654. 特別編 Noland 03.27.25

今回の特別編はほぼ全編英語のため文字起こしのテキスト全ページを特別に公式アプリで無料で公開していますこの機会にぜひ文字起こしをご活用くださいそれでは本編どうぞ こんにちはこんにちはこんにちは今回は ゲスト会ということで特別な方に来ていただいています。ニューラリンクが開発したブレインコンピューターインターフェースを実際に脳に埋め込んだ最初の被験者、ノーランドアーボーさんです。イエイ!ようこそ。Welcome, welcome! Thank you for having me. Can you introduce yourself briefly? Yes. My name is Nolan Arba. I am Nolan Arba. I am 30 years old. I was... Injured in a sort of freak accident almost nine years ago, which left me as a quadriplegic. I was completely paralyzed from below my shoulders.

About maybe a year and a half ago I applied for Neuralink and 13 months ago got surgery as the first participant. Well, congratulations on one year, by the way. Thank you very much. Thank you. I cannot believe we're talking to you. I've said since the very beginning that... I am I am more than happy to do Any interviews, any sort of podcast, anything with anyone, as long as they reach out and I see it and I have the time, then I will do it. I've done everything from Joe Rogan to...

Good Morning America to a podcast with, you know, like 10 listeners. So nothing is off limits. I've been pretty open with that since the beginning. So I'm more than happy to be here.

How is life these days? I mean, how are you doing? Great, great. Still doing lots of interviews, surprisingly. I thought that after, you know, three... months maybe everything would die down I thought that people would have heard my story it would have been sort of old news at that point and no one would be interested that's not what I've seen at all I've been really surprised. A lot of it, I think, has to do with... I've done most of the American publications at this point.

Most people in the United States have had their share, I would say, but I still get interview requests from all over the world. just made me realize that there are a lot of people out there who have still never heard about Neuralink, who have still never heard of me, and I think that's great, just more opportunities to spread the news about everything.

introduces many people to the technology so things are going great and I'm starting to transition this year to being like a keynote speaker so I'm getting like Like I have an agent. Oh my gosh, that's so weird to say. Someone who's going to be like, you know, reaching out for me to places and giving me opportunities to travel and speak. So I'm super busy. all the time. I'm just trying to keep my head above water at this point and make my way and see where life takes me.

You still have time to play games? Not as much as I would like. Not as much as I would like. I still haven't put in enough time to Civ 7, which released a few weeks ago. I've been wanting to just sit and do nothing and play that game. But I have not had the time. I've wanted to stream and do all sorts of stuff. Man, I've been getting a website set up. I've been trying to get a business set up. All these things that come with the speaking engagement territory, the keynote speaker stuff.

There's definitely not a lot of time to play games as much as I would like. I still play quite a bit of chess, so that's one thing that I haven't lost, which is really nice. I checked in on your... your marathon live stream oh yeah uh which was very interesting um did you learn anything special from from that experience and did you learn anything about i guess yourself or and what did you learn about the the implant from that Yeah, I learned that staying up for 72 hours is really hard.

it was super taxing at the very end uh for the last maybe four to six hours i thought it was all a dream i was like this isn't actually happening is it uh there's no way um but

Yeah, I did it, and I learned a lot about streaming, which was really nice. You know, a lot of people, it takes many hours of, like... you know trial and error and doing a lot of streams to figure things out i had 72 hours to figure it all out and a big community of people who were willing to help me which was really nice um and You know, the implant I knew was capable of making the marathon. I use it sort of non-stop and it's never given me issues in that respect.

I used it for 24 hours before and then 48 hours before my 72 hour stream and it works great. I learned that my computer can't hold 72 hours worth of footage when I'm streaming all of it. It was a lot. I put a lot of load on my computer.

Yeah, it was great. And I learned there's just a great community of people out there who are supporting me. It was really cool to interact with everyone and see the support that everyone was... you know hopping in to give me and just kind of hang out with me uh there's some really cool people out there and i was really really happy to get to spend some time with them did you find that your

fatigue or sleep deprivation was affecting your ability to control the cursor with the implant? Not really. I would say... One thing did happen. I was doing a calibration. So there's basically a black screen and... blue and orange bubbles and yellow bubbles will pop up and you know blue represents left click orange is right click and the yellow is just sort of a dwell just hold over it and I was doing that and I think I did it for

geez maybe like an hour it seemed like a long time and the like calibration model was just not getting better and it was because i was just like half asleep kind of like going through the motions but not really um like pushing the model to get better um so it just sort of plateaued and

So, I don't know. I'm not sure what that necessarily says about the implant. I think more about the fact that I can just go on autopilot and still do an hour-long calibration. But, yeah, I mean, the... the implant performed great you know it was there were no issues at all how often do you need to do this recalibration It depends. It depends. I can do a calibration and it'll last, you know, a week. It'll last more if I want it to. It depends on how good I want the cursor control to be.

So there are times when cursor control gets pretty shaky. It's not capable of doing some of the things that I want it to do. Maybe if I want to play a game, it just doesn't. you know it's not capable of performing you know certain tasks and games and things so I'll go and calibrate and that calibration model might deteriorate it might get worse within a day

And then I might need to recalibrate again. But it's because the brain is plastic and is constantly changing. So, you know, you calibrate and... the neurons that are being used to say move the cursor left right up down to be used for left and right clicks they changed their

their purpose, I guess, on sometimes a minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day basis. So one day, a group of neurons or a single neuron might be really working hard on helping me move my like right thumb and the next day it's helping me move my right index finger and so when you calibrate something to say the right thumb and the next day it's not the that neurons not doing the same thing

then your model is going to get worse. It's going to deteriorate. I've noticed that over a period of maybe three to five days, things can... come back to normal with a calibration model which is really weird um i just don't think we understand the brain enough yet i don't think we have a a good enough idea of how to

work calibration to take into account all of these issues. All of these, I wouldn't call them issues, just changes, I would say. But we'll get there. I think that that's something that... we are constantly working on constantly trying to get better so um you know calibration just it's kind of a you know case by case um you take it and we'll see what happens

Do the researchers at Neuralink think that they could maybe take calibration out? Like it's something that could work in the background? Yeah, I mean, I think that's... ultimately the goal is um something where you could just hop on you connect and everything just happens for you automatically um it's like the

you know, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's what we want to happen. I'm not sure we understand the brain enough yet at all to do something like that. What they're focusing on right now is just getting... calibration uh like how long it takes to calibrate down um at the beginning at the beginning it was like you calibrate

for maybe 45 minutes and you get a pretty good model and then you can use that for a while and then maybe after a few days it deteriorates and you go do it again and then it went down to maybe like 30 minutes and now it's down to can get a decent model like 15 minutes I think they're trying to get it like under five at the minimum is what their goal is but I think that as we learn more about the brain and as we learn more about calibration and what

sort of the algorithm does in the background I think that it can be just what you're saying where it is just eliminated completely and as your brain changes the algorithm takes that into account and changes with it. So yeah, I just think we'll get there. So when you're clicking on your computer, do you notice the drift?

like oh this is a little to the right of where i was trying yeah yeah absolutely um so uh i don't know how much a lot of people know about you know bcis in general but there's a concept called like cursor drift where it's just um it's the cursor will have a bias in one direction so it'll want to pull to the right it'll want to pull to the left or up or down and

There is something that Neuralink has created called bias correction, which I can hop into and counteract that. So if it's pulling to the right, I will adjust it so that... the model will, or I guess the algorithm will pull to the left, and so it'll offset. And so there are ways that we have found to, you know, work with that. It still, it changes. It changes all the time. I've noticed that it changes maybe by like what position I'm in.

If I'm sitting up in my chair, if I'm lying in my bed, sometimes if my right hand is in a weird position because my right hand is where I do all of my cursor control and things. you know just in a weird position and it might be a little bit harder to move certain directions or if the computer is like way off to the right and I'm turned to the right I've noticed that the cursor will drift that way

I mean, there are just some weird interactions that we are sort of just scratching the surface of understanding. But yeah, when I'm clicking it, it can get a little dicey sometimes. But I try to go, I have a lot of like... parameters that I'm allowed to change, things that keep the cursor more steady or account for the bias and help me get my model back on track.

Can you let it go? Or can you let go of the cursor? Or is it stationary? Or is it constantly kind of moving a little bit? It's constantly moving.

I think that's something that will need to be addressed at some point. There are ways to keep it fairly stable. The thing is, any sort of slight movement or intent of movement of whatever... body parts say you've calibrated with will keep it moving in in some direction in some way there are ways to you know add like one of my parameters is friction and that just means it requires a bit more force to move the cursor

It is exactly what you might imagine a friction is just kind of hard to move It's pretty sticky and you can turn that way up and it'll be hard to move the cursor So you can just leave it and it'll stay in one place but they've also added like a few features where you can they call it like a parking spot where you go and push your cursor into a corner and it'll get locked sort of in that place and then you can

watch a movie or do different things where you might not need cursor control. So there are ways that they've worked around it, but I think there needs to be some... change in order to account for that because no one wants their cursor just sort of like moving around all the time that would be that'd be a little bit obnoxious so I think they'll get there I think they'll get there

It's kind of a random idea, but it seems like if you sampled frames from your click interactions through your normal use of your computer, you could have a vision model detect drift from like the center of mass of interactive elements and maybe calibrate it in the background that way but yeah um i you know the the calibration algorithm stuff is so far above my head i know that i know some of the things that they do sort of on the back end some of the ways that they are

using my data during calibration to create the models but most of it is I mean it's it's a huge work in progress we I'll have session later today and we will um probably work more on calibration it's something that we work on most of the time that i'm with them at this point just seeing why calibration doesn't spit out like the exact same uh caliber of model every time why sometimes models are worse sometimes they're better how can we get

how can we get calibration time down, those sorts of things. They're just constantly working on it. So if you have ideas, feel free to apply to Neuralink. Maybe you can help them out. I doubt it would be of much help. I saw they posted a video of a pen moving across paper. Did you have a chance to control this robot arm? Are you allowed to talk about that? No, no, I haven't. I am so sad about it.

They let P2 play with the robot arm for about a week. They went out and tested a bunch of stuff. Then they came back and they were like, well, it's just not ready yet. They had been able to accomplish a few things with it.

You know, he wrote something on the whiteboard. I think he wrote like Convoy on the whiteboard, which is the name of the study. And he had done a few other things, but they just said it's not quite there yet before they... willing to just ship it I think they know deep down that I'm gonna use it for super fun things and super I say fun they say you know we need to make sure this thing works before he goes and tries to like

have it hold a hot mug of coffee and sip from it. I think there are some things that they are they know that we will push sort of the boundaries with and maybe test the FDA a little bit with. So they want to make sure that it is completely ready to go before they just start shipping robot arms out to people.

You're ready for it. I'm ready for it. I was ready for it before they even announced it. I knew that it was coming. I knew that there are... things coming down the pipeline that i'm really excited about um so i just kind of have to i have to wait wait to see if i'm the one that gets to play with it or if it's someone else i know that You know, ultimately all of the things that they're testing are meant for all of us. It's not just...

Like, okay, well, P2 gets to play with the robot arm and you get to go play Mario Kart and there's no sort of crossover. I know that they want to give all of us a chance to... do everything. So I'm sure I'll get there eventually. It just is a matter of them getting things worked out on their end. It really is for... All of this really, to me, feels like it's for all of us because, you know, I could be quadriplegic next week. I don't know. But it can easily happen to anyone.

I mean, the way it happened to you was, as you said, a very freak incident. So, you know, this is peace of mind in the future for something that could, you know. happen to anyone on earth. And I think there are like 15 million quadriplegics in the world that have some level of spinal damage. I mean, it varies, obviously, but...

in terms of spinal cord injuries? Yeah, it's something I was just talking about. I spoke at like a medical conference the other day and you know we were talking, I was talking with one lady about her son uh you know just doing like super dangerous stuff and she's always worried about him and i was like you know i uh like it you can't live life scared because i did way more dangerous things than what caused my accident i was like cliff jumping i was uh like

you know driving super recklessly and I was playing rugby and I was playing like tons of different you know contact sports and I was jumping off things super high jumping um into like murky water and you just never know um when Something like this is gonna happen because it for me. It was just a freak accident I got knocked in the side of the head just the right way I mean doctors always say if you have any sort of injury They'll basically always say oh man if you know this had happened

happened you know a few millimeters to the left or right or if you had been like this position just slightly different then you know this injury wouldn't have happened and it's like just a freak accident just sort of like perfect storm sort of stuff um and Like you said, it could happen to anyone, but that doesn't mean you should live your life scared. Obviously, be safe out there, kids. Don't do anything dangerous. But I don't think that...

I think that the Neuralink, like you said, gives a lot of hope for the future. It's something that I talked about a lot at the beginning was I honestly believe that one day someone will get a spinal cord injury, get taken to a hospital. be given the neuralink implant or implants because you put one or multiple in like the brain and then you put them below the level of injury and they like speak to each other and skip that break

And you can walk out of the hospital within, you know, a couple of days maybe. Or the next day, I mean, it could eradicate something like paralysis. And it...

It may not happen in my lifetime, but that gives me a lot of motivation to work as hard as I can and to be as big of an advocate as I can be because I want people to realize that there is hope. I want people with... disabilities to realize that there's hope and I want people who don't have a disability to understand the importance of the study and the importance of the technology.

I mean there's a lot coming out in the tech world that I believe is going to cure a lot of diseases, cure a lot of... Things that we have not been able to solve with, you know, medicine or drugs. I think tech and AI are the future of medicine. It's honestly like, it came out of left field for me, I thought. that medicine and you know pharmaceuticals or whatever it is would solve these sorts of things but i think it's going to come from the tech world

I think on Joe Rogan podcast, you talked about this attempt movement versus imagined movement thing. And I thought that was really interesting. But like, do you ever catch like... the cursor or whatever like when you're playing the game or something do you ever catch nerling catching it before your awareness kicks in or that does that never happen yeah there's it is amazing how well the chip learns and how much it understands intent.

When you want to do something when you want to move any of your body parts when you want to walk when you want to move your hand Those signals are all sent from your brain down to whatever part of your body that you want to move before you're moving. It has to go all the way down and all the way back up. So if you think about it, it's happening.

Before you're even thinking about doing it, but somewhere like deep in your mind You know that you're going to and your mind knows you're going to your brain does and so all the signals can get set before hand the Neuralink is capable of doing that. I think people are going to be the biggest hindrance on it.

think it will like I think I am the blocker right now for some of what the Neuralink is capable of just because it's a little hard for me to keep up with it sometimes it's a little hard for me to like wrap my mind around exactly what it may be able to do because there are times when i am say going from one place to another on the screen point a to point b and then as soon as i get to point b i know that i want to go somewhere else but the cursor will

kind of get there and then start moving before i'm ready for it to move because it it sort of knows where i'm wanting to go what i'm wanting to do and i think that i am the biggest limiting factor in all of this. So I do think that it will be able to learn a lot better as we get better and we adapt to it as much as it adapts to us. Sometimes I try to get out of bed but I haven't gotten enough sleep and it's like...

