Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: Well, this is going to sound somewhat esoteric and maybe
Speaker 2: a bit strange, but I was actually trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how to mitigate the risk of digital superintelligence to
Speaker 2: the agree that that we can improve our bandwidth to
Speaker 2: our digital tertiary self. I think we can better align
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence with a collective human will.
Speaker 1: That's going to sound very strange, but so.
Speaker 2: You could think of like, basically our intelligence is being
Speaker 2: divided into roughly three areas. That's sort of like a
Speaker 2: like you know, Olympic system, like like like the sort
Speaker 2: of instinctual elements that this sort of like the cortex
Speaker 2: and the planning part. Then we also have a tertiary layer,
Speaker 2: which is only computers and bones applications software that we use,
Speaker 2: so that you have a digital tertiari self.
Speaker 1: Basically we were already an android.
Speaker 2: Defictively, I think people feel this when they forget their phone.
Speaker 2: Forgetting a phone, leaving a phone behind, it is like
Speaker 2: having missing limb syndrome. You're missing your part of your
Speaker 2: digital tertiaries. The constraint on human machine symbiosis is bandwidth.
Speaker 1: What is the especially output bandwidth?
Speaker 2: The output bandwidth of a human is less than one
Speaker 2: bit per second over the course of a day.
Speaker 1: So if you have eighty six four hundred.
Speaker 2: Seconds in a day, the number of output bits that
Speaker 2: you produce. Maybe there's some rare cases where it's above
Speaker 2: one bit per second, but very few people produce eighty six.
Speaker 1: Thousand, four hundred output bits.
Speaker 2: So most people like our averaging less than one bit
Speaker 2: per second over twenty four hour period. And when we
Speaker 2: do speak, they say the number of symbols per second
Speaker 2: of speech typing is quite low, especially if it's going
Speaker 2: through a phone. Then you just sort of have two
Speaker 2: slow moving meatsticks that are trying to type letters on
Speaker 2: a phone, so you really have just a few per
Speaker 2: second of characters, so that your phone is like a
Speaker 2: supercomputer in your hands and it is desperately trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what you want to say.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you I've personally experienced that phantom limb syndrome
Speaker 3: when I actually can't find my phone. And I hadn't
Speaker 3: thought of myself as a cyborg until you challenge.
Speaker 4: Me to think that way. But you're in a room
Speaker 4: of folks who've devoted their.
Speaker 3: Lives to neurologic disease, and I must confess to you
Speaker 3: that I had never actually thought of the output of
Speaker 3: the brain in terms of bits per second. But when
Speaker 3: you frame it that way, it makes it really clear
Speaker 3: why there may be a broader opportunity to make that
Speaker 3: virtual cyborg that we have now with our phone a
Speaker 3: little bit more efficient. So that's as a starting point,
Speaker 3: what prompted your interest in neuralink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so basically I thought.
Speaker 2: Okay, in order to have better human AI semiosis, we
Speaker 2: must solve the bandwidth problem. Below a certain bandwidth, we
Speaker 2: are basically just stationary to a computer and at one
Speaker 2: bit per second. Know, that's the very low data rate
Speaker 2: when computers are doing brillions of bits per second.
Speaker 3: So when you think about brain machine interface, why did
Speaker 3: you select the technical approach you did?
Speaker 4: I know a lot of thoughts gone into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if you say, like, okay, we need to have
Speaker 2: ultimately a million bits per second or a billion bits
Speaker 2: per second to gig a bit per second interface, then
Speaker 2: that means you really you can't.
Speaker 1: You need an implant and.
Speaker 2: Ultimately will need to replace the skull and it's going
Speaker 2: to be a zillion wire. I mean, this is some
Speaker 2: sci fi, bizarre sci fi stuff, and I'm not this
Speaker 2: is certainly optional.
Speaker 3: Plan mandatory replacement of my skull whatever problem.
Speaker 1: Mandatory chip and brain is not what we're saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: But at some point you're you say like, okay, how
Speaker 2: many electrodes are needed in order to interface with have
Speaker 2: a whole brain interface?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I've heard you mentioned that larger goal
Speaker 3: of whole brain interface. One thing that's really me by
Speaker 3: the approach that's been taken is, I think as a resurgence,
Speaker 3: we often contemplate the natural history of the disease and
Speaker 3: competing risk and benefit in neuralink as a company has
Speaker 3: started with folks who have als and spinal cord injury.
