Latest Interview of Elon Musk, Gives Update About Neuralink.

Sure.

Well, this is going to sound somewhat esoteric and maybe a bit strange, but I was actually trying to figure out how to mitigate the risk of digital superintelligence to the agree that that we can improve our bandwidth to our digital tertiary self. I think we can better align artificial intelligence with a collective human will.

That's going to sound very strange, but so.

You could think of like, basically our intelligence is being divided into roughly three areas. That's sort of like a like you know, Olympic system, like like like the sort of instinctual elements that this sort of like the cortex and the planning part. Then we also have a tertiary layer, which is only computers and bones applications software that we use, so that you have a digital tertiari self.

Basically we were already an android.

Defictively, I think people feel this when they forget their phone. Forgetting a phone, leaving a phone behind, it is like having missing limb syndrome. You're missing your part of your digital tertiaries. The constraint on human machine symbiosis is bandwidth.

What is the especially output bandwidth?

The output bandwidth of a human is less than one bit per second over the course of a day.

So if you have eighty six four hundred.

Seconds in a day, the number of output bits that you produce. Maybe there's some rare cases where it's above one bit per second, but very few people produce eighty six.

Thousand, four hundred output bits.

So most people like our averaging less than one bit per second over twenty four hour period. And when we do speak, they say the number of symbols per second of speech typing is quite low, especially if it's going

I'll tell you I've personally experienced that phantom limb syndrome when I actually can't find my phone. And I hadn't thought of myself as a cyborg until you challenge.

Me to think that way. But you're in a room of folks who've devoted their.

Lives to neurologic disease, and I must confess to you that I had never actually thought of the output of the brain in terms of bits per second. But when you frame it that way, it makes it really clear why there may be a broader opportunity to make that virtual cyborg that we have now with our phone a little bit more efficient. So that's as a starting point, what prompted your interest in neuralink.

Yeah, so basically I thought.

Okay, in order to have better human AI semiosis, we must solve the bandwidth problem. Below a certain bandwidth, we are basically just stationary to a computer and at one bit per second. Know, that's the very low data rate when computers are doing brillions of bits per second.

So when you think about brain machine interface, why did you select the technical approach you did?

I know a lot of thoughts gone into that.

Yeah.

So if you say, like, okay, we need to have ultimately a million bits per second or a billion bits per second to gig a bit per second interface, then that means you really you can't.

You need an implant and.

Ultimately will need to replace the skull and it's going to be a zillion wire. I mean, this is some sci fi, bizarre sci fi stuff, and I'm not this is certainly optional.

Plan mandatory replacement of my skull whatever problem.

Mandatory chip and brain is not what we're saying, Yeah, for sure.

But at some point you're you say like, okay, how many electrodes are needed in order to interface with have a whole brain interface?

Yeah, you know, I've heard you mentioned that larger goal of whole brain interface. One thing that's really me by the approach that's been taken is, I think as a resurgence, we often contemplate the natural history of the disease and competing risk and benefit in neuralink as a company has started with folks who have als and spinal cord injury. These kind of first steps in terms of technical approach. So we'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Yeah.

Absolutely, long tem goal, like I said, is mitigating civilizational risk associated with a divergence of biological and digital intelligence. That's the long tim goal. Obviously. Then you've got to parse that, h L, Well, what are we going to do tomorrow? Yeah, So the starting point with the first new link device is a thousand electrodes, and with just one hundred of those electrodes are active, if it takes up our first few patients, you know, we're also having

Ten ves per second, and that does a path to one thousand us per.

Second, which would be literally one hundred times more than the next record. So we want to do the implants in where there's the highest gain and the least risk. So we call the first implant to telepathy, which really just interfacing with the motor cortex, and it's basically looking at signals as though somebody moved their own and just reading that signal and then sending that signal to the patient's phone or computer so they can then move the

Yeah, and those are the records you're talking about in those first two prime patients, where you're able to extract signals from their brain at record bits per second and enable them to work in the world.

Is those of us who lose their phone would use today.

Yeah.