I decide I'm going to get up, but then I don't. And so there's kind of this mismatch between what my physical body actually does and what I think my intent is. There's something happening in between the decision and the muscle movement. Do you have any insight into how does that relate to you thinking about moving your hand versus kind of skipping over that? How do you think about this stuff? Yeah, there was a learning curve for me when it came from attempted movement to imagined movement.

Everything started with attempted movement. I calibrated everything by attempting to move my hand left, right, up, down. Obviously I can't actually do that, but the signals are still going on in my brain, so all of it made sense to me. The day that I realized that I could move the cursor without needing to attempt to move my hand at all, it really changed my whole perspective on what this Neuralink...

is capable of. I think that there's something, there are things that are going on in the brain that we just don't understand. There's, you know, the brain is just not mapped as much as we. we you know as maybe as much as people think we know like areas of the brain in certain regions, but we don't know how to Maybe affect any change there. We don't know what exactly is going on in these areas, so

when i think about you know i want to move the cursor from you know one side of the screen to the other i can do that but then there's something deeper like you're talking about like okay i want to go from one side of the screen to the other and then after that i'm going to go down and as it is getting to some places i can see it even like drifting in that direction and it is there's something linked something tied to like my

you know, wanting you saying like, I want, I made the decision to get out of bed, but I haven't actually physically moved yet. There's my decision. Okay. I know that I'm going to go to this next point, but I don't want it to move yet. But there's a, like ability for the implant to Take that information and start processing it faster than what I'm able to process I think that like I I'm much slower than the implant in so many ways. I think that it is

It takes a little bit of mental effort to keep it from doing things that I don't want it to do sometimes, but no effort at all to just use it on a daily basis. It's like... Like using it I can use it for 72 hours, and there's no like mental fatigue there But at the same time I have to physically keep it from doing certain things sometimes I think that that will

change over time because Neuralink will find ways to mitigate all of that. I'm not sure exactly the processes that are going on in the brain that, you know, separate these sorts of like fine lines of like... wanting to go somewhere physically like moving the cursor from one point to another and kind of thinking ahead and not wanting it to do that yet or thinking okay I want to go open up this browser and do this and not have the cursor just immediately go and start doing that sometimes I'll

like look around the screen and the cursor doesn't move but other times i'll look somewhere and the cursor will start following me because it's it's um basically guessing what I want to do next and so it's it's really interesting I'm I'm not You know a neuroscientist by any means by any stretch of the imagination So I have a hard time like wrapping my mind around these things But I think that I am learning just as much as the Neuralink is learning I think that it's a kind of a team effort there

How much do you think your physical brain, your neural pathways are being rewired as a result of interacting with this neural network? So the Neuralink is being trained. but also your own brain is a neural network, which is being trained. So there's some kind of... The flow is in both directions, I guess. Yeah. I mean, there's a...

There's a part of your brain that grows every time you do something that you don't want to do and people who extremely hard workers generally have that part of their brain is much bigger than other people because they have forced themselves to do things it's not just that It's not just that they were born hard workers, it's that they have disciplined themselves and they have decided, even though I don't want to go to work,

I would rather lie here in bed. I would rather take the day off. They force themselves to go. And every time that part of the brain grows a little bit. So our actions directly affect how our brain... changes the plasticity of our brain i've thought about like what is going on in my brain like while i'm doing all of this i've thought so much like what what is actually being

done like what am i changing and it's interesting it's really interesting um one of the bci guys that came before me um in another study he was the first bci participant to Regain movement through using a BCI He I think he was using some sort of Like robot arm mechanism almost like an exoskeleton thing um so he was doing a bit more like i would say like physical therapy with it but he still retrained

his body he still created new neural pathways neural networks to like control his arms again and I think about that all the time like I am probably doing something very similar I'm not sure it would ever get to the point where it is allowing me to move different body parts again, but I definitely think that there's a part of my brain that is going to look different.

than regular people's brains. I mean, it kind of has to, right? Like, I am definitely doing something different. I'm working out my brain in a way that no one else in the world is, well, that two other people in the world are doing. So our brains are changing in a way. I'm not sure how much. I'm not sure if it would even be noticeable, but I know it's happening. I just don't know what that'll look like in, you know, a year. two years, five years, ten years, my brain might

look just completely abnormal. I've already basically decided that my brain is going to Neuralink after I die, so they're going to have a field day, I'm sure. Are there detailed scans of your brain from before you got the implant? And are they monitoring for any such changes? Yeah, I did a whole physical... work up before my surgery so they have they have all sorts of scans on me like my body my brain like 10 different ways so there's there's a lot there they don't do

I'm not getting scans at any sort of regular interval. I'm not sure that they will. That's something that I think is not really part of the study. It's not really a study about how the brain changes in any sort of way. It would be cool to have that information, but it's just not something that I think they're focused on right now. It might be hard to scan the brain.

with an mri because you have the implant in there yeah i can't i can't get mris uh i have a i have a little card in my wallet that says don't give me an mri um like no magnets allowed please don't lose that card yeah You know, funny you say that. I did lose that card. I literally lost my wallet.

I can't lose my wallet. Someone lost my wallet. I won't name names. It's never yours. Yeah. So I had to order a new card from Neuralink. But I know, like... if i ever go in my family knows like no mri's um i am allowed technically to get like certain mri's you just have to change like the frequencies of the mri like if absolutely necessary but on the safe side they're just like don't get an mri like just don't do it yeah i mean in terms of

training your brain i mean just the fact that you have to sort of think about the gap between the attempt and your intent you know like i guess i never think about it right and i never see it maybe

when I have intrusive thoughts or something, then I realize and be like, whoa, what's going on? But do you think that because you deal with it all the time, do you think that the gap is shorter now? Like, do you think that you catch it faster than... other people does it make sense yeah i think i think it's more like riding a bike um before i knew that it was possible The gap was infinite. It was the gap between 0 and 1. As soon as I realized that it was possible, a switch was instantly flipped.

So it's just one now. It's like once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. That's sort of where it's at. I wouldn't say that the gap is shorter. I just think that. There is no gap anymore. It's just I understand how it works. I understand exactly the sort of... Thought I need to think in order to get the cursor to move and before Even though it was still possible at the beginning. I just hadn't figured it out yet You know it to me. It seems like there was a possibility

that whoever got the first Neuralink brain implant would go around and declare like, all right, I figured out that there's no free will or something like that, right? But you... believe that you have free will, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm a Christian. I believe in God. I believe in free will and, you know, all of that jazz. So I'm not...

I haven't made any profound discoveries quite yet. I would say that, I guess, besides the fact that I can move something with my mind, that's, I guess, pretty profound. It's... it's just so intuitive at this point that i think people are going to be surprised um and there are things that yeah um are just are are yet to be discovered because if it if there are things like that

going on um that like i didn't know until i knew um sort of thing uh what else is there you know there are going to be things out there that i probably still learn in time and i'm like this is

It makes so much sense. Why didn't I see this a year ago? Why didn't I see this at the beginning that it was capable of doing this? There's this well-known experiment involving a clock and... like raising raising a finger and then saying when you made the decision when you were gonna raise your finger and this is kind of cited as evidence against free will that

a signal is being sent before you're aware of it and you're kind of experiencing this to some degree with the implant but that is not striking you as like eliminating any possibility of agency, right? Yeah, that's interesting. I've never heard of that experiment. I've never even thought about something like that. It doesn't...

It's weird that well, it doesn't make sense to me that that would Discount free will I maybe I need to think about it Maybe I need to read it and like really see their points because I don't see why that You know counters free will like there's a there's a thing in Christianity to about God knowing everything that you will do before you do it he knows everything that has happened is happening and will happen and so if he knows the ultimate outcome

Do you actually have free will? It's said that your name is already written in the book. God knows everyone that's going to be with him in all eternity. He knows every person. that's going to be in heaven with him already at the end of time. He knows all of these things beforehand. So people say, well, then none of my decisions matter because everything's already predestined. It's predestination, you know.

um but it's not it's a it's a simple way of looking at it because there's a lot more going on than just than just you know god knows everything that means you don't have free will um right God has given us agency. I believe at least God has given us agency. He's given us free will because he wants us to choose him He wants to give us the choice. He could have very easily made people

where they just loved him and worshipped him, and that would have been the simplest thing in the world. But what sort of love is that? What sort of love is it when... you have basically made someone that loves you, just without having any sort of choice in the matter. There's no relationship there, there's no love there that is essentially a robot. He gave us free will because he wants us to make that decision. And whether we choose to be in relation with him.

or not is up to us he knows everything that we will do and um he still gives us you know the chance and he gives us every chance and there's also this idea that you know people think about time linear and especially with God you know God knows everything that we will do he knows everything that we will do in the future so we think about okay well like God is He can see what I'm about to do in this sort of linear fashion. But there's, I think, a much broader take on this, which is...

God doesn't see things from past, present, and future. He sees everything at once. He sees what you're doing now. and what you will do in the future and what you've done in the past all at the same time and that is something that is almost impossible for us to wrap our minds around but I think that really lends a lot of I guess almost a credit like it Makes a lot of sense in terms of God

knowing everything that we will do. It's just because he sees. He sees everything. He's seen everything because he's seeing it right now. He sees the future as it is the present, as it's the present. There's a lot there. I'm not an expert on these sorts of things. These are just sort of what I believe. And, you know, I'm more than happy to have someone tell me I'm wrong.

Have a talk about it because I would like to learn just as much as I think the next person and while I have these beliefs I think that any chance I get to hear other perspectives i'm open to because ultimately i think um it will strengthen whatever i believe because if i'm wrong then tell me i'm wrong um and if i want to um well if i

If what I believe is wrong, then I want to believe the right thing. So it has nothing to do with being, you know, entrenched in my point of views of free will or anything. So it'll only make me research what... I believe even more and come to the truth if it's not. Do you think that being religious gave you some kind of influence on your decision to become the first participant?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that being religious affects everything that I do. I think that it is the biggest part of me. I don't think it's Neuralink. My life is not purposed for Neuralink. It's purposed for God. And so I was at incredible peace when I went through this whole process because of my faith. I think that I've never been...

more at ease about anything in my life, which was weird. I thought that I would freak out. I thought that as the days came closer that I would become more anxious, but I never did. And I attribute all of that to just understanding God and his purpose and his plan. But a lot of it also just came down to I knew that I wanted to help.

Good or bad outcome, I knew I would be helping. Good outcome, everything goes well, I can help in that way. Bad outcome, everything goes horribly wrong, I die on the table, like God forbid.

I know that they learn from that and it won't happen again. So I know that everything that I would have done in that situation would have helped in some way. And I think that gave me a lot of peace too because it gave me a lot of purpose. And I think that that... you know every every person with a disability who is um sort of wasting away in some way wants to give their life some meaning wants to give their life some purpose and i felt like at that point that was my purpose

What was the reaction of people around you when you decided to do it? And like, you know, leading up to the day, like how were people doing? My family was really supportive. I had to have some really hard conversations with my parents about what happens if I die, what happens if I don't die, but I just have a...

Traumatic brain injury like it's brain surgery. They're using a novel technology with the implant and the robot doing my surgery So there are so many things that could go wrong And if I came out with a traumatic brain injury, I told my parents I don't want you to take care of me anymore. I would like to be put in a home. It's one thing to take care of a quadriplegic. It's another thing to take care of a quadriplegic with a traumatic brain injury.

So we had some hard conversations, but I think that at the end of the day, my parents were extremely supportive. They just wanted me to do whatever I wanted to do to find some way to... for me to like give my life purpose if that's what I felt I was doing and so they were behind me a hundred percent. I don't know if that's true. Maybe like 99%. I think they had their reservations, but as parents, they just wanted to be supportive. They must have been scared, I'm sure. My friends were...

mostly supportive. I had a couple of friends who were not very happy with my decision. They pushed back against me a lot and I love them all the more for it. I think that it's great that I have friends that would be willing to speak up like they did. It makes me really happy that I have that relationship with them. Going through Elon Musk's track record.

going through, you know, there was a big, like, not study, like a paper released, I guess, about what had been done with the monkeys that Neuralink was experimenting on.

um and so i read through basically that whole thing which was really long and really hard but i felt like i needed to do my due diligence and one of my friends was like have you heard about this i'm like i've heard a little bit and he's like well you need to read it and so i did i read um sort of the the article that came out about it and

all sorts of these things but yeah I wouldn't say everyone was supportive but most were and even my friend that was pushing back against me who did not want me to go through with it He said, you know, I respect your decision, and whatever you decide, I'm behind you 100%. Even if I don't necessarily agree with it, I'll be supportive. It was really great.

basically good on all sides did you read uh elon's paper about nerling with the the rats no i don't think i did have you seen the pictures of like the the rat with, like, a huge chip sticking out of its head? No, I don't think I have. Yeah. Yeah, there was... It actually had more electrodes. Oh, really? It was a larger implant. Yeah, there was...

There was one paper that people keep telling me to read, and I was like, yeah, I'll get around to it. At some point, I was just like, I've read and heard basically everything I can about this. I know, like, the risks. I know, like... Essentially what they've been doing I have complete faith in all the people working on it so

Like just reading more, like I listened to a lot of things and then just reading more. I was like, it's a lot of the same stuff. I know that there's always stuff that there was going on like early days that I just kind of know nothing about. But I didn't get around to everything, and maybe I should have done a bit more reading, but I think that...

I was okay with what I had digested at that point. I was like, I think it's just time for me to make my decision and move forward. What do you think are some of the biggest... misconceptions about Neuralink and your implant yeah I mean I think one of the things is that people just don't quite understand what it's capable of at this point um it's incredibly sci-fi for sure um but we're not at a place where it is doing things um well like for instance um for typing

i still use a lot of dictation for typing i have like a virtual keyboard that will pull up and i can like click on it and stuff it's really slow we've done a few other um gone through a few other ways of like trying to output texts, like doing sign language and writing, like holding, like I'm holding a pencil sort of writing. And those things have worked, but...

you know, not great, like max 20-ish words per minute, which is not amazing, but it's good. It's really good for BCI, but they just want to do better. People, I think, generally think that I am... thinking like full words and it's like outputting full thoughts and they are sort of like popping up that i'm thinking like open this open that and it opens and um

like just how i how i interact with my computer they think is a bit different um they think that i'm able to play something like say a first person shooter with the neuralink that i'm able to do all the different like commands like all the different buttons on a controller which I'm just not able to do

It's very rudimentary at this point. Well, I say rudimentary, but it's still a brain-computer interface. It's one of the most impressive technologies in the world, but it's in its very early phases where I am...