Speaker 3: These kind of first steps in terms of technical approach.
Speaker 3: So we'd love to hear a little bit more about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, long tem goal, like I said, is mitigating civilizational
Speaker 2: risk associated with a divergence of biological and digital intelligence.
Speaker 2: That's the long tim goal. Obviously. Then you've got to
Speaker 2: parse that, h L, Well, what are we going to
Speaker 2: do tomorrow? Yeah, So the starting point with the first
Speaker 2: new link device is a thousand electrodes, and with just
Speaker 2: one hundred of those electrodes are active, if it takes
Speaker 2: up our first few patients, you know, we're also having
Speaker 2: world records. Admitically, these are world records that are pretty low,
Speaker 2: but we're getting around.
Speaker 1: Ten ves per second, and that does a path to
Speaker 1: one thousand us per.
Speaker 2: Second, which would be literally one hundred times more than
Speaker 2: the next record. So we want to do the implants
Speaker 2: in where there's the highest gain and the least risk.
Speaker 2: So we call the first implant to telepathy, which really
Speaker 2: just interfacing with the motor cortex, and it's basically looking
Speaker 2: at signals as though somebody moved their own and just
Speaker 2: reading that signal and then sending that signal to the
Speaker 2: patient's phone or computer so they can then move the
Speaker 2: cursor around just by thinking. If you will have seen
Speaker 2: the videos of Noland, that's pretty impressive what he can do.
Speaker 2: In fact, shortly after getting the implant, he spent all
Speaker 2: night playing video games just by thinking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and those are the records you're talking about in
Speaker 3: those first two prime patients, where you're able to extract
Speaker 3: signals from their brain at record bits per second and
Speaker 3: enable them to work in the world.
Speaker 4: Is those of us who lose their phone would use today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I think we'll get to the point pretty
Speaker 2: quickly where someone with a neuralink implant will outperform somebody
Speaker 2: who's using their hands play a video game.
Speaker 4: What do you think the timeline for that is? We
Speaker 4: won't hold you to it.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean I do have a habit of being
Speaker 2: optimistic with respect to timelines. But if I wasn't optimistic,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be starting these companies.
Speaker 4: Probably, Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1: But I think given that we're already.
Speaker 2: Pretty much out a point where we're pretty close to
Speaker 2: on par with the video game. Basically you can play
Speaker 2: a video game at a comparable competent level to someone
Speaker 2: with hands. I think with our second generation device, which
Speaker 2: we'll have three thousand electrodes, and we'll get a lot
Speaker 2: better at placing those electrodes so only it's only one
Speaker 2: hundred electrodes being effective, we'll both improve the yield and
Speaker 2: will increase the number of electrodes. So we'll go from
Speaker 2: say one hundred electrodes that are reading to I don't know,
Speaker 2: out of three thousand electrodes, maybe fifteen and a half,
Speaker 2: So like fifteen hundred are reading. So at that point
Speaker 2: the data rate is far in excess of what someone
Speaker 2: video game with their hands could do, and we can
Speaker 2: reduce the latency the moment you think of a move,
Speaker 2: it happens instantly on the computer, as opposed to for
Speaker 2: you know, currently, if you're a human play a video game,
Speaker 2: you have to move your hand so that that's like
Speaker 2: you've got to send signals to the muscles.
Speaker 1: The muscles have to move.
Speaker 2: Your finger takes a certain amount of time to move,
Speaker 2: so you've got to be you basically got to move
Speaker 2: the meat puppet. If you don't have to move actuate
Speaker 2: the muscles in your hand or your finger's going to
Speaker 2: move at a certain rate and set like milimeters per second.
Speaker 2: But if you don't have to do any of that,
Speaker 2: you can literally think it immediately with no latency.