Absolutely, And I think we'll get to the point pretty quickly where someone with a neuralink implant will outperform somebody who's using their hands play a video game.

What do you think the timeline for that is? We won't hold you to it.

Sure, I mean I do have a habit of being optimistic with respect to timelines. But if I wasn't optimistic, I wouldn't be starting these companies.

Probably, Yeah, that's fair.

But I think given that we're already.

Pretty much out a point where we're pretty close to on par with the video game. Basically you can play a video game at a comparable competent level to someone with hands. I think with our second generation device, which we'll have three thousand electrodes, and we'll get a lot better at placing those electrodes so only it's only one hundred electrodes being effective, we'll both improve the yield and

The muscles have to move.

Your finger takes a certain amount of time to move, so you've got to be you basically got to move the meat puppet. If you don't have to move actuate the muscles in your hand or your finger's going to move at a certain rate and set like milimeters per second. But if you don't have to do any of that, you can literally think it immediately with no latency.

You'll outperform someone who has to use a hands.

Yeah, you know, I think as surgeons we really take pride in being efficient and using your hand. But when you're a reductionist like that, it actually makes me feel like I'm actually not particularly efficient. You could just if you just think and do it, I think I'd probably get a lot I'll get a little lot more done.

You know.

One of the things that struck me in terms of the technical approach is obviously you have the implant and then you're extracting those signals and have a recording algorithm, and then you're actually affecting an action and you know, in one of the patients you actually had a lead or traction. But then we're able to tune the recording algorithm to actually recover that function.

Could you maybe say a little bit about.

That kind of vertically integrated approach and how that's going to let you scale a little bit?

Sure? Well, since you know, really none of this stuff existed before, we had to design and build everything from scratch, and I mean it's basically like having an apple watcher a fit, but that replaces a piece of skull. And then you've got these electrodes, very very fine electrodes that are implanted with a surgical robot.

I mean, we can share a little bit about the robot, the R one robot.

That two is to implant the threads.

Yeah, so the threads are really too small to be manipulated by hand, and they need to be placed with extreme precision, very quickly. The brain is moving all the time due to breathing and heartbeat or just not just sitting there. It's like a pulsing thing, and you're trying to get an electrode to a specific depth, while this, you know, jello balloon is just moving around all over the place. So it's it's it's kind of an impossible,

Well, you know what's interesting obviously is a group of surgeons, many of us to varying stages, have incorporated robotics into our practice. When you hear a precision exceeding human capacity, do you think is this going to be a disruption or is this an augmentation to what surgeons do? And I know you have some thoughts around that, and there's maybe some analogies and ophthalmology, so it would love to hear that perspective.

Yeah, So I think the ophalmology analogy is the right one with laseric and ophthalmologists will oversee perhaps half a dozen or a dozen laser machines and to make sure the machine is is the patient getting the right operation in the correct eye, and is the is the machine operating properly. But thereafter the you know, patils in the laser chair and the robots going to basically laser rival.

It's like physically impossible.

Yeah, because we're talking about ultimately doing tens of millions of these things, like maybe this eight billion people in the world.

I don't know, maybe at.

Least a few billion are going to want this, maybe more so, then how do you get billions of devices unless you got the robots.

It's not happening.

I've heard you frame the introduction of the robot is not just a precision issue, but an interest of workforce and scale. And there's obviously a little over three thousand of us nationally, so that would be a little bit challenging. Can you share a little bit in this early journey with BCI what some of the challenges have been, what you've encountered technically, I know, a biological environment, the saltwater problem is very hostile.

Things with energy treaties.

Would love to hear your thoughts on that and how your team's taking those things on.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, as everyone obviously talking to people that know a lot more about the brain and that than I do, but I accidentally come to understand more than most people. The challenge is You've got a device that's going to live there for years. It's an electrical device that has to transmit radio essentially, you know, it has to transmit photons to your computer.

It's subcutaneous, it's got to be charged.

It's got electrodes that are reading and writing, so it's not like it can't just be electrically isolated.

