is
better like this is good like everything
up till this point for the last few
weeks last like whatever three or four
weeks cuz it was before they even told
me like everything before this sucked
like let's keep doing what we're doing
now and at that point it was not like oh
I know I'm still only at like say in web
grid terms like four or five BPS
compared to my 7.5 before but I know
that if we keep doing this then like I
can I can get back there and then they
gave me the dwell cursor and the dwell
cursor sucked at first it's not
obviously not what I want but it gave me
a path forward to be able to continue
using it and um hopefully to continue to
help out and so I just ran with it never
looked back like I said I just kind of
person I roll with the punches anyways
so what was the process what was the
feedback loop on the figuring out how to
do the spike detection in a way that
would actually work well for Noah yeah
it's a great question so maybe just to
describe first how the actual update
worked it basically an update to your
implant so we just did an over the a
software update to his implant and way
you'd update your Tesla or your iPhone
and uh that firmware change enabl us to
record sort of averages of populations
of neurons nearby individual electrodes
so we have uh of less resolution about
which individual neuron is doing what
but we have a broader picture of what's
going on nearby an electrode overall and
uh that feedback I mean basically as no
one described it was immediate when we
flipped that switch uh I think the first
day we did that you hit three or four
BPS right out of the box and that was a
light bul moment for okay this is the
right path to go down and from there
there's a lot of feedback around like
how to make this useful for independent
use so what we about ultimately is that
you can use it independently to do
whatever you want and uh to get to that
point it required us to re-engineer the
ux as you talked about the dwell cursor
to make it something that you can use
independently without us need to be
involved all the time and uh yeah this
is obviously the start of this journey
still hopefully we get back to the
places where you're doing multiple
clicks and uh using that to control much
more fluidly everything and much more
naturally the applications that you're
trying to interface with and most
importantly get that web grid number up
yes yeah so how's the
on the hover
click do you accidentally click stuff
sometimes y like what's how hard is it
to avoid accidentally clicking I have to
continuously keep it moving basically so
like I said there's a threshold where it
will initiate a click so if I ever um
drop below that it'll start and I have3
seconds to move it before it clicks
anything um and if I don't want it to
ever get there I just keep it moving at
a certain speed and like just constantly
like doing circles on screen screen
moving it back and forth to keep it from
clicking stuff um I actually noticed uh
a couple weeks back that I was when I
was not using the implant I was just
moving my hand back and forth or in
circles like I was trying to keep the
cursor from clicking and I was just
doing it like while I was trying to go
to sleep and I was like okay this is a
problem yeah to avoid the clicking I
guess does does that create problems
like when you're gaming accidentally
click a thing
like yeah yeah it happens in chess um
I've lost I've lost a number of games
because I'll accidentally click
something I think the first time I ever
beat you was because of an accident
click it's a nice excuse right you can
always anytime you lose you could just
say that was accidental yeah you said
the app improved a lot from version one
when you first started using it it was
very different so can you just talk
about the trial and error that you went
through with the team like 200 plus
pages of notes like what's that process
like of yeah work going back and forth
and working together to improve the
thing it's a lot of me just using it
like day in and day out and saying like
hey can you guys do this for me like
give me this I want to be able to do
that um I need this um I
think a lot of it just doesn't occur to
them maybe until someone is actually
actually using the app using the implant
it's just something that you they just
never would have thought of or um it's
very specific to even like me maybe what
I want it's something I'm a little
worried about with the next people that
come is you know um maybe they will want
things much different than how I've set
it up or what the advice I've given the
team and they're going to look at some
of the things I've they've added for me
I'm like that's a dumb idea why would he
ask for that um and so I'm really
looking forward to get the next people
on because I guarantee that they're
going to think of things that I've never
