Speaker 1: Welcome to Neuralink Live Update. We're gonna tell you about
Speaker 1: the progress of the first patient with the neuralink olland
Speaker 1: and sort of your recap of the progress there, then
Speaker 1: talk about what changes we were making for the second patient,
Speaker 1: which we're hoping to do an implant in the next
Speaker 1: week or so. And this is for our first product,
Speaker 1: which is called Levathy, which enables you to control a
Speaker 1: computer or a phone just by thinking. So let's in fact,
Speaker 1: so we'll start off with just some introductions. Do you start? Hi?
Speaker 2: Everyone, My name is DJ sull I'm an electrical engineer
Speaker 2: and a chip designer by training. I led the design
Speaker 2: of first several generations of the Neuralink implant. Currently I
Speaker 2: was on the founding team and currently a president.
Speaker 1: I'm Matthew McDougal.
Speaker 3: I'm a practicing neurosurgeon and a head of neurosurgery at Neuralink.
Speaker 4: Yeah go ahead, yeah, head of burning the first as applications.
Speaker 5: And I'm plussed some software engineer at Nerlink trying to
Speaker 5: figure out how to turn brain activity into the stuff
Speaker 5: in the work.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you, Well, so let's see, so we'll
Speaker 1: just get going into the presentation. So our first product
Speaker 1: is something like I said, we call telepathy, which enables
Speaker 1: the person with the neural link implant to control their
Speaker 1: phone or computer just by thinking. And once you can
Speaker 1: control your phone and computer, you can essentially control almost
Speaker 1: anything just and literally just by thinking. So there's no
Speaker 1: eye tracking or anything. It is purely purely your thoughts.
Speaker 1: So this is really quite quite a profound device that
Speaker 1: can help a lot of people who have lost the
Speaker 1: connection between their brain and body. So imagine people like
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking who you know. You imagine if if he
Speaker 1: could communicate at the same speed as someone who had
Speaker 1: still had the connection to their brain and body. So
Speaker 1: it's it's really uh something that can help millions of
Speaker 1: people around the world, and it's a it's part of
Speaker 1: our overall goal of enabling a very high bandwidth connection
Speaker 1: between the brain and and your and and the rest
Speaker 1: of the world and your computers. The long term goal,
Speaker 1: which sounds a little esoteric, is to mitigate the the
Speaker 1: risk of of the civil civilizational risk of AI by
Speaker 1: having a sort of closer symbiosis between human intelligence and
Speaker 1: digital intelligence. But but that that that will take many years. Uh.
Speaker 1: Along the way, We're we're going to help solve a
Speaker 1: lot of brain injury or spinal injury issues. Uh so
Speaker 1: uh and with without first product sypathy, that's that's going
Speaker 1: to be really quite profound. Uh that there is also
Speaker 1: potential long term for bridging the gaps. So if there
Speaker 1: are damaged or severed neurons, being able to span the
Speaker 1: gap between the brain's motor cortex to the spine to
Speaker 1: enable someone to use their body again, I think that
Speaker 1: would be very exciting, and it's you know that that
Speaker 1: is something that is possible in the long term and
Speaker 1: they're not. Our second product, which we've demonstrated to work
Speaker 1: with monkeys, is blind sight, which would enable someone who
Speaker 1: is completely blind, lost both eyes or completely lost that
Speaker 1: are optic nerve to be able to see. So that's
Speaker 1: that's something that we hope to demonstrate in the future.
Speaker 1: So this just gives you a sense of what the
Speaker 1: device is. A way to think about the neuralink device
Speaker 1: is kind of like a fitbit or an Apple watch
Speaker 1: with tiny wires or electrodes. Those those tiny wires are
Speaker 1: implanted in the in the brain and they are read
Speaker 1: and write electrical signals. So a lot of people think
Speaker 1: the brain is this incredibly mysterious thing. It's it is
Speaker 1: mysterious a lot of ways, but but it is. Actually
Speaker 1: it does operate with like electrical signals, so if you
Speaker 1: can read and write those electrical signals, you can interface
Speaker 1: with the brain. And the device is sized so that
Speaker 1: it is the same size as the as the piece
Speaker 1: of skull that is removed. So if it's like a
Speaker 1: few centimeters diameter of skull skull that's removed, we replace
Speaker 1: that with the device after implanting the tiny wires with
Speaker 1: the surgical robot, and that enables read write capability to
Speaker 1: the neurons completely wirelessly. Yeah, yes, exactly, it's completely wirelessly.