Speaker 1: You'll outperform someone who has to use a hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think as surgeons we really take
Speaker 3: pride in being efficient and using your hand. But when
Speaker 3: you're a reductionist like that, it actually makes me feel
Speaker 3: like I'm actually not particularly efficient. You could just if
Speaker 3: you just think and do it, I think I'd probably
Speaker 3: get a lot I'll get a little lot more done.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things that struck me in terms of
Speaker 3: the technical approach is obviously you have the implant and
Speaker 3: then you're extracting those signals and have a recording algorithm,
Speaker 3: and then you're actually affecting an action and you know,
Speaker 3: in one of the patients you actually had a lead
Speaker 3: or traction. But then we're able to tune the recording
Speaker 3: algorithm to actually recover that function.
Speaker 4: Could you maybe say a little bit about.
Speaker 3: That kind of vertically integrated approach and how that's going
Speaker 3: to let you scale a little bit?
Speaker 2: Sure? Well, since you know, really none of this stuff
Speaker 2: existed before, we had to design and build everything from scratch,
Speaker 2: and I mean it's basically like having an apple watcher
Speaker 2: a fit, but that replaces a piece of skull. And
Speaker 2: then you've got these electrodes, very very fine electrodes that
Speaker 2: are implanted with a surgical robot.
Speaker 3: I mean, we can share a little bit about the robot,
Speaker 3: the R one robot.
Speaker 4: That two is to implant the threads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the threads are really too small to be
Speaker 2: manipulated by hand, and they need to be placed with
Speaker 2: extreme precision, very quickly. The brain is moving all the
Speaker 2: time due to breathing and heartbeat or just not just
Speaker 2: sitting there. It's like a pulsing thing, and you're trying
Speaker 2: to get an electrode to a specific depth, while this,
Speaker 2: you know, jello balloon is just moving around all over
Speaker 2: the place. So it's it's it's kind of an impossible,
Speaker 2: really an impossible thing to do by hand. These these
Speaker 2: spades are just too tiny and the level of precision
Speaker 2: required is beyond what people can do. I maybe liken
Speaker 2: it to be being similar to computer controlled machining or
Speaker 2: three D metal printing with we've better a lays of
Speaker 2: welding tiny bits of metal dust. It's just there's just
Speaker 2: no way that humans just do not have the level
Speaker 2: of precision necessary to implant the electrodes, you know, to
Speaker 2: fractions of a millimeter of x y z position.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what's interesting obviously is a group of surgeons,
Speaker 3: many of us to varying stages, have incorporated robotics into
Speaker 3: our practice. When you hear a precision exceeding human capacity,
Speaker 3: do you think is this going to be a disruption
Speaker 3: or is this an augmentation to what surgeons do? And
Speaker 3: I know you have some thoughts around that, and there's
Speaker 3: maybe some analogies and ophthalmology, so it would love to
Speaker 3: hear that perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think the ophalmology analogy is the right
Speaker 2: one with laseric and ophthalmologists will oversee perhaps half a
Speaker 2: dozen or a dozen laser machines and to make sure
Speaker 2: the machine is is the patient getting the right operation
Speaker 2: in the correct eye, and is the is the machine
Speaker 2: operating properly. But thereafter the you know, patils in the
Speaker 2: laser chair and the robots going to basically laser rival.
Speaker 2: And now this is much better than someone getting a
Speaker 2: hand laser and laid hand lasering arrival, which would have
Speaker 2: varying results. I think it will be something similar to LASIC,
Speaker 2: where you perhaps a neurosurgeon overseeing half a dozen or
Speaker 2: a dozen of the neuralink robots that are doing the
Speaker 2: implants and just obviously making sure it's the right implant
Speaker 2: and the right location for the right purpose, and that
Speaker 2: everything's okay with the patient. So it would be like
Speaker 2: a massive amplification, I think, and it's kind of necessary
Speaker 2: that it'd be a massive appiplication because there's simply not
Speaker 2: enough neurosarchence to do this whole by hand.
Speaker 1: It's like physically impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we're talking about ultimately doing tens of millions
Speaker 2: of these things, like maybe this eight billion people in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe at.
Speaker 2: Least a few billion are going to want this, maybe
Speaker 2: more so, then how do you get billions of devices
Speaker 2: unless you got the robots.
Speaker 1: It's not happening.