thought of and they're going to think of
improvements I'm like wow that's a
really good idea like I wish I would
have thought of that um and then they're
also going to give me some push back
about like yeah what you are asking them
to do here um that's a bad idea let's do
it this way and I'm more than happy um
to have that happen but it's just a lot
of like you know uh different
interactions
with different games or
applications um the internet just with
the computer in general um there's tons
of bugs um that end up popping up left
right center um so it's just me trying
to use it as much as possible and
showing them what works and what doesn't
work and what I would like to be better
and um then they take that feedback and
they usually create amazing things for
me they solve these problems in ways I
would have never imagined uh they're so
good at everything they do um and so I'm
just really thankful that I'm able to
give them feedback and they can make
something of it because a lot of my
feedback is like really dumb it's just
like I want this please do something
about it and they'll come back and super
well thought out and it's way better
than anything I could have ever thought
of or implemented myself so they're just
great they're really really cool as the
BCI community grows would you
like to hang out with the other folks
with new links like what what
relationship if any would you want to
have with them because you said like
they might have a different set of like
ideas of how to use the thing uh yeah
would you be intimidated by their web
grid performance no no I hope compete I
hope day one they like wipe the floor
with me I hope they beat it um and they
crush it you know double it if they can
um just because on one hand it's only
going to push me to be better um cuz I'm
super competitive I want other people to
push me um I think that is important for
anyone trying to um achieve greatness is
they need other people around them who
are going to push them to be better and
I even made a joke about it on X once
like once the next people get chosen
like Q buddy cop music like I'm just
excited to have other people to do this
with and to like share experiences with
I'm more than happy to interact with
them as much as they want more than
happy to give them advice I don't know
what kind of advice I could give them
but if they have questions I'm more than
happy what advice would you have for uh
the next participant in the clinical
trial that they should have fun with
this um because it is a lot of fun um
and that I hope they work really really
hard because it's not just for us it's
for everyone that comes after us um and
you know come to me if they need
anything and to go to nurlink if they
need anything man nurlink moves
mountains like they do absolutely
anything for me that they can and it's
an amazing support system to have um it
it puts my mind at ease um for like so
many things that I have had like
questions about so many things I want to
do um and they're always there and
that's really really nice um and so I
just I would tell them not to be afraid
to go to neuralink with any questions
that they have any concerns uh anything
that you know they're looking to do with
this and any help that neuralink is
capable of providing I know they will um
and I don't know I don't know just work
your ass off because it's it's really
important that we try to give our all to
this so have fun and work hard yeah yeah
there we go maybe that's what I'll just
start saying to people have fun work
hard now you're a real Pro athlete just
keep it
short
um maybe it's good to talk
about what you have been able to do now
that you have a neuralink game plant
like the the freedom you gain from this
way of interacting with the outside
world like you play video games all
night and you do that by yourself yeah
and that's a kind of Freedom can you
speak to that freedom that you gain yeah
it's what all I don't know people in my
position I want they just want more
Independence the more load that I can
take away from people around me the
better if I'm able to interact with the
world uh without using my family without
going through any of my friends um like
needing them to help me with things the
better um if I'm able to sit up on my
computer all night and not need someone
to like sit me up uh say like on my iPad
like in a position where I can use it
and then have to have them wait up for
me all night until I'm ready to be done
using it um like that it takes a load
off of all of us and it's it's really
like all I can ask for um it's something
that you know I could never thank
nurlink enough for and I know my family
feels the same way
um you know just being able to have the
freedom to do things on my own uh at any
hour of the day or night it means the
world to me and
um I don't know when you're up at 2 a.m.