Using a cursor right cliff left click middle click You know something like they haven't even figured out how to completely Accomplish click and drag where I can like click and drag something it's really really hard they've been working on it for a long time and they just haven't figured it out so I have like

uh what we call a mode switcher which i just hop to the side of my screen and i switch my normal cursor over to a click and drag and then i can go like and click and drag something and then i'll switch back but you know things like that they've done workarounds for Because it's just not capable of all of that yet. So I think a lot of people are a bit too optimistic at this point. I don't think that... it is far off i don't think that you know thinking words and having them um propagate is

Anything that is outside of the realm of possibility. I actually think it's very much going to be possible It's just not there yet and a lot of people get really afraid of like what you know These things are capable of and what they're doing and like how

how they're changing people and what it's going to do for like the future and all these things and they think that we're in this like sci-fi world already and we're just not there um we're still in the learning phases we're you know taking baby steps so I mean, when we started the call, you were trying to open this audio recording app and you were doing all kinds of things casually. And then I was just like, it was really like magical to me.

I mean, maybe people think that, you know, oh, maybe you're doing all these things like playing first shooter games. But I mean, just just the fact that you're doing this with your head. I've never I mean, obviously, I've never seen anyone do that in front of me. So my mind was just blown.

like yeah yeah it it yeah it's true like i i feel the same way i feel the same way like i think it's incredibly impressive i think everything that is happening is so amazing even when there was you know i had that issue with the thread retraction um like the threads were being pulled out of my brain and um I was losing control of the cursor very rapidly, where I couldn't do anything on my computer. They...

solved that issue just on the software side without having to do any sort of interventions, like physical interventions. They solved it all just with how they were... recording neuron spikes they were instead of recording individual neurons they started recording like groupings of neurons and so like that solved the issue my cursor control came back even stronger and

They've estimated that I have approximately 15% plus or minus 10% of the electrodes still in place in my brain, basically where they're supposed to be. So that could be as little as 5%. And I'm doing better now than I was before the thread retraction. Like, I think people see that as a huge, like... failure on knurling's part they're like oh my gosh look threat retraction all these terrible things are happening they have no idea what they're doing and i look at it it's like guys i have

5% of what they originally wanted in my brain and I'm still doing these things like I'm still accomplishing way more than any other BCI has ever done in history like I don't see how they don't see the

triumph in that. I think it's all incredibly impressive. I mean, just the fact that they didn't really know that that could happen, like the brain is actually... moving right yeah yeah i it's something that a lot of people don't think about um i don't think i'd ever thought about it that the brain pulses uh with the heart um

And one thing that they learned was, you know, the brain moves more than they anticipated. They had worked with monkeys and other animals, rats, pigs, things like that, sheep. They had never seen the brain move that much, or they had estimated, I guess, how much the brain would move. They had seen, I think, thread retraction in one monkey.

before but they had sort of written it off as something um that had happened with a monkey or something sort of abnormal like it's it's not the norm basically it's you know one one out of whatever 20 30 monkeys happen to like it's negligible at that point obviously it wasn't with me because my brain moved a lot more on the magnitude of like three times as much as they thought it would move which is just

It's a lot. When you're doing precise, you know, math and... calculations for how much you think a brain moves and then it moves on a scale of three times as much like things get a little bit wonky um they don't necessarily work as much um and I think one of the surgeons got in there and saw my brain pulsing and they realized how much more it was moving. And the surgeon was like, yeah, that seems about right.

But there's not a lot of literature about the brain or how much the brain moves, which is very surprising to me. You would think that we would know this at this point, but we just don't. We didn't. And that is, it's one thing that we've learned since Neuralink. I mean, the things that we've learned could fill a room with PhDs. Like, there's just so much information out there.

information that they're not even really touching at this point because it's not the point of the study, which I think is incredible. Do you know when the retraction of the threads started happening? Immediately after surgery, yeah. Okay.

so the way that they solved it um was actually along the lines of keeping p2 on more oxygen um like i think they kept them on oxygen like a certain um a mixture of oxygen right after surgery and they kept him lying more prone for 24 hours and um i think there was one other thing um they like didn't let him sit up they kept him on oxygen maybe one other thing

But they thought that the thread retraction might have been because I was like moving around so much. I was sitting up right after surgery and a lot of the like... oxygen i was breathing in just kind of naturally there was something maybe with like the nitrogen that was causing um some of the threads to move or become displaced so they they

you know hypothesize they theorize and like oh well let's try this and see if it works and it absolutely worked p2 and p3 have had no threat of attraction i think they're like they say no threat of attraction but there's always with these sorts of surgeries uh maybe like a few percentage loss like they're happy they're happy if

80 are still in place they're happy if 90 like ecstatic if 90 or 95 are still in place so there's always a little bit of movement but i think they've well i know that they've solved the issue that was happening with me so It's just one other thing that we've learned. I think I saw that there was like a bubble, a gas bubble that kind of forms and that can, the bubble will actually depress the brain itself.

and increase the distance between the skull and the surface of the brain, which causes the retraction. Yeah, they thought that might have been the case. I know at the beginning. I don't know that that's what they ended on. I think that they said that that might have been happening with me. There was some evidence that it might have been happening with me. But, you know, the evidence that they're getting...

Like with the threads. It's... it's different maybe than people might think i can't just go in and get a scan and have them look at the threads the threads are way too small in order to see the threads in my brain they'd have to put me under a ct scan that would fry my brain So they can't see what's going on at all. All they can do is take the data and take the numbers and say, okay, by these numbers, we think that the...

Like this thread has moved this much. And that's really all that they can do. And I mean, I think it's a pretty accurate way of like feeling things out of understanding what's going on. But we can never be 100 percent sure because we can't see and we can't see like real time. So there was I know they had thought that I might have had that air pocket. There's a name for it. I was here and I forget.

But I'm not sure that's what they landed on. I think that they said that might have been what caused it and that might be happening. But I don't know if they said that was the ultimate cause. If you get another implant, where... would it be would it be in the other hemisphere and then what would you want to be able to do with it yeah i would imagine it would be in the other hemisphere probably with like in the area from my left hand

I think at that point, you could start trying to work on things like typing. You know, having to... having two separate implants um speaking sort of at the same time to the app is a little bit foreign to me at this point like it's it's one thing to be able to you know control my cursor with my mind just because like it's it's one thing like if i'm having to like split my mind in two or do two things at once It's almost like being

was it like omnidextrous i know ambidextrous is like you can use either hand but like at the same time like as well like i'm not sure exactly what it is but like imagine trying to write at the same time with both hands like perfectly um something like that i think that that's what it would take but all at the level of just thought instead of actually movement which is not something i can really wrap my head around right now but i think it's also one of those things where

Once it clicks, it clicks. And then from there on, it all just makes sense. So far, the implants are all connected to the dominant hand. Is that correct? I think so, yeah. I think P2 is a lefty. I think I'm right-hand dominant. So it's on the other side for P2. Yeah, I believe so.

Pinterest this is a really silly question but how how fragile is it like if you bump your head is that is it gonna be okay or you know it's a funny you ask when I was visiting in austin texas at their uh at one of their facilities um they have a little contraption set up to test that very thing um where they basically just like like drop something on the implant from different distances and different weights and stuff it's not incredibly fragile but I guess what they told me

It's pretty sturdy, but don't hit it. They don't want me bumping my head or anything. It would definitely hold up. to a lot of strain i've seen kind of the testing on it um but it's better not to find out sort of thing uh yeah i've i've bumped it a few times and Mostly, it just hurts like you're hitting your head. I can't feel it at all, ever, unless someone touches it or bumps it.

and then it feels sort of foreign like it feels like there's something on my skull which there is and it just got bumped and it's not comfortable um it hurts just as much as it would hurt like bumping your head on something um but i haven't broken anything yet in there so that's a good thing i did fall like um i was being transferred on a plane like i was

having some guys like lift me off a seat of a plane and one of the guys like didn't really get a good grip and i like kind of slowly just fell over and like hit my head on a center console and i told that story to um one of the one of the doctors, one of the people working with me at Neuralink, I'm sorry, at Barrow at the hospital as part of the study. I told her that and she was like, what side of the head was it on?

Like, it wasn't on the Neuralink side, was it? It was, like, her first question. And I was like, no, it was the opposite side of my head. And, like, it didn't hit the Neuralink. She's like, okay, good. Like, it was really funny. Like, they... They're very careful about it. I am very careful as well. If I was really worried about it, I have a helmet that my friends got me for Christmas one year. I would just start wearing that around. Yeah.

My sister really wanted me to ask you if your brain can operate or interact with Neuralink while you're dreaming and if anything happens like that. Yeah, it definitely works while you're sleeping. If I leave it connected, or if I fall asleep while it's connected, I will wake up to random stuff being opened.

which is interesting. I don't think it's... maybe like what people think is happening i don't think it's you know i'm dreaming about something and it is going like pulling stuff up um i don't think it's definitely that's not what's happening it's more just that you move in your sleep And so the cursor is moving and there's that, you know, issue of like cursor drift and like the cursor is just sort of always being sort of mobile, like it's always sort of moving around.

That's basically what's happening, and so it'll just be like moving around the screen, clicking different things, and doing different things on the screen while I'm dreaming, while I'm sleeping. It is a... massive fear of mine uh that that happens uh because it's happened a few times and i've pulled up like different text messages and stuff i'm like oh don't want to don't want to text that person or don't want to send anything to that person

You know different like different things like that like I'm afraid it's gonna do some weird stuff While I'm in my sleep or like open something weird And so I'm really worried about it all the time, so I'm very careful to disconnect whenever I'm done using it.

Just as recently as last week it happened to me. And I was like, I don't even remember falling asleep. I was just staring at my screen. I was like, I didn't open that. And I didn't open that. I was like, okay, well, something must have happened. In your dreams, are you always paralyzed in your dreams? Or do you have dreams where you're moving around? And if so, is it possible that your brain is sending signals that would be moving your hand?

while you're sleeping? Yeah, I think it's definitely possible. I always dream as I have never been paralyzed. Really? Yeah, it's something that I was very surprised about at the beginning. But all of my dreams end... almost all of my dreams i'll say most of them the ones i can remember at least always end with me realizing that i can't do this because i'm paralyzed and then i'll wake up um so it's it's like

i'll be doing you know i'll be playing sports i'll be doing all these things and then slowly throughout the dream it'll sort of dawn on me like hey like i can't do this like well how am i moving i'm paralyzed and then i wake up so um yeah

Yeah, it's interesting. It's super interesting. I don't understand it. Is that lucidity? Like, what is that realization? Yeah, I think it's probably me, like, coming out of my sleep. And so, like, as I'm... as i'm waking up as my body is like becoming more lucid i guess uh it like in it reflects that in my dream it's like okay well like you're waking up now and like I'm waking up and I'm like starting to realize it's almost like

You know, you always wake up remembering sort of your dream at that point. You remember for maybe a few seconds, a few minutes your dream. Like that, that moment, like the very end of your dream, especially. is where I'm realizing that I'm paralyzed, so it's like I'm almost awake. I'm basically awake, and so it's like, oh, I'm paralyzed still. So I think it's just me sort of waking up.

So you're not necessarily trying to get up when you wake up? No, no, no, no. It's always just... Honestly, I think the same thing. Every time I wake up, I'm like, man, it's so weird that I dream like that. It's so weird that that's how my brain works. I don't know if there's something psychologically going on there. Maybe someone can analyze my dreams. I have no idea why it happens.

It's not like when I wake up, I try to sit up or do anything. I just sort of wake up and I'm like, oh, yep, this is just how things are still. I saw some comment on... i don't know why this is coming to me now but someone was saying that in a dream that they had in like the 90s that they that they were told that everyone had already gotten brain implants there's kind of this weird space of like theories online

involving simulation theory and brain implants and we're actually just remembering something that's already happened. Do you see a bunch of that stuff? Not a ton. That being said, I'm not on the internet a ton looking at anything like that. In my comments, I'll see... Occasional things like that in my messages. I'll see occasional things like that and people saying you know, I mean You know people saying I was the first person to get a brain chip

Neuralink was, you know, they experimented on me first and other people like we're all in a simulation and everything is, nothing is real and stuff. And I've, I've gone.

I've listened to some people online who have spoken about simulation theory and stuff. I don't see it a ton with me. Honestly, what I got a lot at the beginning was people saying that... it was evil essentially that the neural link was itself evil um and yeah i i got that a lot i got like you're the antichrist i got um you know it's just everyone trying to like control um all of us and i'll never get it like

You know, you're brave for what you've done, but I'll never get it because it's evil. And people saying that it's completely against, like, God. It's, you know, Mark of the Beast stuff. I've gotten a lot of that. It doesn't faze me. I'm just like, all right.

whatever i mean if if it is then if it is then you know i'm screwed um but i don't see i don't see how i don't see how it is but yeah okay i think i think that's kind of coming from this i mean there's the fear of the unknown and also a fear of like they kind of imagine the worst case scenario when people focus on like the bad things that could come out of something like this rather than you know

weighing that with all the good things that could come out of this but yeah i mean it's one thing to like say it to your friends or whatever but it's another to comment to you saying like i wouldn't get it it's such a weird thing to be doing yeah i mean to each their own I read through a lot of my comments. I read through a lot of my comments. There are still people out there who just disagree with what I'm doing. I'm just like, alright. Thank you.

thanks thanks for your message that's fine with me i guess um um yeah i don't know i don't know it's it is what it is i i do love how this it really is a part of sci sci-fi culture and maybe you're familiar with like the neural lace but like that the idea of like augs or augmented humans uh cyborgs uh has been around for a long time

yeah and i guess i mean do you identify uh as a cyborg is that yeah i i do i do it's it's a little weird but i do i mean i don't think about it much i kind of like i kind of just thought that I was at the beginning I'm like yeah I'm a cyborg like I put it I put it like on a lot of my stuff I'm like yep cyborg like that's me and now at this point it's just kind of like like what I am in a way I don't

think I'm really any different but I know that I fall into sort of a different category a little bit because I've been basically augmented in a certain way with technology. um and so it's it i fall into that cyborg category and i'm like fine by me i think it's fun um i don't think it changes like who i am in any way but yeah and it's it's wild to think this is real this really is like i mean you you know elon is i wouldn't say a believer but he he thinks that the simulation theory is logical

like probabilistically it makes sense but one of the reasons why simulation theory makes sense is this idea that in the future our brains are being written to by implants so like like the upcoming product Blindsight. It's actually writing to the brain. It's taking visual information and... through a camera and writing it to your brain. So you're actually seeing things. And if it's just through the camera, then the things you're seeing are real. But there is this possibility of...

evil mega corporations, you know, writing reality to your brain, kind of like the Matrix, right? Yeah, evil corp. Yeah. Yeah, evil corp. Yeah. It's a real possibility. Like, I don't...

i'm not going to like sit here and lie and tell people like nope nothing like that's ever going to happen like no one will ever use this for bad like anything like that i can't i can't promise that i know that um technology is just a tool for us to be used it's something for us to harness but people are the contributing factor people are evil people are good and evil so evil things will be done with this I am almost positive

I feel like someone at some point will find a way to use this for evil purposes. And it will be able to write on the brain at some point. I don't... I don't discount that. I look forward to it in a lot of ways, and I think that it's something that we would definitely need to keep an eye on, because...

