Neuralink

The most important briefings of the day. Karl Deisseroth, professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, shares the news of his Nobel Prize with his kids.

🎤 Elon Musk in 2019 talking about Super Intelligence and Neuralink:

“There’s a lot that can be done to improve quality of life for individuals, and those will be steps along the way. And then ultimately, it’s intended to address the existential risk associated with digital Super Intelligence.”

What happens when Elon Musk builds a link between the brain and a computer? 🧠 People with paralysis are controlling computers, playing games, driving wheelchairs and creating art with their minds. Terry is turning his thoughts into his own natural voice. 50,000+ hours of implant use. A new cursor-control record of 11.32 bits per second. Electrode threads placed straight through the dura for the first time.

🎙️ In 2019 Elon Musk joined lexfridman to talk about Super Intelligence and Neuralink:

“There’s a lot that can be done to improve quality of life for individuals, and those will be steps along the way. And then ultimately, it’s intended to address the existential risk associated with digital Super Intelligence. “We will not be able to be smarter than a digital supercomputer. So therefore, if you cannot beat them, join them. And at least we want to have that option. “It’s important that Neuralink solve this problem sooner rather than later, because the point at which we have digital Super Intelligence, that’s when we pass the singularity, and things become just very uncertain. “It doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily bad or good. But the point at which we pass the singularity, things become extremely unstable. “So we want to have a human-brain interface before the singularity, or at least not long after it, to minimize existential risk for humanity and consciousness as we know it.”

Neuralink recently announced their clinical trial participants have used their implants for a combined total over 50,000 hours. At ~27 patients, this means each patient has used their device for nearly 2,000 hours. Assuming 16 hours of use per day, 7 days per week, that's an average of ~4 months of nonstop usage per patient. One of Neuralink's main advantages is *scale.* Assuming this growth continues, they'll have more detailed brain data than any company in the world. Actually, I'm sure they already have more of this data than any company in the world! 1. Imagine what will happen when they have 10s and 100s of millions of brain implants all pattern matching when people are developing dementia or about to have a stroke or depressed. 2. Imagine their ability to train an AI model just like ChatGPT, but instead of using words to train a large language model (LLM), they can use brain data to train a neural foundation model.

BREAKING: Neuralink clinical trial participants surpass 50,000 hours of implant use. • One of the largest intracortical neural datasets ever created • First participant alone: 9,000+ hours and 22.4 billion neural spikes • New BCI record: 11.32 BPS

Elizabeth Pipko says Elon Musk should be celebrated for his achievements “This is a man who really should be celebrated… He’s the pioneer of mainstream electric vehicles… everything he’s done with Neuralink, I think, should be celebrated and talked about every single day.”

Neuralink has enabled participants to exceed prior bitrate records. This is the best overall metric for measuring brain-computer interface capability. Although it doesn't tell the full story in one number, it's a quantifiable metric that indicates a lot. This screen capture is a participant playing Webgrid (very importantly faster than the vast majority of non-Neuralinked people could play).

Our clinical trial participants have now used their Neuralink implants for over 50,000 hours, building one of the largest datasets of intracortical neural activity ever. We used it to pretrain a foundation model for BCI: self-supervised neural encoders that turn noisy, drifting spikes into stable representations. Some initial results: • Decoders that keep working for weeks instead of days. For some users, calibration dropped from 10 min/day to 10 min/week • Teleporting cursors that jump straight to the intended target • A new cursor-control record of 11.32 bits per second (exceeding the performance of most able-bodied people)

BREAKING: The first Neuralink patient is doing well, and Elon Musk is hopeful to have results by later this week.

How Neuralink Is Implanted - A Neuralink implant is placed through a small skull opening, where ultra-thin electrode threads are inserted into the brain to detect neural signals and wirelessly translate them into digital commands.

The first Neuralink goal is restoring connection. The most ambitious interface begins with a concrete human capability worth restoring

The Real Impact of Neuralink for Paralyzed Patients

🚨 BREAKING: Neuralink ENABLED SPEECH for patients! 🧠 This groundbreaking tech reads brain signals to help those unable to communicate verbally. ALS patients can now share their thoughts. It's a HUGE leap in assistive technology

Neuralink and Grok gave him his voice back Terry, an ALS patient, is Neuralink’s third VOICE trial participant. A tiny chip reads the brain signals tied to speech, so he just thinks the words and it decodes them. The twist: instead of a robotic voice, Neuralink used Grok Voice to rebuild his real voice from old recordings. So he looked at his wife and said I love you, in his own voice. Still a trial, but incredible.

"The vast majority of diseases or brain issues, I think are fixable with a Neuralink device."

🗣️ Elon Musk