In fact, you're fighting two things. You want.

You really are desperately trying to read these neurons, but you also don't want to be corroded. So it's like the very difficult thing to have just the minimum amount of insulation necessary to not be corroded, but not be so insulated that you can't hear the neurons. So there's a very challenging materials problem with our latest electrodes that will be silicon carbide coded, but even the silicon cartibide is.

A very difficult material to work with.

It's awesome, but it's very difficult, and you've got to make sure the coding is extremely precise. It's be you know, canvy tooth thin or tooth thick anywhere. It's going to be very evenly you applied to the threads. So it's the cher number of iterations necessary to actually have this device be medically sealed and survived in the body and not fail in some way, and then have to be able to transmit to your phono computer at a high data rate without burning down the battery is very difficult.

So this feels like the right place to ask. I think one of the more interesting questions we received. So as someone who's in a position of authority to comment on both, can you settle the age old question, what's actually more difficult brain surgery or rocket science?

Well, both of my challenging. It's bizarre that I'm in bold in both. I mean, I think there are similar magnitude of difficulty.

Especially story the story checks out.

Yes, I think nobody's out there thinking, you know, what's easy brain surgery and rockets.

Okay, perfect, Thanks, thanks for backing us up. We appreciate it.

Yeah, and unmercent, Now that's a legit. Rain surgery is super hard, and rockets it's super hard. And there's a reason that there are idiomatic expressions. This is no accident, especially as you try to scale the electrodes number of electrodes, and I don't we don't know how to say.

Like ultimately get to say, how do we do a million electrodes?

This is we don't know how to do that yet except that hopefully it is physically possible. If you want to have a hind Man with a whole brain interface, then I think probably the right automagtude is something like a million electrode and that that still has a very high ratio of neurons to electrodes, So that means you've got to read you try to add like any given electrode has to be able to read neurons from you know several like I don't know one hundred or one

Well, the goal with a whole brain interface is this

Do you see those as intermediate steps? Would love to hear your perspective on it.

Yeah, I mean, I think we should be able to solve any problem over time that is a result of you know, like if you think of the brain like a computer effect, like a circuit board or something like that, you can say, like if you're given a circuit board and there were some short circuits or some circuits that should be there but aren't there. If there are any circuits that shouldn't be there, and and some that that are there but shouldn't, we can fix those. So basically,

Basically anything that is a function of signals in er out.

If that is the nature of the problem, it can be fixed ultimately with a neuraling device.

Yeah, well I know you.

Neuralink just got FDA breakthrough designation for blindsight week and

Absolutely, so I think it can help a lot of people, like really ultimately help tens millions of people, maybe one hundreds of millions of people. I should say, also this potential, we'll go beyond the brain to like if somebody's got a sort of spinal cord injury, that being able to transmit the signals, so.

You know, like the ideal. I think what most people that have blusted the.

Connection between their brain and their body would like is to reanimate their body. Sure you know there are there are there are some approximations of that where you can animate see a robot suit or a robot arm or

Arms and legs.

If you think of it just like an electrical and communication system, like if you severed some ethernet cables, what would you do?

Well, you bridge the signal?

Okay, great, that the same thing can be done with the human body is bridge the electrical signals and the communication signals. So you've got sensors and actuators and the signals the bi directional signals for sensors and actuators are being interrupted, and I said, if you shunt the signals, you will be able to renovate the body.

One other issue that comes up with implants that you were mentioning our iPhones when you're committing someone to an implant, obviously there's a whole issue around upgrades or the cycle time or iteration and technology. So you can maybe say a little bit about reversibility and how we should be thinking about these things as we enter an era where bci'll become more widespread.

Yeah, so we do think upgrades are pretty important, just as you would not once an iPhone one stuck in your head when there's an iPhone sixteen or whatever version iPhone and are on these days but I think it's like six it's pretty high.

I've lost track of what not for they're on I think you're I think you're up to date on the sixteen.

I think, okay, you know so so.

But I mean, now there's this, there's some sort of logarithmic you know, there's like as kind of goes by, the incremental gains from one, say iPhone to the next are are less.