playing web grid mhm by yourself yeah I
just imagine like it's darkness and
there just a light glowing and you're
just focused what what's going through
your
mind or you're like in a state of flow
where it's like the mind is empty like
those like Zen Masters yeah generally it
is me playing music of some sort I have
a massive playlist and so I'm just like
rocking out to music and then it's also
just like a Race Against Time because
I'm constantly constantly looking at how
much battery percentage I have left on
my implant like all right I have 30%
which equates to you know x amount of
time which means I have to break this
record in the next you know hour and a
half or else it's not happening tonight
um and so it's it's a little stressful
when that happens when it's like when
it's above 50% I'm like okay like I got
time it start getting down to 30 and
then 20 it's like all right uh 10% a
little pop Up's going to pop up right
here and it's going to really screw my
web grid flow it's going to tell me that
you know like there's a like the low
battery low battery popup comes up and
I'm like it's really going to screw me
over so if I have to if I'm going to
break this record I have to do it in the
next like 30 seconds or else that popup
is going to get in the way like cover my
web grid um and then it after that I go
click on it go back into web grid and
I'm like all right that means I have you
know 10 minutes left before this thing's
dead that's what's going on in my head
generally that and whatever song is
playing um and I just I just want I want
to break those records so bad like it's
all I want when I'm playing web grid it
it has become less of like oh this is
just a leisurely activity like I just
enjoy doing this because it just feels
so nice and it puts me at ease it is no
once I'm in web grid you better break
this record or you're going to waste
like 5 hours of your life right now and
um I don't know it's just fun it's fun
man uh have you ever tried web grid with
like two Targets and three targets can
you get higher BPS with that can you can
you do that you mean like different
color targets or you being oh multiple
targets does that change the thing yeah
so BPS is a log of number of targets
times correct minus incorrect divided by
time and so you can think of like
different clicks as basically doubling
the number of active targets got it so
you know you basically higher BPS the
more options there are the more
difficult to task and uh there's also
like Zen mode you've played in before
which is like infinite can covers it
covers the whole screen with a grid and
um I don't know what yeah and so you can
go like that's that's insane yeah he
doesn't like it because it didn't show
BPS so like you know oh yeah I had them
I had them put in a giant BPS in the
background so now it's like the opposite
of Zen mode it's like it's like super
hard mode like just metal mode if it's
just like a giant number in the back C
we should name that metal mode is a much
better
name so you also play Civilization 6 I
love Civ six yeah um usually go with
Korea I do yeah so the great part about
Korea is they um focus on like Science
Tech victories which was not planned
like I've been playing Korea for years
and then all of the nuring stuff
happened um so it kind of aligns
um but what I've noticed with tech
victories is if you can just rush Tech
Rush science um then you can do anything
like at one point in the game you will
be so far ahead of everyone
technologically that you will have like
musket men infantrymen planes sometimes
and people will still be fighting with
like bows and arrows and so if you want
to win a domination Victory you just get
to a certain point with the science and
then go and wipe out the rest of the
world or um you can just take science
all the way and win that way and you're
going to be so far ahead of everyone
because you're producing so much science
that it's not even close um I've
accidentally won in different ways just
by focusing on science accidentally won
by focusing on science I was yeah I like
I I was playing only science obviously
like just science all the way way just
Tech and I was trying to get like every
Tech in the tech tree and stuff and then
I accidentally won through a diplomatic
Victory and I was so mad I was so mad uh
it because it just like ends the game
one turn it was like oh you won you're
so diplomatic I'm like I don't want to
do this I should have declared war on
more people or something um it was
terrible but you don't need like giant
civilizations with tech especially with
Korea you can keep it pretty small so I
generally just you know get to a certain
military unit and put them all around my
border to keep everyone out and then I
will just build up so very isolationist
um nice just work on the science and the
tech that's it you're making it sound so
fun it's so much fun and I also saw a
civilization 7 trailer oh man I'm so
pumped and that's probably coming out
come on S7 hit me up I'll alpha beta
test whatever that'd be wait when does
it coming us yeah yeah next year yeah
what other stuff would you like to see
improved uh about your link app and just
the entire experience I would like to
like I said get back to the um like
click on demand like the regular clicks
that would be great uh I would like to
be able to connect to more devices right
now it's just the computer I'd like to
be able to use it on my phone or use it
on different consoles different uh
platforms um I'd like to be able to