There are a lot of ways that it can get out of hand, but I don't know how we prevent it before we kind of get there. I know that a lot of these things, like with AI, you kind of just don't know where it's headed, and so you need to... try and play catch up a bit with um like any sort of um legislation or anything about it or any sort of safeguards and things and we can do our best to prepare for what's coming but

You just never know. Who would have thought the internet would have become what it did at its inception? And so who knows what Neuralink will become in five, ten years? And so it's hard to foresee all of the... possibilities all the outcomes all the good and the bad and I know that they're going to be some some nefarious people doing some shady things at some point but you know that's

It doesn't mean that the technology is evil by any means, but yeah, it is interesting. The technology will be able to read and write. We'll be able to... connect through bluetooth connections probably to each other at some point um who knows what that looks like who knows what that feels like i know that other bcis have already worked on like sensation um neuralink is very much still like

like cursor control like just very plain and simple but other BCIs have already kind of started have been working on like using BCI to like stimulate parts of the body and like give back sensation and, um, or at least let someone feel. Um, so like that stuff is all possible and who knows when you reach other parts of the brain, like there are so many other things you can do with Neuralink.

um joe rogan has talked about like being able to flip a switch and feel like you're on a drug trip like i don't see why that's not possible there are going to be a lot of things that something like this um like neuralink will be able to do and we just kind of have to like build the plane as we're flying it i think a lot of uh of the luddites or anti-technologists that might call you Skynet, Progenitor, or whatever it is. They should also be concerned about the possibility of...

artificial super intelligence, a rogue AI or an AI that's not aligned with us. And a lot of smart people believe that we... won't be able to maintain alignment because of our basically our output is way too slow for us to communicate with advanced ai and so the

The way to maintain alignment between our species and ASI is through Neuralink. So it's actually... it may actually be the thing that protects us against sort of like the instrument of the devil antichrist artificial intelligence apocalypse right yeah i mean it's possible i like i said i think i am

the one thing that's holding back Neuralink. I think that Neuralink is capable of so much more and I definitely believe that some high computation within ourselves is possible with Neuralink and so some high competency and basically anything I I believe that there will be ways in which we will hopefully be able to keep up with the growth in AI and things. And who knows?

Like I said, I don't know what Neuralink will become. I know things that are coming, hopefully. I know things that it is capable of now. But I have... thoughts about what it might be capable of and I don't see why it's not possible as long as we get really good people working on it and we find really smart solutions and we harness it to the best of our ability.

You mentioned disconnecting your BCI when we were talking about dreams. Can I ask you about the logistics of it? Because I was showing your videos to my son, he's six, and the first thing he asked was like, how does he turn it off?

and i was like oh that's that's actually a good question i have no idea yeah so um the neural link when i'm not using it is sort of just in a hibernation mode it's in like a sleep mode um how i Charge it is how I basically turn it on so There's like a coil that I will just put over my head I wear a hat with a coil in it that is connected to a charger base so

it's what is the i always forget what the word is called you know when you put your phone on like a mat and it charges it like you don't need to plug it in or anything it's called like wireless charging magsafe yeah like induction charging or something like that it's like it's like a coil basically um and so that's what's happening with the neural link it's just a coil that sits over my head and it charges like

the air essentially like there's nothing that needs to be plugged in so I'll wear a hat and charge it and it'll turn on and once it's like woken up essentially from its sleep mode when I put that coil over my head

Then I can connect to my computer. I will use a voice command and say like implant connect and it'll connect and then Whenever I am done using it uh i'll just say the opposite uh implant and then not connect i don't want to say it because it's going to disconnect on me um right but yeah it'll it'll uh um so then it'll disconnect

And it'll stay awake for about five minutes. After that, it will go into sleep mode again. And so then it's just kind of waiting for me to turn it back on to put the coil over my head again. yeah and then you know it'll it'll if i use it to um zero percent it'll just die and it's not actually at like zero percent they have like safeguards so it's at maybe like

10% or 20% or something. So I could let it die and go about a week without charging it again before I would... get into any sort of danger zone because i think once it dies completely then they have issues um they they won't be able to like turn it back on essentially so um that's why they make it like tell me it's dead when it's not actually dead because they don't want me going below a certain threshold and then they ask that I charge when it's dead at minimum every three days.

um to keep it from like fully dying um but it's just basically in sleep mode all the time when i'm not using it is there any day you don't use it Hardly. Hardly. It depends. I think the days that I don't use it are when I'm traveling and doing like... like speaking engagements and things um i will use it on a plane if i can if the flight is long enough um um i will use it like in my car as i'm traveling um and so like i'm generally using it almost all the time. It just depends on what I'm doing.

There have been times in the last year where I didn't use it for a few days. I went to a non-profit and I was staying there for like a week and I just didn't use it because I was busy all day. But I have to, within regulations through the study, connect and collect data once every five days, or else I'm like...

not in compliance with the study anymore as part of my voluntary position in it and stuff. But, yeah, I use it all the time. You use your computer with it? Yeah, well, so the app is... uh uploaded on my mac on my computer okay um it is what i use 99 of the time it can be connected to my phone but it's connected to my phone like

through my computer so not like necessarily connected solely to my phone just because they have to anything that I control has to be uploaded with the app and since they've only uploaded the app and they're only working on the app for a Mac right now um that's that's really all it's capable of um you can connect things to the mac like a switch to the mac through like what they call a magic box it's just like a converter essentially which converts like mac

outputs into like switch like nintendo switch outputs um but um yeah just mainly my computer do you have any like phantom brain chip syndrome when you when it when you don't have it turned on or when it's charging and you're not you can't access it like does it feel

Like, if I don't have my phone, I'll, like, have a mini heart attack and panic. Do you have something like... No, no. I mean... I love being on it and using it as much as I can, but when I didn't use it for almost a week and I was out just spending time with my family and stuff, I love that just as much. naturally an outdoorsy guy I like being outside and not necessarily being tethered to like electronics all the time which is pretty ironic but

I don't mind going without it. I'll go and spend time with my family and go do other things and stuff. I'm out of the lot now because I'm working a lot and I have to stay in touch with a lot of people. you know, schedule things and stuff like that. So it seems like I'm always working. But yeah, I don't mind not being on it. Were you worried when you were...

When things were going on with the thread retraction that you, you know, I just imagine if I were in your situation, I would have been like quite worried that, you know, that that. I wouldn't be able to use it anymore. Yeah, that was my conclusion, I guess, when they told me about the threat attraction. I assumed... I guess assumption. My assumption was that I was not going to be able to use it anymore when that day they told me. It wasn't, I mean, I had thoughts like maybe they can fix it.

But I I was basically resigned to I'm not going to be using it anymore at that point That was a month in and I had a bit of a cry. I remember like they told me in a hotel like lobby right before I was about to go visit Neuralink. um like meet everyone basically for the first time show my face for the first time they all knew me as p1 but no one had really ever seen my face besides like a handful of people um or knew my name besides a handful of people so i was about to go meet all of them

I was about to go give the all-hands speech. There's a video of it, I think, when I'm talking with DJ and Bliss and stuff. I was about to go do all of that, and they come to my hotel in the morning and tell me,

And it was really, really hard. It was super hard. I got in my van to go over to Neuralink because they were basically like, you know, we'd understand if you don't want to like... do this anymore this is not like an easy thing and i said no like i need to show my appreciation um i want to i want to meet everyone who's been doing this and working on it and i want to say thank you and i want to

like tell them how amazing of a job they've done and i want to go see everything like i thought it would be really cool um And so I went and got in my van to drive over. It's like a two-minute drive from my hotel. And I just sat there and cried for a few minutes. I prayed about it with my family. And then I went over and... had like one of the best days of my life um it was great it was great but i was super worried i thought that i wouldn't be able to use it anymore is there some

concern still lingering that that the retraction could progress and no no we haven't I've asked a few times maybe in the last six months or something I've asked just like how things are going. They said that they've seen no evidence of it still of the thread still moving They've essentially stabilized or they have stabilized So, you know, they

The hope is that the threads don't move too much before scar tissue forms around it. You want scar tissue to form around the threads to lock them in place. And they saw that happening in the monkeys within, you know, like a couple of months. So they just, you know. are just hoping basically. They expect that the scar tissue will form and kind of lock them in place. It's kind of a trade-off because the scar tissue prevents signals from getting to the electrodes as well.

But it also, like, anchors them and keeps them from moving. So, you know, good and bad. But, yeah, I'm not worried about them moving anymore. I know that you reached out to Neuralink. Right. But like every time I see you speak, like even now, like it feels like Neuralink got so lucky because it could have been I mean, anything could have happened. Right. Like you could.

be acting normal and nice and then you get it and you turn out to be an asshole or you know it's just do you know what i mean like yeah yeah i i think was super lucky to get it I don't know still to this day why I was chosen I don't think that there's really anything special about me about my application about well just about me I think that any

There were a number of people who could have done this just as well as I could have, and who could have been just as good of a P1 as I could have. I was just lucky that I was what they wanted. All of the criteria that they had set, very, very strict criteria that they set, just aligned perfectly with my body and my disability. It really was just sort of, I believe, a match made in heaven with us.

I am happy to be an advocate and speak as much as I am and help them out as much as I can. I think that it is something I... have always been comfortable with is speaking and being in front of people and never, you know, being starstruck by anyone that I met. It's just people are people. And... I also feel like I'm extremely lucky to be in this situation. So, I mean, I think I won that little trade-off, I guess, or that little whatever.

Like, I don't think they got as lucky as I did, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I think they got really lucky. Well, thank you. Thank you.

What is the current situation with Neuralink? Are there more people in the pipeline to get it or do you know anything? Yeah, I... know that they're planning on doing a lot more surgeries this year I've heard that They are working through getting more people they're working getting more people through Because they have to go and like get it all approved by a certain board like we want this person and it has to get approved And they just opened up the Miami site

at the i think university of miami site um so i think they're ramping up i haven't heard that there's a p4 yet but i know it's coming they're starting um trials in canada as well right yeah i think so i think canada and the uk is where they're trying to get to um to like neck kind of next phase i think canada was approved um so yeah Do you know what's different about P2 and P3? What sort of things they might learn there that they wouldn't be getting from you?

I think they wanted a lefty for P2. I don't know why. I think they just wanted sort of two sides of it. And everyone's sort of different, too. Everyone's... I guess, how they interact with the implant, how they perform with the implant, it's all different. So I think they just also just wanted someone else. And then P3 has ALS and pretty... pretty far along so he is on a ventilator and is unable to speak so they are finding ways to tailor the Neuralink to

people in that situation as well because it's you know i use a lot of voice commands and he obviously can't so they need to find ways around that um they need to find ways to let him use it just as well as i can so i know that there are different sets of disabilities that they're looking to test it out with and I think they just want as many people as possible with all sorts of these disabilities.

to get a wide range of data because, you know, I'm just one person. Someone else's experience could be much different. P2 is just one person. Someone else's experience could be much different with the two of us. It's like, okay, well, one of them... may be an aberration or one of them may be like the norm or both of them could be the norm or both of them could be aberrations we just need to like get more people in to really you know find the

the middle ground between everything and find out how to make it accessible for everyone. I guess it has to be a grown-up, right? I mean, I guess if it's a child, the brain will still...

grow? Yeah, I think so. I'm not 100% sure, so don't quote me on that. I think so. I think they want... adults maybe the study might even require it i'm not sure that kids are allowed to be in the study to be honest um so yeah i'm not 100 sure how much would you say just for an intuitive sense it the the neural link as a product i mean it's not for sale yet but how much has it improved your quality of life just day to day

I mean, I feel like it's improved my life dramatically. I think, you know, people take using a computer for granted. they don't realize how much it can affect my life and how much more I'm able to do with it. I would imagine people would say, it's really just a computer. Shouldn't be helping like that much like you can you know play games go on the internet and do different things like that like that Shouldn't improve my quality of life like that much. It's just a computer, but it really has

made me more independent. It's given me a lot of hope for the future as far as finding work, going back to school, being able to communicate with people. I've said I feel like a better son, brother, and friend. I'm just able to keep in touch with people much, much better than I was before. I'm able to play. and have fun which is not something that i was really able to do much before um i could like watch things but not not really interact with them in any way

Take learning Japanese, for instance. I was trying to learn Japanese by watching YouTube videos and watching TV shows and things. And while it's possible, I know it's possible, it's really hard when you're not... in some way like interacting like you're not going through some sort of like book or you're not going through some sort of like interactive you know website or anything I mean I I was

watching listening to Japanese for I don't know like months years and I it was just so hard to pick up and then I got on the Neuralink and I think I learned like hirigana and katakana in like like maybe a week um it just made it made things it made things so much easier um because i could like interact i could i could do things so

It's just stuff like that. It's just opened up a lot of possibilities for me. Not just because I'm P1. Even if I wasn't out there speaking and doing things, I would have a lot more time to myself, that's for darn sure.

I'd be able to like play games all I want and I'd be able to like focus more on like all of my learning and stuff instead of like doing all of my like traveling and speaking and things um i love it don't get me wrong i love it but it i think people think that maybe my life has improved so much just because i'm p1 and i'm like sort of famous a bit um

But that's not it, really. It's more that it's given me a lot of hope for what I'm actually able to accomplish, what I can do. And so it's great. It's made things a lot better. I assume it probably gave you a lot of privacy too, no? Yeah, yeah, it definitely did. One thing about texting without the Neuralink is...

Everything you text, you have to say out loud. And that sucks. It's not great. It's not just like... I know where people's minds go with that, but it's more just like I want to talk with my friend about... how he's doing with something that he's really struggling with. And I don't want everyone around me to know what that is. It's not just my privacy, it's other people's privacy. And so...

The Neuralink has afforded me that, and that's great. All sorts of stuff like that. All sorts of stuff. Hopefully it doesn't get me into any trouble. That's kind of a counterintuitive one. getting a brain implant would increase your privacy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because I would think like if I want to Google something, like if I have a question and I want to Google something and a lot of the times it's not...

Even if it's not anything embarrassing per se, like it's like I don't, it's not something that I'll be like sharing with other people, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just little things, little things like that.

I mean, it's very similar to when I had my accident. Like, people just take a lot of things for granted. A lot of things that you would never think about if I didn't bring it up. Like... scratching an itch imagine not being able to scratch an itch for hours hours and hours and hours and just having to lie there and let an itch sort of just rest on your face say

It's absolutely hell. It is really hard. And basically what people say in the medical profession, their medical advice is go to your happy place. um and that sucks it's really hard so it's just little things like that that people don't think about um and i'm not like criticizing people for not thinking about it but it's more just little things with Neuralink have made my life a lot better. Just lots of little things add up. I think in one of the interviews you mentioned getting a headache.