It's kind of logarithmic gain, it would appear.

But that means that well, like I say, the first five or six versions, there are actually big jumps, and certainly that would be that is the case with your link.

So if somebody has say production design.

Version one, I think five years later they'll one to have production design version three or four. And so we designed the implant such that it can be removed but with hopefully minimal strip damage to the area, so that you can then then replace it with another one. And we have with in our animal studies, we've done I think three implants, and the third implant still worked quite well, meaning.

You've replaced the implant three times in the same.

Place three times. Yeah, and the third one was still working was working great.

So we've talked about the robot addressing the workforce problem.

We've talked about interchangeability.

You know, a lot of what your vision involves is being high performing but also affordable, so it would be accessible to people. How do you see bridging that gap?

Yeah, So the device itself in volume should should not be super expensive. I mean hopefully it's like, I don't know, five to ten thousand dollars and very high volume. It should sought to approximate the cost of an Apple watch or a phone, so maybe it's a thousand or two thousand dollars something like that. And then the if it's implanted with a robot, then that that surgical procedure should be fast. Like we do have a game plan for

You invoked physics, And one interesting insight that I gained in our time together is this idea that there's often a debate about the.

Possible and what's possible and what's not.

And I know you have the perspective that that shouldn't really be subject to debate, because if something's impossible, it's because it's a function of physics, and if not, then it is and you just have.

To figure it out.

If something like if you're breaking conservation of energy or momentum or charge or something like that, then you either have a Nobel prize or you're wrong, and most likely you're wrong. But provided you're not sort of trying to break the sound barrier or something like that, like you're not moving.

That fast that then you should come visit. Okay, that's probably going to be bad for the brain. If it's going super.

Sadic, that actually is starting to make a lot of sense.

Yeah. Yeah, but provided you're still subsonic and you're not just doing things so fast that it causes physical disturbances. That then you can get things don very quickly. Basically if you look at the things at a bind grain level and say, well, what is the size of the voltage difference that you're trying to detect in a neuron and how so that for like, how far away from.

An electrode could you detect a pulse? You know? And can you.

Distinguish one neuron from another neuron based on its signature, So like if one neuron has almost like an accent or a voice, if your sensors are precise enough, you can say, okay, that sort of faint voice we hear that faint signal is this neuron, This loud signal is a nearby neuron.

And you can actually figure out especially where these neurons are based on on slight differences and how they they fire.

And that's and that's how you're going to map the function of the brain and get a step closer to that whole brain interface.

Yeah, I mean, we definitely are venturing into deep sci fi here. If people are interested in some sci fi book recommendations I would recommend in banks, the culture books and in banks actually just have this concept of a neural lace where there's all the humans have a neural link or neural lays throughout their brain, and when somebody dies, their memories are being dynamically uploaded to.

The cloud or whatever the internet is.

In the future, they can reinstantiate into human body if they want.

Well, they can live in simulation, which we might be in right now.

If so, I'd just like to applaud the simulators on the excellent work they are doing.

This feels very immersive and high fidelity. So thank you to simulator.

Thank you simulators. Please don't turn us off.

Yeah, well, well listen, Elana, this has been a terrific conversation. You have all of neurosurgery in the room here, and so what are maybe some last thoughts you'd like to leave us with.

Well, I think this is going to be something that is an incredible powerful tool for neurosurgeons for helping fix things that are rare related issues. It's sort of like, you know, it might be like the difference between if it was a weapon situation, difference between like bows and arrows and jet airplanes, Like, it's a big difference, you know, so we want to give you.

I hope I have the airplane in that Yeah, in.

A positive constructive way.

I mean, one can only do as well as the tools that want to get you know what.

It's like, what tools do you have?

And I think with my essentially giving neurosurgeons a much more sophisticated, powerful tool like the neuralink device, you could really help a lot of people terrific.

And I know that's why we're all here to better characterize in our logic disease and to help people. So really value your perspective. Thank you for being are a puzzle lecturer for creativity innovation