Speaker 3: I've heard you frame the introduction of the robot is
Speaker 3: not just a precision issue, but an interest of workforce
Speaker 3: and scale. And there's obviously a little over three thousand
Speaker 3: of us nationally, so that would be a little bit challenging.
Speaker 3: Can you share a little bit in this early journey
Speaker 3: with BCI what some of the challenges have been, what
Speaker 3: you've encountered technically, I know, a biological environment, the saltwater
Speaker 3: problem is very hostile.
Speaker 4: Things with energy treaties.
Speaker 3: Would love to hear your thoughts on that and how
Speaker 3: your team's taking those things on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, as everyone obviously talking to people
Speaker 2: that know a lot more about the brain and that
Speaker 2: than I do, but I accidentally come to understand more
Speaker 2: than most people. The challenge is You've got a device
Speaker 2: that's going to live there for years. It's an electrical
Speaker 2: device that has to transmit radio essentially, you know, it
Speaker 2: has to transmit photons to your computer.
Speaker 1: It's subcutaneous, it's got to be charged.
Speaker 2: It's got electrodes that are reading and writing, so it's
Speaker 2: not like it can't just be electrically isolated.
Speaker 1: In fact, you're fighting two things. You want.
Speaker 2: You really are desperately trying to read these neurons, but
Speaker 2: you also don't want to be corroded. So it's like
Speaker 2: the very difficult thing to have just the minimum amount
Speaker 2: of insulation necessary to not be corroded, but not be
Speaker 2: so insulated that you can't hear the neurons. So there's
Speaker 2: a very challenging materials problem with our latest electrodes that
Speaker 2: will be silicon carbide coded, but even the silicon cartibide is.
Speaker 1: A very difficult material to work with.
Speaker 2: It's awesome, but it's very difficult, and you've got to
Speaker 2: make sure the coding is extremely precise. It's be you know,
Speaker 2: canvy tooth thin or tooth thick anywhere. It's going to
Speaker 2: be very evenly you applied to the threads. So it's
Speaker 2: the cher number of iterations necessary to actually have this
Speaker 2: device be medically sealed and survived in the body and
Speaker 2: not fail in some way, and then have to be
Speaker 2: able to transmit to your phono computer at a high
Speaker 2: data rate without burning down the battery is very difficult.
Speaker 2: I'd say there's many many technical challenges in that. So
Speaker 2: I mean I do have slightly criviolized by saying it's
Speaker 2: sort of like a fitbit or an Apple Watch in
Speaker 2: your brain. But if you actually put those things in
Speaker 2: your brain, neither your brain nor the Apple watch or
Speaker 2: fitbot would be happy.
Speaker 3: So this feels like the right place to ask. I
Speaker 3: think one of the more interesting questions we received. So
Speaker 3: as someone who's in a position of authority to comment
Speaker 3: on both, can you settle the age old question, what's
Speaker 3: actually more difficult brain surgery or rocket science?
Speaker 2: Well, both of my challenging. It's bizarre that I'm in
Speaker 2: bold in both. I mean, I think there are similar
Speaker 2: magnitude of difficulty.
Speaker 4: Especially story the story checks out.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think nobody's out there thinking, you know, what's
Speaker 2: easy brain surgery and rockets.
Speaker 4: Okay, perfect, Thanks, thanks for backing us up. We appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and unmercent, Now that's a legit. Rain surgery is
Speaker 2: super hard, and rockets it's super hard. And there's a
Speaker 2: reason that there are idiomatic expressions. This is no accident,
Speaker 2: especially as you try to scale the electrodes number of electrodes,
Speaker 2: and I don't we don't know how to say.
Speaker 1: Like ultimately get to say, how do we do a
Speaker 1: million electrodes?
Speaker 2: This is we don't know how to do that yet
Speaker 2: except that hopefully it is physically possible. If you want
Speaker 2: to have a hind Man with a whole brain interface,
Speaker 2: then I think probably the right automagtude is something like
Speaker 2: a million electrode and that that still has a very
Speaker 2: high ratio of neurons to electrodes, So that means you've
Speaker 2: got to read you try to add like any given
Speaker 2: electrode has to be able to read neurons from you
Speaker 2: know several like I don't know one hundred or one
Speaker 2: thousand neurons. So if you can do if you've got
Speaker 2: a million electrodes and each electroid can read a thousand neurons,
Speaker 2: so you've got access to a billion neurons.