control as much stuff as possible
honestly um
like an Optimus robot would be pretty
cool that would be sick if I could
control an Optimus robot uh the link app
itself um it seems like we are getting
pretty um dialed in to what um it might
look like down the road seems like we've
gotten through a lot of what I want from
it at least the only other thing I would
say is like more control over all the
parameters that I um can tweak uh with
my like cursor and stuff there's a lot
of things that you know go into how the
cursor moves in certain ways um and I
have I don't know like three or four of
those parameters and there might gain
and friction all gain friction yeah and
there's maybe double the amount of those
with just like velocity and then with
the actual dwell cursor um so I would
like all of it I want as much control
over my environment as POS possible um
especially you want like advanced mode
you know like in like there's menus
usually there basic mode and you're like
one of those folks like the power user
Advan yeah that's that's that's what I
want I want as much control over this as
possible um so yeah that's that's really
all I can ask for just give me give me
everything uh has speech been useful
like just being able to talk also in
addition to everything else yeah you
mean like while I'm using it while
you're using it like speech to text oh
yeah or do you type or cuz there's also
a keyboard so there's a virtual keyboard
that's another thing I would like to
work more on is finding some way to um
type or text in a different way right
now it is um like a dictation basically
and a virtual keyboard that I can use
with the cursor but we've played around
with um like finger spelling like sign
language finger spelling um and that
seems really promising so I have this
thought in my head that it's going to be
a very similar learning curve that I had
with um the cursor where I went from
attempted movement to imagin movement at
one point I have a feeling um this is
just my intuition that at some point I'm
going to be doing finger spelling and I
won't need to actually attempt to finger
spell anymore that I'll just be able to
think the like letter that I want and
it'll pop up that would be epic that's
challenging that's that's a lot of work
for you to kind of take that leap but
that would be awesome and then like
going from letters to words is another
step like you would go from you know
right now it's finger spelling of like
just the sign language alphabet but if
it's able to pick that up then it should
be able to pick up like the whole sign
language like language um and so then if
I could do something along those lines
or just the sign language um spelled
word if I can you know spell it at a
reasonable speed and it can pick that up
then I would just be able to think that
through and it would do the same thing I
don't see why not after what I saw with
the um with the cursor control I don't
see why it wouldn't work but we'd have
to play around with it more what was the
process in terms of like training
yourself to go from attempted movement
to imagine movement how long did that
take so like how long would this kind of
process take well it was a couple weeks
before it just like happened upon me but
now that I know that that was possible I
think I could make it happen with other
things I think it would be much much
simpler would you get an upgraded
implant device sure absolutely whenever
whenever they'll let me uh so you don't
have any concerns for you the surge your
experience all of it was um like no
regrets no so everything's been good so
far yep you just keep getting upgrades
yeah I mean why not I've seen how much
it's impacted my life already and I know
that everything from here on out it's
just going to get better and better so
um I would love to I would love to get
the upgrade what uh future
capabilities are you excited about sort
of Beyond this kind of uh
telepathy is Vision interesting so for
folks who for example who are blind so
you're like enabling people to see or or
for
speech yeah there's a lot that's very
very cool about this I mean we're
talking about the brain so there's like
this is just motor cortex stuff there's
so much more that can be done the vision
one is fascinating to me I think that is
going to be very very cool to give
someone the ability to see for the first
time in their life would just be I mean
it it might be more amazing than even
helping someone like me like that just
sounds incredible um the speech thing is
really interesting being able to have
some sort of like real time translation
and um cut away that language barrier
would be really cool um any sort of like
actual impairment
um that it could solve like with speech
would be very very cool and then also
there are a lot of different
disabilities that all originate in the
brain and you would be able to hopefully
be able to solve a lot of those um I
know there's already stuff to help
people with seizures um that can be
implanted in the brain this would do I
imagine the same thing and so you could
do something like that I know that you
know even someone like Joe Rogan has
talked about uh the possibilities with
being able to um stimulate the brain in
different ways um I'm not
sure I'm not sure what you know like how
ethical a lot of that would be that's
beyond me honestly but I know that there
is a lot that can be done when we're
talking about the brain and being able
to go in and physically make changes to
help people or to improve their lives so