Speaker 1: So like I could I could have a neuralank right now.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't know. And it charges inductively so you could
Speaker 1: just uh it's they have electromagnetic ad that that you
Speaker 1: charge the device with. So yeah, it's like an Apple
Speaker 1: Watch exactly.
Speaker 2: So uh, except that it's actually a much harder technical
Speaker 2: challenge to solve that there's limit as to how much
Speaker 2: get the print issue or whereas in for phones and.
Speaker 6: Really care if you're sitting on the table.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also it's got to go through skin and stuff
Speaker 1: as well. And okay, so it is a tougher challenge
Speaker 1: to to charge and to have vivemand with communications, given
Speaker 1: that has got to go through skin and hair and
Speaker 1: stuff we have we have solved. So yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So our first step with the telepathy is basically
Speaker 4: to unlock digital independence for people with policies and to
Speaker 4: allow them to control the computer just with their mind
Speaker 4: without moving their body. And our goal is to provide
Speaker 4: them the same level of control, functionality, and reliability that
Speaker 4: I have when I'm using a computer, even better than
Speaker 4: the level of control I have.
Speaker 5: Just to be clear, this guy he's controlling us with
Speaker 5: his brain. So he's not like you can't see his
Speaker 5: hands in this video, but he's not using a mouse
Speaker 5: and keyboard, just thinking about how to move the cursor
Speaker 5: and playing civilizations.
Speaker 1: No eye trackers from meat, just thinking.
Speaker 6: Just a couple of days a cursor move here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like the last standard two nights ago.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I think I think the way he also
Speaker 2: described that is he's using them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's many more videos on his on the platform.
Speaker 4: Definitely checked them out. Yeah, so he can he's string
Speaker 4: with that live and also can talk and like move
Speaker 4: his head with that problem multi time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you guys, like, if you join his livestream, you
Speaker 5: can ask him questions. You'll he'll tell you all about
Speaker 5: what it's like to move.
Speaker 2: Also, I think I haven't played Civilization myself, but I
Speaker 2: think this is actually not easy.
Speaker 6: About this is expert Emperor mode.
Speaker 5: Emperor if you have played stiff empro mote is like
Speaker 5: the highest difficulty level. Just the point is that this
Speaker 5: is a kind of demanding task. And while wife streaming
Speaker 5: playing the hardest motive team and he's able to do
Speaker 5: that while.
Speaker 6: Moving on talking engaging with you know, the audience.
Speaker 3: Playing One of the other games he likes to play
Speaker 3: a lot is chess. I think it gets lost sometimes
Speaker 3: that he's actually playing speed chess against me, which requires
Speaker 3: an incredibly high fidelity degree of control and speed of
Speaker 3: control in order to be able to win.
Speaker 4: So also, another cool stuff about about our device is
Speaker 4: that is it anywhere anytime, also on a plane during
Speaker 4: a flight, while sating really cool memes of care. And
Speaker 4: also our device unlocks things that previously were impossible for participants.
Speaker 4: For example, we're able to connect him to his living consoles,
Speaker 4: which they marcott with friends and family, and it was
Speaker 4: lovely to see them playing together after years that he
Speaker 4: couldn't do it since his injury.
Speaker 5: I know, if you're sitting over from this guy playing
Speaker 5: look over, he's going a cap me love, no hands,
Speaker 5: no movement.
Speaker 1: Even away over.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's strange, strange time.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And he loves using the device and using independently daily
Speaker 4: to watch videos and read play games using the baser.
Speaker 4: And the key metrics that week are is to make
Speaker 4: sure our device is actually useful to basically the amount
Speaker 4: of hours and use the device daily and weekly, and
Speaker 4: we track it weekly since the since the surgery, and
Speaker 4: on weeks that he's not too busy and not traveling,
Speaker 4: he can even reach seventy hours of using the.