And that got me thinking, you know, when you have a headache and if you have senses on the other parts of the body, you can just sort of distract yourself. But I guess in your situation, headache must feel... Way worse, I would imagine. They feel about the same, I think. Yeah? Yeah, I think a headache is a headache. The worst ones are like nerve pain.

I get nerve pain. I woke up in the hospital one night and felt like my legs were on fire. And it's just... your your nerves going crazy going haywire um and so like obviously my legs aren't on fire i can't even feel my legs so why am i feeling that my legs are on fire um and You know, the doctors are like, we can only give you so much meds for that, and we gave you your dose. So, again, go to your happy place. Like, things like that. It sucks. There are things that are bad.

Is that inflammation or what's causing it? Yeah, it could be like inflammation and swelling in the spinal cord. More, I think, than that, it's just your nervous system is in shock after a spinal cord injury. Everything is sort of just finding its new normal. I'm finding my new normal as a quadriplegic. My body is doing the same thing. It's like, all right, we're not working anymore. My body starts atrophying. My nervous system just goes haywire, essentially.

My autonomic system also goes haywire. So all the things that should be like regulated sometimes just aren't. And, you know, things like that. So it's just your body just is adjusting. So things can get really hard. But I managed. I'm here. So we're good. How do you go to your happy place? What does that mean for you? Well, I don't really have one. I think that when those things happen, there is very little way to, like...

get it off your mind. I would posit it to anyone that if you literally lit your legs on fire, You could find any way to think about anything else. It's just not possible. You kind of just have to start thinking about other things. That's what I do. When I have an itch, I can't scratch.

i try to find ways to scratch it for as long as i possibly can it is always on my mind if i'm lying in bed and i have an itch on my nose at night and i can't like say turn my head enough to reach my pillow or i usually have like something kind of next to me um if i can't like reach that and scratch it i will do everything in my power for hours and hours and hours to scratch that itch. Because it's not going to go away. It's not just going to stop. And if I can't, if I can't do it...

then I will lie there and maybe I'll turn something on my TV. Maybe I will just turn something on and watch and try to not think about it. It doesn't always work. And when I couldn't turn on TV before, I just kind of had to lie there at night and like stare at a wall. If it gets too bad, I have like a phone next to me and I will call someone. And I'll say, I need help. Like, this is, like, I can't do it. And I used to do that a lot. I used to do that a lot. Nowadays, I...

have different ways of like scratching itches mainly on my face. Cause that's like basically the only place that I ever get itches. Um, and, um, you know, it's just, it's just a matter of, of, finding some way to think about something else but i wouldn't say there's any sort of like happy place i go to it's just just think about anything is this what a lot of doctors say to patients like go to go to a happy place yep

Huh. I didn't know that. Yep. Well, there's really not a whole lot more they can do. Um, they, they can't make it go away with drugs, with pain meds because they're only allowed to give you so much before it's like dangerous to your health. Um, so, you know. That's that's it. They just say like I'm sorry, but like you're just gonna have to find a way to get through And that's kind of all they can do I'm just imagining this robot arm

reaching in on your screen right now and just scratching a little itch on your nose. You're not the only one. I... I've told them, I was like, they're like, what would you do with the robot arm? I was like, scratch an itch. Like that, that enough would be, would make it worth it. Right. So. Yeah. Even if that was the only thing it did, it would be incredible. Right. Yeah.

yep i'm excited i'm excited for it i'm gonna do lots of cool things with it how would you have that robot arm set up and would would you just need one well i think they would only send me one um I would mount it to my chair in some way. So it would be a lot like this straw right here. It'd probably be like mounted in some way. And then on my bed next to me, it would just be mounted on my bed. I think that that's probably the simplest way.

And would you want it to be like a human type arm or is there some other kind of arm that might work better for your situation? Yeah, I've never thought about it. I think a human arm makes sense just because I know how to use it and what it's capable of. So maybe that one makes more sense. What I really want, sorry, not Neuralink related, is a capuchin monkey. Okay. So people train capuchin monkeys.

to help quadriplegics. There's a non-profit that does it. And they'll give them to a quadriplegic and go and train the monkey to help the quadriplegic and stuff. And I want one so bad, but Arizona, where I live, does not allow primates to be owned. Wow. Even for this kind of medical service animal type situation? Not even that. I looked up when I was on their non-profit site and they're like, these are the states that don't allow it. And Arizona was right there. And I was like, awesome.

but I want one so bad. Like a monkey could scratch my itch. A monkey could like give me, give me treats and stuff. Like monkey would be my best friend. Like, yeah. Does the monkey have an implant and, and. Can you control the monkey or is it totally free to just... I mean, now we're talking, right? Now we're getting somewhere. I don't see why not. Poochum monkeys are pretty small.

So they might have to make one like the size of a dime and maybe it only does like one thing. Maybe it only like connects to me and we can like communicate with one another. i mean that that might really get some of these people going once you're like a remote operating uh You could probably lobby for it. Yeah, I'm going to eventually. It's on my list. I'm going to make sure that Arizona allows people to have capuchin monkeys. It is on my list.

Yeah. It's kind of weird for the state to be like, no, you cannot have that. Yeah. Yep. You're not wrong. So are you an Arizona native? Yeah, I grew up here. I was born in Hawaii, but my dad was in the Marine Corps and my parents. I moved to Yuma. There's a Marine Corps station here. And then I grew up here basically my whole life. Why did you go to Texas for university instead?

Yeah, great question. My best friend and my girlfriend at the time were going. And that was good enough for me. But I went and visited... I went and visited... the college when I was a junior with both of them and I just really really wanted to like I fell in love with the school and I was like I want to go here and so we all decided to go together

And then my girlfriend decided to go on the complete opposite side of the state to West Texas A&M. And my best friend decided to go to our rival school. So I was kind of there alone. And then I was like, all right, well, I'm still going to do it. I packed up a suitcase, packed up a suitcase like when I turned 18, two months after I turned 18, and I moved out of my house.

And what's the rival school? Is that UT? Yeah, UT. We call it TU. They are not the University of Texas. They are just a University of Texas. Texas A&M was their first. okay but you're on good terms with i i guess asu uh no i'm not a big asu guy no okay okay what is it like the the sun devils or Yeah. I don't really... Sun Devils. Then U of A, I think I like a bit more. Okay. And they're, you know, Wildcats. They're in... So ASU's Phoenix. U of A's...

Tucson. I'm a bigger U of A fan, but Texas A&M is where it's at. Arizona schools can suck it. Do you feel like you represent Arizona at all? Yeah, I'm a big sports guy. I'm a big Arizona sports guy. So I have come to love Arizona in a lot of ways. I didn't when I was growing up. I was like, I want to get out of here as fast as possible. I hated the heat. And then I moved to Texas and I was like, I'm an idiot. I should have gone somewhere up north.

But I, yeah, I just was not a big fan of Arizona growing up. And Yuma is like not a great place to like grow up as a... you know teenager i would say there's not a lot there's not a lot to do uh so it was it was pretty hard um and then um you know like i just wanted to get out wanted to go see the world a bit So, yeah, that's kind of what I did. And I went and traveled. I studied abroad in Australia.

I started working at a summer camp in New York in the Poconos, well in Pennsylvania technically, but in the Poconos right on the border of New York. I drove around the country. I just kind of did whatever I wanted to do. Now that I'm back in Arizona, I can see kind of the good parts of it, I would say. So yeah, it definitely changed my view on everything when I came back. What got you into learning Japanese? Yeah, um... I had... Well...

I had always liked... Well, maybe not always. I started liking anime when I was a bit younger. i watched silent kind of like the basics i watched like uh inuyasha was probably one of the first and then um and then bleach was like my favorite show still is one of my favorite shows and then uh Yu Yu Hakusho is probably my favorite anime of all time and then like Naruto and so like I was I was very much like surface level like like some of the basic stuff and then

Most of those I watched in English though. So like I wasn't really interested in the Japanese language at all. And plus at that point in time anime wasn't like popular. um people weren't like yeah like anime is cool man they were like you watch anime you're a weirdo you're a nerd yeah and like you're an outcast so um it it

You know, I got there eventually. Oh, and, like, Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball, yeah, how could I forget Dragon Ball? But, yeah, and then after a while, like, I think it was after my accident, I... Was watching a lot more anime and then I started like reading manga. I think the first manga I read was It was either Tokyo Ghoul or Demon Slayer

And I had, like, watched the show, I think maybe the first season of Demon Slater, and I was like, I can't stop there. So, like, I went and read the whole manga on, like, a night, and I was like, this is actually great. Like, why haven't I been reading this entire time?

um so then i started doing that and once i started you know reading i was like well you know there's just so much more to like this this you know uh culture and um everything everything about it i'd like through manga through anime i'd started like appreciating a lot of the parts of the culture. There were things that I thought were very nice and things that I wanted to learn more about and stuff. And I had honestly fallen in love with the Japanese language.

As I started watching more anime like I don't know like I don't know something about it is like I know people say the exact opposite to me But something about it is actually very pleasing to the ear. I really enjoy like the sound of uh like japanese being spoken um it's really nice so i just i wanted to learn and it's simple like like i think it's super simple uh kanji is super hard but like the rest

The rest of it's super simple, I think. Like, there's... Y'all have very strict rules for your, like, pronunciation and everything. Like, English is freaking crazy, but y'all are like... like it's like very simple and then you just add a consonant and stuff and it's like like simple very very simple um it's just like learning the grammar a bit and once you learn the grammar it's like like that's not too bad

um so i don't know i really enjoy it plus i just love languages in general i always saw myself as being like a polyglot at some point in my life so just sort of fit in you said you did some traveling recently um where did you go yeah I I was um just this week I was up in Phoenix speaking at like a medical convention um last month I was in Texas for like a non-profit hunting trip. So they like mounted a gun to my chair and let me hunt. Super cool.

Not controlled with the implant, though. No, I wanted to so bad. That would be so cool. I wanted to so bad.

I was like, maybe I should just do it and ask for forgiveness instead of permission. They didn't have the mechanism for it or anything. There was just no way to do it. I would have needed Neuralink to set it up, but I was really really hoping that they were going to send me the robot arm and then I could just use the robot arm to fire the gun and then like technically you know I'm not controlling the gun with the

implant I'm just um no I'm okay thank you I'm just uh um controlling like the robot arm so maybe loopholes FDA um and then I could ask for forgiveness later But no, they didn't give me one. And I told Neuralink about it, and they were like, Thank God you didn't do that. You would have gotten in so much trouble. And I was like, yeah, whatever. It would have been fine. Yeah, like if you accidentally shoot someone. Yeah.

Is it going to be your fault or whose fault is it going to be? You know? No, it's the arm. Yeah, it was Eve. It was my implant. She took over. It wasn't me.

I mean they said the robot arm moves so slow like so slow that it would be pretty hard to kill anyone like you'd have to be like running in slow motion for me to catch up to you um so yeah unless i'm like shooting long distance like a sniper are there things that are sort of uh classified i'm i'm sure there are proprietary things that you can't talk about but like of everything that you do You hypothetically could talk about how much of that is is sort of

you're discouraged from from talking about it um nothing i didn't sign an nda i didn't sign anything i'm allowed to i'm allowed to speak about whatever i want i choose not to speak about certain things because i

you know, like, I don't want to give away certain surprises maybe that are coming down the road. I don't want to hurt Nerling in any way. And not that, like, anything bad is going on, but that... you know some things could be misconstrued the wrong way you know like when the thread retraction happened we released it

Maybe like a few weeks later, maybe a month or two later or something. I can't remember how long it was, but I could have spoken about it that day if I wanted to. I could have gotten on and spoken about it, but I didn't want... it to come out before Neuralink had a chance to like understand what happened and explain what happened. And I think that was very valuable. And so, I mean, I could, I can talk about whatever I want. That's why I always tell people I'm an open book.

ask away, and if I know, I'll tell you, and if I don't, I won't, and if I don't want to talk about it, I won't. That's pretty cool. How long do you think it'll be before some kind of... Let's say, you know, like China's making a starship, right? Oh, are they really? I didn't know that. Yeah, there's like a Chinese version of a starship that they're working on. So how long do you think it would be before we see...

kind of like a knockoff Neuralink or we start to see like these competitor, like similar, you know, the same form factor and sort of a similar. Probably not long. I wouldn't say very long. I think that the proof of concept is already there. I think people have seen that it works. And there's some information out there. People could try to reverse engineer it.

Saw a guy who like his whole he started a YouTube channel and his whole YouTube channel is reverse engineering the Neuralink And so like I know that You know there's stuff out there that could help and maybe make it possible So I don't see why it would be very long before something like this something like a you know knockoff Neuralink would come out There's also just like There's a lot of other tech brain stuff coming out

There's a lot more going on in the field than just Neuralink. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe it might be high on someone's list. Maybe not. Maybe they find a better way to do things. Maybe Neuralink. um abandons this chip altogether and goes in a different direction i'm not sure but i don't see why um i don't see how lot lots more tech won't start popping up because it's been shown to work, and that's all people need, I think. There was a lot of uncertainty at the beginning about this whole thing.

yeah um including i guess the feasibility of of the surgery itself and i i guess in some ways the the robot is you know the autonomous surgical robot is like as I wouldn't I don't know if it's as much of an innovation but it's certainly a big part of

I would say it is. I would say it's just as much as an innovation, if not more. I mean, one of the surgeons that did my surgery... or that was in there during the surgery looking at my brain said he had never seen a less traumatized brain during brain surgery and that is a robot implanting 64 threads in my brain with precision that a doctor could never do in like

million tries you know so I think it's gonna revolutionize surgery and the medical field that's why I think I think a lot is coming down the pipeline that you know tech will solve instead of like medicine it kind of needs to be done on the first try yeah yeah i mean the you know what's crazy is uh that

surgical robot uh tiny dancer is what they've named it what i've started to call it i guess one girl said it and i was like i love that i'm gonna keep calling it that um so it's maybe maybe just us two but um they brought like 20 extra needles um for the robot because you know the needles are like replaceable and stuff and um they had gone through like

probably hundreds of iterations of the needle, and they brought 20 replacement needles because they didn't know if the needle was going to be able to survive the whole surgery. to like penetrate certain parts of the brain and make it through the whole surgery without like breaking or anything like that happening and uh one needle did it all

They didn't need to use any replacements. They like encased that needle in like epoxy or something and they're saving it They're like it was the most incredible thing because they they had expected like so much so much worse um i mean you hope that one needle does it but they they honestly expected it to break and it was one needle so it was just it's just amazing everything about that surgery was incredible everything just went perfectly Except for the threat of traction, obviously. Right.