Speaker 3: Well, the goal with a whole brain interface is this
Speaker 3: potential for long term augmentation or symbiosis. But you know,
Speaker 3: in the more immediate term, something that we think a
Speaker 3: lot about as surgeons is how is technology can allow
Speaker 3: us to treat problems that we aren't able to treat
Speaker 3: now and there's this whole family of diseases, psychiatric conditions,
Speaker 3: neurodevelopmental conditions, you know, folks who are neurodiverse and nerd
Speaker 3: degenerative conditions like Alzheimer's and so as we get a
Speaker 3: better picture of not just the structure of the brain,
Speaker 3: but you know, for lack of better term, the music
Speaker 3: of the brain.
Speaker 4: Do you see those as intermediate steps? Would love to
Speaker 4: hear your perspective on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think we should be able to
Speaker 2: solve any problem over time that is a result of
Speaker 2: you know, like if you think of the brain like
Speaker 2: a computer effect, like a circuit board or something like that,
Speaker 2: you can say, like if you're given a circuit board
Speaker 2: and there were some short circuits or some circuits that
Speaker 2: should be there but aren't there. If there are any
Speaker 2: circuits that shouldn't be there, and and some that that
Speaker 2: are there but shouldn't, we can fix those. So basically,
Speaker 2: if if if it's it's like fixing a circuit board. Now, now,
Speaker 2: if the circuit board is all melted, it's going to
Speaker 2: be hard to fix a melted circuit board. You can
Speaker 2: fix the circ board with a few issues, but you
Speaker 2: can't fix it if it's been melted. But the vast
Speaker 2: majority of diseases or brain issues I think are fixable
Speaker 2: with your within your rolling device. It's it's a it's
Speaker 2: a fine grained means of reading and writing electrical signals
Speaker 2: in the brain at a road with high precision. And
Speaker 2: so that means like if there's an electrical storm, some
Speaker 2: kind of apilepasy or something, you can interrupt that storm
Speaker 2: if you can, if there are a set of signals
Speaker 2: to like in the case of blindness, that if somebody's
Speaker 2: lost their optic noble both eyes, you can still stimulate
Speaker 2: the visual cortex.
Speaker 1: Basically anything that is a function of signals in er out.
Speaker 2: If that is the nature of the problem, it can
Speaker 2: be fixed ultimately with a neuraling device.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I know you.
Speaker 3: Neuralink just got FDA breakthrough designation for blindsight week and
Speaker 3: a half before this meeting. One thing that I heard
Speaker 3: you talk about that I thought was so interesting when
Speaker 3: I think about neurodiversity or NeuroD degenerative disease, is this
Speaker 3: idea of imagine, if someone of the intellective of Stephen
Speaker 3: Hawking was able to communicate more efficiently, how much more
Speaker 3: would society have benefited from those insights, and so when
Speaker 3: I think of people with neurodiverse conditions, I always think
Speaker 3: that they have this amazing potential to potentially be unlocked,
Speaker 3: and maybe this implant could be a digital bridge to that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, so I think it can help a lot of people,
Speaker 2: like really ultimately help tens millions of people, maybe one
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of people. I should say, also this potential,
Speaker 2: we'll go beyond the brain to like if somebody's got
Speaker 2: a sort of spinal cord injury, that being able to
Speaker 2: transmit the signals, so.
Speaker 1: You know, like the ideal. I think what most people
Speaker 1: that have blusted the.
Speaker 2: Connection between their brain and their body would like is
Speaker 2: to reanimate their body. Sure you know there are there
Speaker 2: are there are some approximations of that where you can
Speaker 2: animate see a robot suit or a robot arm or
Speaker 2: something like that. But if I think most people will
Speaker 2: be asking them, like, what would you prefer, I'd like
Speaker 2: my body to work again if provided the neurons are
Speaker 2: still kind of there, It's it's simply physically possible to
Speaker 2: shunt the signals, frown the motor cortex past the point
Speaker 2: where the damage has occurred to the neurons that then
Speaker 2: interface with your muscles and your.