I'm really looking forward to everything
that comes from this and I don't think
it's all that far off um I think a lot
of this can be implemented within my
lifetime um assuming that I live a long
life what you were referring to is
things like people suffering from
depression or things of that nature
potentially getting help yeah flip a
switch like that make someone happy um I
know I think Joe is talked about it more
in terms of like you want to experience
like what a drug trip feel feel like
like you want to experience what be like
to be on yeah mushrooms or something
like that DMT like you can just flip
that switch in the brain uh my buddy
Bane has talked about being able to like
wipe parts of your memory and
re-experience things that like for the
first time like your favorite movie or
your favorite book like just wipe that
out real quick and then refall in love
with Harry Potter or something um I told
them I was like I don't know how I feel
about like people being able to just
wipe parts of your memory um that seems
a little sketchy to me he's like they're
already doing it
so sounds legit uh I would love memory
replay just like actually like high
resolution replay of all memories yeah I
saw an episode of Black Mirror about
that once I don't think I want it yeah
so Black Mirror always kind of
considered the worst case which is
important I think people don't consider
the best case or the average case enough
I don't know what it is about us humans
we want to think about the worst
possible thing we love drama yeah it's
like how is this new technology going to
kill everybody we just love that like
yes let's watch hopefully people don't
think about that too much with me it'll
ruin a lot of my plans yeah yeah I
assume you're going to have to take over
the world I mean you're I love your
Twitter you uh you tweeted I'd like to
make jokes about hearing voices in my
head since getting the neur link but I
feel like people would take it the wrong
way plus the voices in my head told me
not to yeah yeah yeah please never
stop so you're talking about Optimus
um is that something uh you would love
to be able to do to control the robotic
arm or the entirety of Optimus oh yeah
for sure for sure absolutely you think
there's something like fundamentally
different about just being able to
physically interact with the world yeah
oh 100% um um
this I I know another thing with like
being able to like give people the
ability to like feel sensation and stuff
too by going in with the brain and
having the Nur link maybe do that that
could be something that um could be
translated through transferred through
the Optimus as well like there's all
sorts of really cool um interplay
between that and then also like you said
just physically interacting I mean 99%
of the things that I can't do myself um
obviously need I need a caretaker for
someone to physically do things for me
if an Optimus robot could do that like I
could live an incredibly independent
life and not be such a burden on those
around me um and that would it would
change the way people like me live um at
least until whatever this is gets cured
um but being able to interact with the
world physically like that would just be
amazing
um and and there not just like for being
for having it be a caretaker or
something but something like I talked
about just being able to read a book
imagine an Optimus robot just being able
to hold a book open in front of me like
get that smell again I might not be able
to feel it at that point um or maybe I
could again with the sensation and stuff
but being there's something different
about reading like a physical book than
staring at a screen or listening to an
Audi book I actually don't like
audiobooks I've listened to a ton of
them at this point but I don't really
like them um I would much rather like
read a physical copy so one of the
things you would love to be able to
experience is opening the book bringing
it up to you yeah and to feel the touch
of the paper yeah oh man the touch the
smell I mean it's just like just
something about the words on the page
and you know they've they've replicated
you know that page color on like the
Kindle and stuff yeah it's just not the
same yeah so just something as simple as
that so one of the things you miss is
touch I do yeah a lot of a lot of things
that I interact with in the world like
clothes or literally any physical thing
that I interact with in the world a lot
of times what people around me will do
is they'll just come like rub it on my
face they'll like lay something on me so
I can feel the weight they will rub you
know a shirt on me so I can feel fabric
like there's something very profound
about touch and uh it it is it's
something that I miss a lot um and
something I would love to do again but
we'll see what would be the first thing
you do with a with a hand that can touch
give your mom a hug after that right
yeah yeah I know that's it's one thing
that I've that I've asked um like God
for basically every day since uh my
accident was just being able to like one
day move even if it was only like my
hand so that way like I could squeeze my
mom's hand or something just to like
show her that you know like how much I
care and how much I love her and
everything um so along those lines um
being able to just interact with the
people around me handshake give someone
a hug um I don't know anything like that
being able to help me eat like I'd
probably get really fat um which would