I thought you were going to say they gave you the needle. I wanted it. I wanted it. That would have been cool. It would have been a museum. Yeah, that would have been cool, but I think the guys on the team wanted it. They were like, yeah, we encase this and we keep it on a shelf and stuff. I'm like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't ask for this. They gave me a bunch of skulls. I think that's good enough. So you have the piece of your skull?

No, I wish I could have. I wish. I think they said that it wasn't allowed. It's something about, like, something to do with, like... surgeries in general or maybe like the fda surgery in general like it wasn't i wasn't allowed to keep it um but no i i have the skulls that they um well one of the skulls that they did a practice like dry run on um my

my surgery the day before they did they did the surgery on that skull and then i got everyone that worked on my surgery to sign it um so i have that and then i have two more that like everyone at nerling signed So I have like the whole team. I have Elon Musk. I have all sorts of like other people that have like worked on the project on like three different skulls. So it's pretty cool.

Wait, are these real skulls? No, they're 3D printed skulls. So it was like a 3D printed replica of my face and head.

um so it's like they've got my face on it which is really weird um yeah but uh yeah it's just because they needed something to like practice on so they took like all of my exact um brain scans my like skull scans face scans and replicated everything and then practice the surgery on it so it's more than just a skull yes it's like your own it is it is me yes it is me yeah it's interesting that they did the face part too because you would think that's not really necessary

yeah yeah i don't know maybe maybe it made it more like real to them they had to make them more personal or something i don't know do you ever take it with you anywhere or is that i know like uh i keep it i keep it i had it in a like shadow box for a while and then i think my mom broke my shadow box i need to get a new one um but i just like have them

And whenever people come to interview me, I'm like, want to see Skulls? And they're like, whoa, that's so cool. A witch doctor. Yeah, they take tons of pictures of them and stuff. Yeah, they're pretty cool. I'm really glad they gave them to me. What are you guys working on these days? Or if you can... Yeah, I still work on a lot of calibration stuff. I think they're about to start giving me back control of the Nintendo Switch again. I've had kind of control.

But they hadn't really been working a lot on the game controller aspect of it. And so they're about to give that back to me. I think they were supposed to do it this week if I had time, but I haven't really had time. So maybe next week. And then controlling a power wheelchair with the implant. So being able to drive my chair. Right now, I have a sip and puff.

So like when I'm moving, I just have to like blow or suck into this kind of constantly. So like using the Neuralink, I'd be able to drive around and have conversations with people, which would be sick.

yeah that and then I'm I know they're always working on ways to improve things for P3 because he has ALS I know that they're like always working on ways to like give him more control better control working on other typing formats to help me like help us like type better faster more accurately so they had um like some stuff going on there and then i don't know what p2 is doing um have you met them i facetimed with p3 before his surgery

he reached out to me on x and was like hey i'm going to be p3 like what's up and i was like oh cool and i started texting him and then like a little bit later i was like maybe i should actually find out if this is real or not like it could have just been could have just been someone like hey i'm p3 you know like oh yeah so yeah yeah so i messaged one of the people at barrow and they're like we can neither confirm nor

deny that there's a p3 and i was like that's a ton of help so i messaged him and i was like can you in any way like show me that your p3 like give me some proof and he sent me a bunch of like emails that he had between like himself and you know literally the girl I was texting to give me like confirmation if he existed um so like her and then people at neuralink and stuff so i was like all right it's him and so uh i talked to him a bunch like about what to expect things like that i

facetimed my family facetimed with his family and um kind of like put their minds at ease he has he yeah so we just like talked with them and stuff um and uh So yeah, it was just, that's basically it. And then I get like updates from him. We text every now and again. But I haven't spoken to P2. I don't think he likes me. I don't know. Really? No, I don't know. I have no idea. You've seen the video, the Counter-Strike video? Yeah. Yeah, he uses the Neuralink with a quad stick.

so he uses it kind of like in conjunction um so it's not just all neural link i think he uses the neural link for like aiming maybe going like left and right or like looking I think that's what he uses the knurling for, which still, like, super impressive. It's freaking awesome. Yeah, I've wanted to try it, trying to use my quad stick with it, but I just haven't had time. And there's the video of you playing Mario Kart. Is that fully Neuralink controlled or how is that?

Yeah, that was early days. That was, like, within the first few weeks that I used it. And I haven't played since because they were, like, they were sort of... jumping a few steps when they did it. They were just connecting me through my computer and then just kind of like translating and tweaking things real time. So they were like helping me.

um like helping the performance they were like okay you need this up you need this down we'll change this we'll change that to like make my performance better um and then once they left uh they were planning on like making it into a game controller gamepad mode on the app and they just ran into some problems they're like it's actually a much harder problem than what you think it is

and so they just haven't gotten around to it um they're finally like okay with shipping it and letting me try it out now and seeing how it works so um yeah Has your web grid score gone up over time, or has it kind of leveled off, or how is that? It's, you know... It went up for like the first six, eight months or something. I hit high nine. I want to hit ten so bad, but I just haven't been able to.

um it's plateaued might have even gotten a bit worse lately um since we started like introducing a lot more like click stuff um the multiple clicks like left and right click in theory should make it go up because You get like higher score for using two clicks instead of just the one So it should go up like quicker, but the issue is Control of the cursor is a little worse with clicks which is interesting without clicks it's a lot smoother it's a lot faster with clicks it's a lot more like

I don't know how to say it. It's just not as good. It's just not as good. So my WebGrid score has gone down, and that's a lot of what they're working on right now. Well, also...

Also, part of it is, like, my WebGrid score was from what they call, like, bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is where I'll play WebGrid, and then they'll just use the... the gameplay to train models so they will like take all the data from my gameplay and they will throw that back into the algorithm and say like train off this data and so my um

my control would get better and better, especially for that one task, especially for WebGrid. But they've been trying to go away from that because they don't want WebGrid to be... you know bootstrapping on web grid to be how I get good cursor control they want calibration to be how you get good cursor control so what they're trying to do now is match the two they're trying to match

calibration with how good bootstrapping our web grid was, and it just hasn't worked yet. Calibration's pretty significantly worse I would say, but it's getting better.

um they are working on a lot of things always that's what we work on basically all the time nowadays is just finding a way to make calibration better to make my like web grid scores better um and ultimately that means that like my um models are getting better can you swipe on a mobile interface or is that difficult to do yeah um yes and no if i'm like on

like connected to my phone any sort of swipe would just be like a click and drag or click and hold so what they have now is like when i'm on my phone with the neural link i have left and right click and my left click is a regular tap and my right click is a like click and hold so that represents the swipe and what are you what are you imagining doing

to to do those the left click and right click yeah my left click and right click vary a little bit basically what my left click is is either a turn of my wrist Unlike a level plane to the left for left and then a turn of my wrist like my whole hand to the right for right click or Because the signals are extremely similar. There's a lot of crossover

I will push my right thumb out to the left for a left click and my right pinky out to the right for a right click. Yeah, and so that works pretty well.

And then I just, you know, as I train that, I just start like thinking about it. Like think about left click. Like I think about sort of the action of what left click is. Like, okay, I'm thinking about... like not attempting to move my thumb out or my pinky out but thinking about like what that looks like essentially and it will you know give me a click and then sometimes i've found that i can just think

left click right click like the words basically the like idea of left click and right click and that'll happen as well um and that makes me think that there's a lot more potential to narrow link And would the cursor move as you're talking about it like this? If you're explaining it to people. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been playing around with my cursor this entire time.

I can like turn it off and Like leave it in a corner somewhere, but I'm like a fidgeter. I need like my brain doing multiple things at once So I've just been playing around with it. I sent a message to Neuralink while we've been talking. I've done stuff like that. Have you messed with... the new grok ai at all and do you think that these these new ai models will like enable you to do a lot more things once i mean we're kind of on the brink of these action models and so there's sort of like

You know, how is that going to change what you're able to do? Yeah, I haven't played around with it, honestly, at all. I wanted to download the app, but it's only for, like, mobile stuff. So I can't get it on the computer. All right. Yeah, so that's how I wanted to use it. But I haven't had a chance to play around with it at all. I mean, I use ChatGPT quite a bit for things. Don't tell Elon.

But I use it. I also use Grok. I'll compare the two. Sometimes when I want to do something, I'll put it into both and see what they pop out. So, yeah, I haven't had a chance to play with the new Grok yet, though. The new one's really good at programming, I've noticed. Oh, really?

pretty uh nice looking website in like 10 minutes it was like pretty pretty incredible and i mean that's with not using any not doing any programming myself so like you know there are a lot of things that you can do on a computer now that you can you wouldn't have been able to do without certain skills before but now you can do it

Yeah, I considered learning how to code a while ago, and it was just too hard for me with what I was able to do. Even with Neuralink, it was a little bit too difficult. So I kind of gave up on it, but I gave up on it with the caveat that I believe that I may not need to know how to do it in the future. You were right. Yeah, so...

Maybe it'll work out. I know a lot of programmers, coders say like, yeah, but it's still not good at this. It's still not good at that. I still have to like check the code because we'll get these things wrong and stuff. And like, I have no idea what any of that is. So I'm not. I wouldn't be able to do anything like that, but maybe someday it'll get better. Are you...

I've noticed that there's been a lot of pushback lately on generative AI, especially in the art space. And there does sort of seem to be this increasing tension between... You know, like the EAC movement? I don't know if that's what it's called, but sort of like the accelerationist movement. And then there's like the... the people that think we're going way too fast. Obviously, you're sort of in the accelerationist crowd, but I wonder if you have any just...

As your position is sort of like a canary in the coal mine, in a way, a sense of whether this pushback on these technologies will... become like a an issue at scale in the future the way it is in science fiction or if that's probably Overblown or I don't know. What's your sense on that? It's hard to say. I don't think things will happen like sci-fi thinks things will happen, but I may be just a naive optimist.

I can definitely see how these things can be used for bad, and I can definitely see how they can get out of hand. I mean, you take even AI that's trained... well AIs that have been trained and a lot of it has to a lot of it relies on like who is training the

AI who's training the large language models and things, like what sort of things they're putting into it and how much that can have an effect on the outputs. So you can see how that... you know slippery slope kind of stuff um goes on there you can see how like with neuralink what it's capable of doing with uh reading and then not just reading but like writing um there is a lot of

potential for it to be used inappropriately on people with people if you think about you know what I was talking about earlier with being able to cure paralysis by putting Putting implants in the brain and then below the level of injury if like Neuralink is obviously capable of being hacked It's just a Bluetooth signal. So if you take that into account like you're controlling someone's body You're controlling someone's mind

I mean, there are a lot of ways this can be used badly, to put it mildly, I guess. But I... just don't see it happening like i said maybe i'm naive um i don't i don't see that see that being a problem but i don't even if it like wasn't going to happen there's like this issue of the the public perception of it And just sort of that maybe... Yeah, it could honestly kill the project like public perception of nuclear energy did. If you think about like...

nuclear energy, how much safer it is than basically every other type of form of energy. But the public perception is the Simpsons glowing green like nuclear waste and stuff. And like Three Mile Island or Fukushima, like that's what they see when they see nuclear energy. Like even even though they found ways to like safely dispose of waste and Like if you look at the stats how much like safer it is like how many deaths per like, you know

100,000 people or something like that. It's not even close. But people don't see that. And maybe the public perception could kill a project like this too. I think it would be hard with Elon Musk behind it, but... we'll see it definitely helps to have a face right like your face like people can see beyond the concept it's like oh you know how can you say like oh we don't need this like after you you they see you and

hear you speak and like tell us about your experience and be like yeah i'll just it's really important yeah i'll just record a bunch of like um uh like hot takes some little like cliff notes versions of everything and i'll mass print my skulls and send them out to everyone just like my face with my voice in it people can hear yeah can you imagine trying to explain this implant and what's going on to someone from like the 1600s or something i would have been burned at the stake

For sure. Probably. For sure. Witchcraft. Yeah. For sure. That is true, yeah. It's... I don't... maybe it all makes sense to you through um maybe a religious filter or you know in your world view but of all the people in the world you know you somehow you

are this p1 and it kind of seems you know at a minimum it's like ridiculously unlikely that you would be in the position and have the opportunity that you have i mean it's almost like I don't know, it goes very well with the whole religious worldview and sort of a divine calling. i mean for you certainly um that would make everything make way more sense like it does does that sound right yeah it absolutely does um i think that

A lot of dots were connected for me when I was chosen as the first participant of Neuralink. A lot of questions were answered and a lot more questions were asked of me as well. And I've asked of God as well. But I think that with my belief in God, it really does seem like a sort of... divine appointment in some ways but I know that my life is more than Neuralink and it is not, you know, my purpose is not Neuralink.

I'm glad that I can do it and I'm glad that it was me and I'm glad that I can speak about it and I'm glad I've been given The the chance and the opportunity and I'm super thankful and super grateful, but I know that This is just another part of my life, of my journey. I don't believe that this is everything.

I honestly, well obviously with my faith, I know that God is the most important thing in my life. And so everything that comes outside of that, like all the good, are just blessings and they're perks. Ultimately, I know that He's the only thing that matters the only thing that ever will matter to me I can still

be a good advocate and still travel around and have fun and play around with Neuralink and stuff and understand that it's not who I am. Do you believe in aliens? Yeah, yeah, I do. Do you think they've been to... to earth do you think we have anything to do with them yeah absolutely think they've been here 100 like recently like are they oh yeah are they here now yeah oh for sure absolutely they have to be But the chip in your brain is made by humans. Oh, I hope so. I mean, I don't know.

because the implant thing is like a a big alien topic like an abduction thing yeah you know so like you look like in some ways you are very similar to someone who was like abducted and then they implanted something yeah My buddy and I have... joked about like before everything broke with me just going to like random bus stops in public places and being like Elon Musk put a chip in my brain and letting people letting people just

kind of like look at you like a crazy person. And then, and then, you know, a month later I'm on like good morning America. They're like, what the heck? Like, it'd just be funny. But yeah, I, I, um, I definitely believe in aliens I don't know what they are I don't know The only thing that I hope that they are not are the mantids. I talk about this all the time. They're like mantis aliens and they are the most terrifying concept I've ever heard of in my life. Just giant mantises. That sounds

awful anything else I think I'm okay with and yeah I think like there's I've watched a lot of like abduction stuff alien stuff uh lots of like alien encounters and things and i just don't see how you can't believe in them um i don't i don't like if you just look at a lot of the like stories Like the Brazilian Roswell, that's one of my favorite. It's just crazy. And like, what is it, like South Africa or something? The one that landed in like a schoolyard in Africa.