Speaker 1: Arms and legs.
Speaker 2: If you think of it just like an electrical and
Speaker 2: communication system, like if you severed some ethernet cables, what
Speaker 2: would you do?
Speaker 1: Well, you bridge the signal?
Speaker 2: Okay, great, that the same thing can be done with
Speaker 2: the human body is bridge the electrical signals and the
Speaker 2: communication signals. So you've got sensors and actuators and the
Speaker 2: signals the bi directional signals for sensors and actuators are
Speaker 2: being interrupted, and I said, if you shunt the signals,
Speaker 2: you will be able to renovate the body.
Speaker 3: One other issue that comes up with implants that you
Speaker 3: were mentioning our iPhones when you're committing someone to an implant,
Speaker 3: obviously there's a whole issue around upgrades or the cycle
Speaker 3: time or iteration and technology. So you can maybe say
Speaker 3: a little bit about reversibility and how we should be
Speaker 3: thinking about these things as we enter an era where
Speaker 3: bci'll become more widespread.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we do think upgrades are pretty important, just
Speaker 2: as you would not once an iPhone one stuck in
Speaker 2: your head when there's an iPhone sixteen or whatever version
Speaker 2: iPhone and are on these days but I think it's
Speaker 2: like six it's pretty high.
Speaker 3: I've lost track of what not for they're on I
Speaker 3: think you're I think you're up to date on the sixteen.
Speaker 1: I think, okay, you know so so.
Speaker 2: But I mean, now there's this, there's some sort of
Speaker 2: logarithmic you know, there's like as kind of goes by,
Speaker 2: the incremental gains from one, say iPhone to the next
Speaker 2: are are less.
Speaker 1: It's kind of logarithmic gain, it would appear.
Speaker 2: But that means that well, like I say, the first
Speaker 2: five or six versions, there are actually big jumps, and
Speaker 2: certainly that would be that is the case with your link.
Speaker 1: So if somebody has say production design.
Speaker 2: Version one, I think five years later they'll one to
Speaker 2: have production design version three or four. And so we
Speaker 2: designed the implant such that it can be removed but
Speaker 2: with hopefully minimal strip damage to the area, so that
Speaker 2: you can then then replace it with another one. And
Speaker 2: we have with in our animal studies, we've done I
Speaker 2: think three implants, and the third implant still worked quite well, meaning.
Speaker 4: You've replaced the implant three times in the same.
Speaker 2: Place three times. Yeah, and the third one was still
Speaker 2: working was working great.
Speaker 3: So we've talked about the robot addressing the workforce problem.
Speaker 4: We've talked about interchangeability.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of what your vision involves is
Speaker 3: being high performing but also affordable, so it would be
Speaker 3: accessible to people. How do you see bridging that gap?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the device itself in volume should should not
Speaker 2: be super expensive. I mean hopefully it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: five to ten thousand dollars and very high volume. It
Speaker 2: should sought to approximate the cost of an Apple watch
Speaker 2: or a phone, so maybe it's a thousand or two
Speaker 2: thousand dollars something like that. And then the if it's
Speaker 2: implanted with a robot, then that that surgical procedure should
Speaker 2: be fast. Like we do have a game plan for
Speaker 2: what I call this six hundred second surgery. So ten
Speaker 2: minutes you sit in the chair, in ten minutes the
Speaker 2: data you have an implant, and we're not violating physics.
Speaker 2: So it I mean just just has with laser. You know,
Speaker 2: it goes in a laser to a whole munch of
Speaker 2: things to rival. Now you'd have to automate basically everything here.
Speaker 2: But if you break it down second by second, date
Speaker 2: is possible to have a six hundred second or ten
Speaker 2: minute surgery. And so at that point, if it's being
Speaker 2: done by a robot and it's the whole thing takes
Speaker 2: ten minutes, I think it probably that the whole thing,
Speaker 2: all inclusive, ends up being you know, on the order
Speaker 2: of five thousand dollars maybe similar to Lasic.
Speaker 3: You invoked physics, And one interesting insight that I gained
Speaker 3: in our time together is this idea that there's often
Speaker 3: a debate about the.