be a terrible terrible thing uh also
beat Bliss and chess on a physical chess
board yeah yeah I mean there are just so
many upsides you know and any any way to
find some way to feel like I'm bringing
Bliss down to my level yeah because yeah
um he's just such an amazing guy and
everything about him is just so above
and beyond um that anything I can do to
take him down a notch I'm happy yeah
yeah humble him a bit he needs it yeah
okay as he's sitting next to me uh did
you ever make sense of why God puts good
people through such
hardship oh man
um I think it's all
about understanding how much we need God
and I don't think that there's any light
without the dark I think that if all of
us were happy all the time um there
would
be you know no reason to turn to God
ever I feel like there would be no
concept of you know good or bad and
think that as much
of like the darkness and the evil that's
in the world it makes us all appreciate
the good and the things we have so much
more and I think you know like when I
had my accident the first one of the
first things I said to one of my best
friends was and this was within like the
first month or two after my accident I
said you know everything about this
accident has just made
me understand and believe that like God
is real and and that there really is a
god basically and that um like my
interactions with him have all been you
know real and worthwhile and he said if
anything seeing me go through this
accident he believes that there isn't a
God and it's a very different reaction
um but I believe that it is it is a way
for God to test us to build our
character to um um send us through
trials and tribulations to make sure
that we understand
um how precious you know he is and the
things that he's given us and the time
that he's given us and then um to
hopefully grow from all of that um I
think that's a huge part of being here
is to um not
just you know have an easy life and do
everything that's easy but to step out
of our comfort zones and really
challenge ourselves uh because I think
that's how we grow what gives you hope
about this whole thing we have going on
hum civilization oh man um I think
people are my biggest uh
inspiration even just being at nurlink
um for a few
months looking people in the eyes and
hearing their motivations for why
they're doing this it's it's so
inspiring and I know that they could be
other places um at cushier jobs um
working somewhere else doing XY wi Z
that doesn't really mean that much um
but instead they're here and they want
to better humanity and they want to
better just the people around them the
people that they've interacted with in
their life they want to make better
lives for their own family members who
might have disabilities or they look at
someone like me and they say you know I
can do something about that so I'm going
to and it's always been what I've
connected with most in the world are
people I'm I've always been a people
person and I love learning about people
and I love learning like how people
developed and where they came from and
to see like how much people are willing
to do for someone like me when they
don't have to and they're going out of
their way to make my life better it
gives me a lot of Hope for just Humanity
in general how much how much we care and
how much we're capable of when we all
kind of get together and try to make a
difference and I know there's a lot of
bad out there in the world but there
always has been and there always will be
um and I think that that is it shows
human resiliency and it shows what we're
wble what we're able to endure and how
much how much we just want to be there
and help each other and how much
satisfaction we get from that because I
think that's one of the reasons that
we're here is just to help each other
and um I don't know that that always
gives me hope is just realizing that
there are people out there who still
care and who want to
help and thank you for being one such
human being and continuing to be a great
human being through everything you've
been through and being an inspiration to
many people to myself for many reasons
including your epic unbelievably great
performance on web grid I will be
training all night tonight to try to try
to catch up you can do it and I believe
in you that you can uh once you come
back so sorry to interrupt with the
Austin trip once you come back I
eventually beat Bliss yeah yeah for sure
absolutely I'm rooting for you the the
whole world is rooting for you thank you
for everything you've done man thanks
thanks man thanks for listening to this
conversation with Nolan arbaugh and
before that with Elon Musk DJ saw
Matthew McDougall and Bliss Chapman to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
let me leave you with some words from
Aldis Huxley in the doors of
perception we live together we act on
and react to one another but always and
in all circumstances we are by
ourselves the martyrs go hand in hand
into the arena they are crucified alone
embrace the lovers desperately try to
fuse their insulated ecstasies into a
single self
Transcendence in vain but its very
nature every embodied spirit is doomed
to suffer and enjoy its Solitude
Sensations feelings insights fancies all
these are private and accept through
symbols and at secondhand
incommunicable we can pull information
about experiences but never the
experiences themselves from family to
Nation every human group is a society of
Island
universes thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time