Like, they're just things that, I don't know, in my mind, prove it. um obviously there's like all the stuff that's come out recently with like the uaps and like the tic tac video and stuff which which are just fun to watch and i mean it proves that there's technology out there something

um if it's alien or you know government or something who knows but there's a lot i like it i'm also a big fan of the bigfoot stuff um that's a good one um there's a guy there's a guy called uh I think his name is David Politis, and he has a program and books called Missing 411, and he's like a...

you know, detective, retired detective of like many years who started investigating people who go missing in like national parks, like national forests and stuff. And when you hear those stories, you're like, yep, never doing that. um never never going on those anymore because there's definitely something out there that we don't know about could be aliens could be bigfoot i don't know what about bigfoot's an alien

Or is that unlikely? I mean, it's possible. I don't see why they have to be mutually exclusive. I think that weird stuff happens in those forests. Really weird stuff. And it could be aliens. It could be aliens. I'm not opposed to that theory. It could be like Bigfoot things. I don't know. But, you know, people... people just when you hear the stories it's like people don't just go missing like that a child does not walk like

10 miles in no shoes and not dirty as clothes up over a path that like a trained outdoorsman couldn't make in the same amount of time. Like that stuff just doesn't happen. So you're like, something's out here. So I don't know.

How about the Abominable Snowman? Is that on the same level? You know, I don't know much about the Yeti stuff. I think that it's probably just as feasible as the Bigfoot stuff. Once you start getting out to those, like... like nowhere places where it's like there's there's no civilization it's like you have a town because they're like yeah this would be a good place to settle out in the middle of nowhere on like

a river in alaska like 500 miles from anything else it's like this is where we want to be and then they start like encountering stuff it's like well like what did you expect you know um so so i believe there's there's stuff out there There's so much stuff out there that we just don't understand. It's more fun that way, too. What's that? Yeah. We know for sure that there are many undiscovered species, like in the Amazon rainforest, for example.

And many times scientists have thought that some species was extinct and then we find some survivor of that species somewhere. We've also found different types of humans that lived recently that we weren't aware of. Do you know about like the Atacama alien? It sounds familiar, I don't know. So they found humanoid remains in the Atacama Desert, and it turned out to be a person who lived...

How old did they live? Do you remember, Mommy? I can't remember. They lived to like five or six years old or something. And they're like an adult human, except that... They're like four inches tall. Huh. Like Indian in the cupboard. I don't know if you've seen that. I haven't. That's wild. And that's real. That one is real. Wow. Look like an alien they have sort of the elongated skull and it's like just straight-up alien appearance This sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory, but now I'm

I'm down for it. I believe this kind of stuff. I'm a big fan of the Atlanta stuff. I'm a big fan of, like, the Younger Dryas stuff with, like, what is it, like 11,600 years ago, there was that giant flood in North America and stuff. Love all of that. Big fan of, like, Graham Hancock. Randall Carlson the great guys I think I mean there's there's a lot there's a lot out there and you know it's a lot of it is just like non mainstream mainstream

Organizations are like, well, we don't believe that. So, like, you don't get to be in our club and nothing you say is going to be published. And, you know, we're going to make you seem to be like a crazy person. A lot of the evidence is pretty overwhelming. At least enough to be seriously considered. If nothing else. Not to be completely discounted because it goes against what you believe.

Yeah, I find that particular debate super interesting. You know, the impact glass and sort of this, what is it, 12,000 years ago. You know, we've had these cataclysmic... impacts um and then there's also like the you know after the the ice age um the sea levels all went up and and all the coastal the ancient coastal construction is submerged and erased, essentially. That stuff is super fascinating. I don't know where aliens come into that exactly.

We're learning new things all the time. Yeah. There's so much out there. I could talk about this stuff for hours because it's so much fun. Yeah, it's great. I just... I'm here for the ride. I have my beliefs. I believe in God. I believe in, you know, I have my faith, but I'm also open to, I don't think, and I don't think belief in God discounts a lot of what people think it discounts.

I think you can still believe in a lot of other things or at least be open to them. I don't think that that's necessarily wrong. Yeah, I agree with that pretty strongly. I think people taking... certain scripture literally for the express purpose of just discrediting the bigger picture thing, you know, something happened with the Big Bang.

or whatever it is, creation. And whatever it is that happened seems like it must have been divine in some way. Otherwise, like, how do you even, where do you start, basically, right? I feel like there's been... I don't know, like the hardcore atheists have kind of realized that they... weren't making as strong of an argument as they thought, and more and more people are not necessarily opening up to God, but opening up to the mystery of existence. Well, yeah, I mean, Christianity is growing.

like well religion is growing um much more than people would have thought i mean um there was a this idea that with um progress comes the death of religion with you know more technological advancement with enlightenment in science through science and technology comes the death of religion and people ultimately become more atheist and that's been that was you know postulated hundreds of years ago and as recently as like 60 years ago and maybe even like 30 years ago and they've seen

Basically the exact opposite, that even though we've become more advanced technologically and we feel like we understand more, Christianity is growing, or religion is growing just in general. And atheism is dwindling. And that might be because of some of the arguments that are being made. People just aren't connecting with them anymore. I'm not sure, but...

And it's actually pretty interesting, like the numbers that have been put out about the growth of religion and everything, which is, I mean, I love it, but yeah, it's just interesting.

Have you always been religious? Yeah, I grew up in the church. My mom worked at our church. She was like the preschool ministry leader. So I grew up like... handling babies since I was basically a young kid and always being in church like taking care of kids and Just being around kids, babysitting, working at the church, being voluntold to work and serve because my mom was in charge of it.

and then I was like a student leader at my church growing up and then I went to college and I was like I'm gonna keep my faith there's no way I'm gonna let anything come between me and God and then like three weeks later I was absolutely turned around um i i for four years i was basically just like well i'm young i'm i'm dumb i'm allowed to make all the mistakes and

that I want because I think it'll all come back as like wisdom to me in the future and I need to be able to experience things to be able to tell someone not to do it you know I always felt that way like it's wrong of me to tell someone not to do something that I've never done

I had that belief and I was like I'll come back to God eventually like when I settle down when I find a wife when I have kids I'll settle down because I'll want to raise them Christian and things like that And then I had my accident And I was like, well, I guess God had other plans for me. But that kind of flipped the script for me almost immediately. So, yeah. You know, and seeing my... Well...

In all the interviews that I've seen of you, the thing that struck me the most is the way you... handled everything, presented yourself, you don't ask for pity from anyone, you're not seeking it in any detectable form whatsoever. And there's something about your attitude that I think really commands respect. And, you know, like Mami was saying, I'm not trying to just completely glaze you here, but I think your faith shows in itself.

uh the the the mental fortitude and sort of the resilience that that that you put on display is coming from somewhere beyond if that makes sense yeah Thank you. Wow, that's really nice of you to say. When you said asking for seeking pity in any way, I don't think it ever crossed my mind that people...

would pity me, especially now. If anything, I thought people would be jealous of me. But, yeah, you know, like, at the very beginning, Obviously, things are hard, but it was really hard to see people for the first time again.

people that I knew before you know like all of my friends my best friends people that like family things like that like girls that I thought i was in love with um all sorts of things like every spectrum every range of relationship that i had with people people who i was in like really bad feuds with people who were like i was super angry with or we were in a really bad fight we're not on good terms like even those people it's really hard to see all of them because

I knew things were going to be different and I knew that people were going to see me differently. And so for a long time, I like hid myself away and I got really, really anxious every time I was going to.

like see someone that i hadn't seen in a while because i knew that things were going to be different i knew that they would see me differently and there's something about like seeing yourself reflected in someone's eyes like differently than kind of how you see yourself like how you view yourself and looking at it from their perspective and you know that that's not how they see you anymore it's really hard

it's like really really hard and i had a very very long drawn out argument with god about like i felt like he had some sort of purpose i felt like he He wanted me to speak about something. And I told him I would absolutely 100% go on stages everywhere in the world, go on the biggest stage in the world and speak. My only... my only... I guess... I told him I wouldn't do it as a quadriplegic. I said I would do it, just not as a quadriplegic.

And here I am. He obviously won that argument. He called that bluff. Yeah. And it just sort of happened. Like, Neuralink happened. became the first participant, and I felt very strongly that it was important to get this information out there, to tell people about it. And that was never how I envisioned anything happening. But I was then never afraid. I had to interact with a lot of people going through all of my interviews.

Well, yeah, interviews for Neuralink and being poked and prodded and tested on and stuff to make sure I qualified. And I don't know, I just felt like I became someone else when Neuralink happened.

I saw myself differently than I had before and it became a lot easier to see people again and be in front of people and So I've never I've never ever expected anyone to like pity me for this for like how I am I've always been a strong believer that you can't compare you can't compare suffering well you can

But you can't like obviously you see people and you're like stop complaining about something that is Ridiculous that means nothing like that's not what suffering is But if someone is suffering like actually suffering then I'm not gonna say that

what my suffering is is any worse than what theirs is. I would never do that to someone. I would never belittle someone's suffering because everyone's going through something. I was made to be... able to handle this I believe I believe God gives everyone only what they're able to handle and something's broken in my head where I kind of fell into this way too easily and so I knew that I knew that I was capable of making it

knew that I was strong enough to do it well that's maybe not true I remember people telling me at the beginning that Nolan if anyone can do it you can do it you're strong enough and I was like I don't know if that's true but I guess it was. I guess I've managed it. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just, I'm just not, I'm not any different. I'm the same person. This is how I was probably before my accident.

This is how I was before Neuralink. It's probably how I'll always be. Something about me is just... I don't know. I get it all from my friends and family, I'm sure. But, yeah. I just enjoy talking to people, honestly, at the end of the day. I enjoy these conversations. You know, I... My family helps me with so many things, and there's no way that I could really express how grateful I am to my family for everything that they've done. And, you know, I'm sure there's no way you could have...

gotten to where you are now without the support of your family. And so just the degree to which you are unable to express that gratitude must be tremendous. you know, for them and, I mean, for your faith and everything else and for the Neuralink team also, but, you know, really for your family. Yeah, I think we have an understanding. I think...

I think they know how much I appreciate them. I tell them all the time. I tell them thank you for everything that they do. And I don't do anything without their help. I try to understand their perspective always. It was definitely a learning curve with all of us, but we got through it together, only together. And I tell everyone that I come across that I talk to about this sort of stuff, like I would have never been able to do this without my family.

And I tell it to people with my family in the room sitting front row because I know that they know that that's what I honestly believe. And so we understand each other. You know, yeah, I couldn't have done it without them. I love them to death. I have a really really good relationship with my mom. I always have We've I've basically been like a mama's boy since I was a kid

I moved out at 18 because I felt like I was super independent. And I was. I wanted to do everything on my own. But my mom and I have been like... kind of like best friends since i was a kid um we could talk about anything together and we still do and i think that was made for that reason um because we needed that to get through this um so

So yeah, things were never easy, but we've all found a rhythm to it. I guess you didn't know how much you would... need to rely on them you know like you you'd never know when you're going to need um you know a lot of assistance from yeah family so yeah it's no reason to like treat your family well just to like get it back just in case but um yeah i i hate i hated moving back home i honestly did i never wanted to come back

Even after my accident, four months in the hospital, I came back to my hometown and I asked one of my friends to live with him because I was like, I don't want to move back with my parents. You know how sad that sounds? And eventually I did because it was really hard on my friend. and i had to learn i had to learn how to rely on my family it was hard but then a big part i think of why i'm here is because i mean why i'm able to do something like this is because i very early on understood that i

can't get depressed and sad. I can't let that affect me because it would hurt my family more than it would hurt me. They're trying everything they possibly can to make life good for me. to like make me happy in some way in some small way and if i was just depressed all the time like what what a disservice that would be to them like how much of a slap in the face would that be to them if i don't try my hardest

to like be better and be good for them and be happy for them. They deserve it because they work so much harder than I do. I get to lie around and have people do stuff for me. I feel like an emperor, just lying on a couch, having people feed me grapes and fanning me and stuff. That's what my life is. They're the ones who have to do everything. They're the ones that are actually doing the hard work. So if I didn't try, then I would be dishonoring them in a lot of ways. That's amazing.

I mean, just to think, I mean, I'm a mom, you know, so I sort of like tend to look at it from like a mom's perspective. Like that's the tendency, but like, you know, with all the things that happen to you. like from a mom's perspective like your son like the best mental space that your son could be in is i think what you just described so you know what i mean like

Because I think people will take it differently. And I'm not religious, but I'm almost kind of envious of religious people. Because then you have something to hang on to. When it's really hard. And I don't have that. I love that for you. I love that you have it. I think it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it's also the only reason I got I don't know if I can have two only reasons I get through things. I'm going to. I think God allows it.

My faith was definitely a huge part of all of this. It really is such a core part of who I am. I just like to let people know. talk about it sometimes in my interviews as much as I can and at least touch on it, talk about my faith because it's really important to me that people understand that all things are possible in God. I mean he is just so loving and graceful and healing in all the best ways even if we don't understand why. So it really did make things a lot easier.

on me um gave me a lot of like direction and purpose made me angry sometimes like god why aren't you like healing me i know if you're like the god you say you are i know you're capable of it be so easy wouldn't even have to like think about it you could just make it happen and like why then and then I get into Neuralink and I'm like okay well this is probably why um so yeah yeah I think, God, it's like a very good way for you to have an interface, kind of negotiate and understand why...

you are who you are, where you are, where you are, like in the moment and kind of negotiate with reality a little bit, if that makes sense. I think without that...

and without prayer or something. You know, you can do the meditations and whatnot, but I think that doesn't give you as useful of a... context of like you know we all need to have purpose in life to to really thrive and for life to be meaningful and so seeking that purpose is sort of seeking the rationale or like why is this happening right and we're constantly in this state of not knowing why something happened not having found the rationale or not found the opportunity

in that particular problem but having that kind of interface with with god or the universe whatever you want to call it um kind of brings that relationship to the surface to be disgust I mean with God or with yourself or whatever it is yeah I think there's um there's a lot of depth to Like what you're talking about in a lot of different ways. You know, I think a lot of people misunderstand religion in some ways. They think that you...

Come to God because you, like, want something. You need help. But God calls us not to... Not... God calls us to be healed, but maybe not in the way that we think. He calls us to be healed through repentance and obedience. He calls us to be healed by... just believing that like he is who he is and then what you're talking about like navigating all these things it lets like as a christian lets me believe in like you said a purpose

and a future hope. Without that future hope, I think people die. I think that without some sort of hope of what happens beyond eternity, beyond our lives, like before eternity, I guess, beyond our lives. I think there's a lot of meaninglessness. I think that it's hard to navigate the world if there is no meaning in a lot of ways. A lot of people...

come to that. A lot of very smart people, much smarter than I have, have come to that. And I think that with God, you see a desire to be better for something bigger than yourself and that that gives you know your life sort of everything that happens meaning It's like every interaction, every moment is how can I be better? Not because I want to be better for me, but because I...

was given this opportunity by a God who loves me, by a God who came and died for me. Even though I am not worth it, a God who came and died for me, I want to be better for that God that loves me. And it really does put a lot of things into perspective, I think, for me. Like I said, I want to be better for my parents. It's a very similar interaction.