Speaker 4: Possible and what's possible and what's not.
Speaker 3: And I know you have the perspective that that shouldn't
Speaker 3: really be subject to debate, because if something's impossible, it's
Speaker 3: because it's a function of physics, and if not, then
Speaker 3: it is and you just have.
Speaker 1: To figure it out.
Speaker 2: If something like if you're breaking conservation of energy or
Speaker 2: momentum or charge or something like that, then you either
Speaker 2: have a Nobel prize or you're wrong, and most likely
Speaker 2: you're wrong. But provided you're not sort of trying to
Speaker 2: break the sound barrier or something like that, like you're
Speaker 2: not moving.
Speaker 1: That fast that then you should come visit. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: probably going to be bad for the brain. If it's
Speaker 1: going super.
Speaker 4: Sadic, that actually is starting to make a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but provided you're still subsonic and you're not
Speaker 2: just doing things so fast that it causes physical disturbances.
Speaker 2: That then you can get things don very quickly. Basically
Speaker 2: if you look at the things at a bind grain
Speaker 2: level and say, well, what is the size of the
Speaker 2: voltage difference that you're trying to detect in a neuron
Speaker 2: and how so that for like, how far away from.
Speaker 1: An electrode could you detect a pulse? You know? And
Speaker 1: can you.
Speaker 2: Distinguish one neuron from another neuron based on its signature,
Speaker 2: So like if one neuron has almost like an accent
Speaker 2: or a voice, if your sensors are precise enough, you
Speaker 2: can say, okay, that sort of faint voice we hear
Speaker 2: that faint signal is this neuron, This loud signal is
Speaker 2: a nearby neuron.
Speaker 1: And you can actually figure out especially where these neurons
Speaker 1: are based on on slight differences and how they they fire.
Speaker 3: And that's and that's how you're going to map the
Speaker 3: function of the brain and get a step closer to
Speaker 3: that whole brain interface.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we definitely are venturing into deep sci
Speaker 2: fi here. If people are interested in some sci fi
Speaker 2: book recommendations I would recommend in banks, the culture books
Speaker 2: and in banks actually just have this concept of a
Speaker 2: neural lace where there's all the humans have a neural
Speaker 2: link or neural lays throughout their brain, and when somebody dies,
Speaker 2: their memories are being dynamically uploaded to.
Speaker 1: The cloud or whatever the internet is.
Speaker 2: In the future, they can reinstantiate into human body if
Speaker 2: they want.
Speaker 1: Well, they can live in simulation, which we might be
Speaker 1: in right now.
Speaker 2: If so, I'd just like to applaud the simulators on
Speaker 2: the excellent work they are doing.
Speaker 3: This feels very immersive and high fidelity. So thank you
Speaker 3: to simulator.
Speaker 1: Thank you simulators. Please don't turn us off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, well listen, Elana, this has been a terrific conversation.
Speaker 3: You have all of neurosurgery in the room here, and
Speaker 3: so what are maybe some last thoughts you'd like to
Speaker 3: leave us with.
Speaker 2: Well, I think this is going to be something that
Speaker 2: is an incredible powerful tool for neurosurgeons for helping fix
Speaker 2: things that are rare related issues. It's sort of like,
Speaker 2: you know, it might be like the difference between if
Speaker 2: it was a weapon situation, difference between like bows and
Speaker 2: arrows and jet airplanes, Like, it's a big difference, you know,
Speaker 2: so we want to give you.
Speaker 4: I hope I have the airplane in that Yeah, in.
Speaker 1: A positive constructive way.
Speaker 2: I mean, one can only do as well as the
Speaker 2: tools that want to get you know what.
Speaker 1: It's like, what tools do you have?
Speaker 2: And I think with my essentially giving neurosurgeons a much
Speaker 2: more sophisticated, powerful tool like the neuralink device, you could
Speaker 2: really help a lot of people terrific.
Speaker 3: And I know that's why we're all here to better
Speaker 3: characterize in our logic disease and to help people. So
Speaker 3: really value your perspective. Thank you for being are a
Speaker 3: puzzle lecturer for creativity innovation