I want to be better because I love someone enough that me doing these destructive behaviors will only hurt them. And I think that's the same thing with God. That makes sense. I mean, I think whether you're religious or not, that kind of thing makes sense to me. Yeah, I mean, where do you think this all goes? Do you believe in this singularity thing in terms of just the rate is going to go like this? Are you...

Because you seem like a very optimistic person and there are a lot of people that are maybe less optimistic lately, but does that all kind of fit into... I mean, for you, certainly it would go within God's plan. There are things I believe about God and things that... I don't think really have... I want to say much to do with God, but I know that it's kind of a naive way of looking about it, looking at it. I think it's more that...

I believe there is going to be some sort of space race, but for the brain. I believe that there will be a rush towards these texts for... Maybe not just the brain, but healthcare in general. But I think the brain is the next frontier. I think it is something that we know so little about. and is literally such a core of our being that it's incredible that we're finally finding a way to...

hopefully map out some of the brain in different ways and find ways to manipulate the brain in different ways. And that's a scary thought but I also think it could be incredibly useful for the human race. um in a lot of different ways whether you think that's about creating cyborgs and creating superhumans or you think it's about solving different like debilitating diseases like i'm more passionate about

So I do think that there will be a ramp up though. I think with the growth of AI and all of the tech that's coming out and like with these sorts of things like Neuralink, I think it's going to be like... a crazy next 10 years um that's just what i believe and i don't know that that necessarily is like you know i say oh well it's all in god's plan it's more like well yeah like everything is in god's plan but like

I don't necessarily think that I need to think about it that way. It's more like God is a more personal being than I think. That's how I would like to think about him is having a personal relationship more and being also like...

Lord Lordship sort of stuff and having control over everything so not being afraid I guess of what's coming And just accepting it and making the best out of every situation, but yeah, I think tech and stuff is going to go crazy um i think it's going to be really cool you know no matter how fancy the neural link the neural links get and our technology gets we we still need to find our way in the world and maintain sanity and strength. And it seems like you've honed a lot of that.

You know, the implant didn't help with that part. But, you know, no matter how, I don't know, I feel like in some ways you're pushing another frontier that has nothing to do with the implant. just through example. And then the implant kind of brought you to the prominence to exemplify that in a way. Yeah, that's interesting. I'd never thought of it like that. It's very possible. I mean, I don't, I still don't think I've got things under control. I still think I'm, like, I still don't.

Like I don't even know how to say it. I don't know how to say it without seeming like I'm fishing for compliments or anything because that's really not what I'm trying to do. It's more that I Still don't see myself the way that a lot of other people see me

I don't see myself as being inspirational or motivational or really having done anything right throughout my whole injury. I think I failed a lot. I think it took me way too long to... get off my off my butt and do something i think that i was yeah i i don't think i i don't think i'm really much of an example at all um but then i see and hear people tell me

like my story is inspiring and how strong I am and I'm like like I maybe I have something there that I can like express to people which is why I'm going to start doing like keynote speeches and stuff but it's so hard I've been thinking about it for weeks at this point like what do i have to say to people because like i don't think anything i did was anything special i don't think anything i did might work for other people because i think i'm just kind of

in a weird way was made for this and so i can't just really tell people that you know like adversity sucks but as long as you're made for it you'll be fine um like i don't know what um what exactly to tell people so i'm trying to figure out like where my where my place is and all this because i definitely don't feel like i've i've uh mastered anything at this point or have like a whole lot to say i have something to say i just don't know what it is yet

You know, all the special people say they're not special. Like, no one's like, I'm actually stronger than most people or whatever, but I think... I think it really helps when, like I've, you know, you said like we can't compare, you know, struggles. I'm not trying to do that at all. Like, you know.

and I can't compare it obviously but like I've had you know I've lost my mom or I've had depression like things like that and you know it's really easy to sort of have this self-pity or just being in your shell and be like depressed and just dwell on it so I think that's that's what people mean when they say it's really inspiring to see you because it sort of puts you into perspective yeah it's weird because I never wanted I never wanted that in a way I never wanted

to uh have people look at me and say like i can do better like look like he's doing fine like what's wrong with me because I felt like it was convicting people for the wrong reasons like I feel like they were looking at me and being like wow like like some people have it so much worse I can be better and I never really wanted to be an example like that but maybe

Maybe I am. Unwillingly, maybe I am. I just thought that, you know, everyone has something that they're going through. And so you look at me and you say like, oh, like people have it so much worse. I can do better. It's like, don't belittle what you're going through. Like, yeah, what I went through sucked, but what you're going through sucks too. And like, if you need help, then get help and like find a way to get through it as well.

And I'm here for you if you need help as well. But, like, it's interesting when I think about it. Because I'm not, yeah, I don't know. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. I'll get there. I'm gonna travel around and speak so I'm gonna have to talk about something I have to say something and we'll see we'll see what what resonates we'll see what you know as I speak if I'm

believing what I'm speaking, if I agree with myself with what I'm speaking or if I'm just trying to appease people, I think I'll know pretty quickly and hopefully change my tune. Have you been to Japan? I want to go so bad. I'm trying to go in September. Oh, really? Yeah. Cool. The issue is Japan is very compact. My chair is big. Stairs and I don't get along either. Finding a place to stay has been a mission.

finding just like accommodation like a house i can stay in that doesn't have like steps to get up anywhere or um like steps to get in or have like you know because a lot of them are multiple stories like little three-story places two-story places um and uh they won't have anything on like the ground floor it'll all be like upstairs so if there was like a room like a shower

A shower I could fit in because I need that. I can't get in a bathtub or anything, so I need a shower. A roll-in shower. There's a few needs that I need that aren't... that are like finding it's really difficult to find in japan and then i know that my chair is not gonna fit like anywhere um and i i can't like get another chair um this is like

basically my chair specially made for me uh I can't just like rent one in Japan like other people do um because they're like narrower in Japan when you rent them and stuff to get in places I can't do that um and so Would just kind of be like stuck like hanging around most of the time Hopefully finding some more like touristy places that are a bit bigger that I could get into

But that sounds kind of lame, too. But, I mean, if I could go, I'm going to go. It's just a matter of if I can. You definitely should. I mean, we could help you out. I mean... I'm here. I can go check out anywhere that you want to go and see, like, oh, this place got no stairs. Oh, that'd be sick. Where are you at in Japan? I'm in Tokyo, near Shibuya. I'm trying to stay in Osaka because the World Expo is there this year.

That's what I'm trying to get to. I'm trying to convince Neuralink to do something there. So then I can get a little bit of sponsorship or they can... Help me out, like make some connections or something to get into the World Expo and do like something. I don't know what, but do something. Oh yeah. Seems like a good idea. Yeah, I'm trying. Neuralink, they said we don't have any plans to do anything at the World Expo.

They're not really allowed to like help me out with anything like that because it's a voluntary study and anything they do will be seen as incentivizing me to stay. So they're just like not allowed to do a lot, which kind of sucks. Can they talk to people? Not even making connections and stuff. They just won't do it. Which is fine. I understand. I'm not blaming them for it or anything.

um but it makes things harder when i'm trying to like do stuff so what would you do at the the expo or would would they're like represent uh Neuralink and the technology? Yeah, I'd love to do that. I'd love to just put me on a stage that rotates and I'll just spin around and people can come and look at me and take pictures of me and stuff. And I'll just do that for like a day or a month or something. I don't know. But yeah, I'd love to do like a little demonstration.

Play a game, show people kind of what I can do, stuff like that. I think that'd be super cool, and I think it would be really beneficial to Neuralink, but I guess they don't feel the same way. I'll have to convince them. Yeah. Well, if there's anything we could do to help. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. We're working on a mobile game for studying vocabulary.

which would also be helpful for learning Japanese, as well as Japanese conjugation. I wonder if you'd be able to use that. And if there's anything, you know... I'd want you to be able to use it. I don't know if there's restrictions on what sort of applications you can use. It's really just anything I can get on my computer or on my phone.

So I think, yeah, I could probably try it out. Just depends on what exactly, like what sort of inputs I'd have to use, like what sort of clicks, swipes, click and drags. scroll stuff like that because I'm like not I'm pretty limited what I can do on a phone right and so it would just depend I just it's one of those things where I just have to go in and try it out and

see how much it works. Have you discussed that kind of accessibility or user interface with a developer for mobile applications? No, never. I talked to Neuralink about this stuff, and they're like, well, we'll fix it. And so then they give me some little kind of workaround that lets me interact with it a bit differently. If there's stuff I want to do, basically.

It's interesting. There's like a kind of a new category of accessibility or user interfaces. There's a lot of accessibility stuff built into user interfaces already for color blindness or whatever it is. um but for a user interface to be sort of optimized for neuralink i mean the the player base is very small at this stage but yeah um yeah i i don't think it's a terrible idea i know that i've always said uh um that you know just as things are

Alexa compatible. I think things will be Neuralink compatible in the future. I'm not talking to you. Thank you. Sorry, my Alexa turned on. She's listening. Yeah, I think things will be Neuralink compatible, so it'll be cool. I know right now the idea is to kind of adapt the Neuralink to enable you to do everything without having to modify the software. beyond it right yeah um sort of a similar concept to like the humanoid robot but there may be cases in which

the user interface beyond the Neuralink could be adapted to work better with the implant. And maybe that will start happening at scale in the future once. You know, as Elon says, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people start getting these. Yeah, I think that'll happen. I think, you know, the updates are so simple. Like, they're so fast. It's just through the app.

So you go on and click a button and you restart to update and you restart it. I think that it'll happen like that. I think it'll be very, very similar. They just need a bigger workforce, and I'm sure they will when they have that many products out there. What's your impression of the team overall and just sort of their work ethic?

their caring, their sense of mission. Some of them have done interviews and we've seen presentations, but I don't... think we really get to see sort of the team on a personal level at all so yeah they're honestly the most impressive people I've ever met in the world like all of them they're all geniuses in their own way They're all incredibly hard workers and they all could be doing what they do at like Google or Facebook for much more money. But they've decided that...

Working on something like this a project like this Helping someone like me is more important than you know changing fonts at Google They A lot of them have had experiences with people with disabilities, like personal experiences. A lot of them have family members who would benefit from the Neuralink.

just care so much they see what they're doing as like right and right in the world and they're willing to work terrible hours work for a company that doesn't pay as much as something like Google or Apple I mean to have that have that kind of option there with something that pays so much more I actually don't know how much they make but I know that these other places would pay more for their qualifications and stuff to have

These sort of options available and not choose them to work at Neuralink, I think, says everything about them. It shows their hearts. And they're all just really good people. I've worked with... few of them I would say maybe like 12 of them very closely for the last year and they are like some of the nicest guys and gals I've ever met. They just care about me so much and want the best for me. They want to be better for me always and they want to make this thing as great as it possibly can be.

for the people that they're helping. Not for any sort of like fame or recognition, but because they know that they're just helping. They're helping someone. And I think... It's incredible. They're really, really incredible people. And we have a lot of fun. We have a lot in common, all of us. I'm a pretty easy dude to get along with, so I think that makes things easier because they're a bunch of nerds.

um so i gotta bring them out of their shell a bit but um yeah it's uh it's good we have good times how about uh dj specifically isn't is he sort of the lead engineer dj yeah dj is the ceo um it was his it was his brain baby all of it um yeah he's been there from the beginning yeah yeah it was him he was the one who started it all um he uh

He's great. He really is one of like, I mean, I'll say this about each one of them because it's true of each one of them. He's incredible. He's like the nicest guy.

He cares about all of us so much. He wants this thing to succeed just as much as he wants us to succeed. And, you know, he's been a really good... a really good guy to like me and my family as much as he's allowed to be because of the study and like the fda regulations and stuff it's like hard to have like real like personal relationships with these people because it crosses some lines but As much as he's able to be, he's been awesome. He's been awesome. Yeah. Cool.

Yeah, he's a super impressive dude, too. I don't know if you guys know the story behind the knurling thing. He said that he came over from Korea and didn't speak any English. And he... wanted to find a way to like communicate with people because he thought that it was like he was having a hard time like communicating because he didn't speak any English so he's like there needs to be a better way to like communicate with people

And Neuralink was born through many iterations. I think they said one of their first ideas was like brain dust. You like sprinkle dust on the brain as a bunch of like electrodes, electrodes in it. And then wherever they fall, you kind of just like read them and you put them in like an area, I guess, but use it like that. So that was one of their first ideas, but.

That got nixed, and they ended up on this. But in the Neuralink headquarters, you can see from its inception the iterations of the implant.

um from the very beginning to the end and they're um they've grown a lot and they've well not in size i mean like they've gotten a lot better um yeah it's really cool really cool well are you okay on time we've had you for yeah i could talk i could talk about this stuff like forever me too um my my implant has a little bit longer in it um i have like 27 left it would last a little bit longer i was like no i was like kind of uh supposed to have session with neuralink um

And I messaged them while we were doing this. I was like, I'm going to be late. Oh, no. I'm sorry. No, it's fine. I told them I was going to be late, but I didn't read what he replied. So I should maybe go do that, but I'm having a great time. Thank you so much. It's been so amazing to talk to you. You know, this has been so much fun. I hope the next time, I mean, I hope you can come back on in the future and hopefully you'll have a robot arm with you to scratch your itches.

Yeah. Do lots of other stuff. Do lots of other stuff. Just don't tell Merolink about it. Yeah. I think you are... in so many ways just perfect for this position so far and you've represented just the technology and the whole ambition so well and represented your faith super well and I'm very grateful that you exist. Thank you. You're P1 instead of someone that might not have done as well. In mommy's words, an asshole. Yeah.

yeah and somehow you know without without moving you found yourself at the nexus of you know helping us with ai alignment and you said you're not a neuroscientist but you're certainly researching the brain uh in your own way so yeah yeah i appreciate you guys having me on sorry it took so long But this was a lot of fun. I think this is probably the longest interview I've done, longest podcast or anything. I think Lex Friedman was kind of long, but I don't know that it was this long.

But I loved it. I had a great time. Y'all are great hosts. Y'all do really, really well, especially letting me. just kind of ramble and talk and talk and talk. I'm a talker and y'all are great, great listeners. So I appreciate that. And I hope you guys all the best success. health and everything i hope you guys are doing well and this thing uh what y'all are doing goes exactly where y'all want it to go and above and beyond your expectations whatever you want

So yeah, I just really appreciate you guys having me and taking the time to spend time and talk to me for three and a half hours. Listen to me ramble and ramble and ramble. Well, it was our pleasure. And again, if you need anything in Japan... I'm here and we're very happy to help with whatever it is. Give recommendations if you need or whatever.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. I will almost for sure take you up on that because we are in like major planning mode for Japan and I'm looking around at stuff. So yeah, that would be great. What do I do with this QuickTime recording? Yeah, so we're just going to say bye to our listeners. Yep. Sorry. Oshimai. Bye. Bye.