Speaker 1: Device a week.
Speaker 4: This is amazing and he would of course love to
Speaker 4: use it more, but need to run result sessions, he
Speaker 4: needs to sleep sometimes and also of course to charge
Speaker 4: the device once in a while hopefully will improve that
Speaker 4: over time.
Speaker 5: Maybe not obvious to people who are watching this like
Speaker 5: it's a normal math book. He's controlling. This isn't like
Speaker 5: some limited addition thing. But there's only a few options,
Speaker 5: Like you can just do anything that you can do
Speaker 5: on a mapbook pro that same one I have on
Speaker 5: my desk. Actually it's the exact same one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And another interesting point is that on the first
Speaker 4: day he used bciurn Control, was able to break the
Speaker 4: previous world record for curser control just by using the
Speaker 4: brain and recently he even doubled it and was able
Speaker 4: to outperform about ten percent of our engineer at New Link.
Speaker 4: And you can be sure that we are very good
Speaker 4: in this game and very quick. And if you want
Speaker 4: to check out how well how well you can do it,
Speaker 4: you can do it on our website. And it's very
Speaker 4: addictive games. Yeah, it's a very simple game. You just
Speaker 4: have to click on the square.
Speaker 1: But it's actually even though it sounds silly, it's it's
Speaker 1: quite a Yeah, it can be quite a It sounds
Speaker 1: like it could be quite addictive, and it's especially if
Speaker 1: you get a low score and you think there's no
Speaker 1: way I got it. So, I mean, anyone who wants
Speaker 1: to try this, I recommend going to the neuralink dot
Speaker 1: com its website and seeing seeing if you can beat
Speaker 1: Nolan's record, and it's that you will find that's actually
Speaker 1: quite difficult to do so. And this is really with
Speaker 1: version one of the device and with only a small
Speaker 1: percentage of the electrodes that are working. So this is
Speaker 1: this is really just the beginning, but even the beginning
Speaker 1: is twice as good as the world record. This is
Speaker 1: important to emphasize the you know, the media has a
Speaker 1: habit of saying that the glasses ten percent empty, but
Speaker 1: actually it's ninety percent full. So I think it's really
Speaker 1: quite accomplishment of the Neuralink team to have achieved with
Speaker 1: with the first patient, first device, twice the world record
Speaker 1: for the range computer madwidth. That's really an astonishing, an
Speaker 1: amazingly great outcome, and it's only going to get better
Speaker 1: from here. So the potential is to ultimately get I
Speaker 1: think to megabit level. So that's that's probably the long
Speaker 1: term goal of improving the bandwidth of the brain computer interface.
Speaker 1: If you think about like how low the bandwidth normally
Speaker 1: is between a human and advice, it's the average bandwidth
Speaker 1: is extremely low. It's it's i say, less than one
Speaker 1: bit per second over the course of a day. If
Speaker 1: there are eighty six thousand, four hundred seconds in a day,
Speaker 1: you're outputting less than that number of bets to any
Speaker 1: any given device except perhaps very rare circumstances. So this
Speaker 1: is it's actually quite important for for AI. You know,
Speaker 1: basic for human AI sebiosis is just being able to
Speaker 1: communicate at a speed. Yeah, I can follow.
Speaker 3: So yeah, just to emphasize again, he's performing at this
Speaker 3: extremely high level with about fifteen percent of his channels functional,
Speaker 3: and so we want to mitigate any of the problems
Speaker 3: that led to that situation. So, you know, the brain
Speaker 3: is a fascinating organ. I'll share with you some of
Speaker 3: the secrets about the brain. During any typical brain surgery,
Speaker 3: a small amount of air is introduced into the skull.
Speaker 3: That's because neurosurgeons like to have as much room as
Speaker 3: possible around the brain, and so there's this little known
Speaker 3: control mechanism of allowing the CO two concentration in the
Speaker 3: blood to rise a bit, which allows the brain to
Speaker 3: either expand or contract, depending on where you you target
Speaker 3: that CO two. But typically neurosurgeons will have the brain
Speaker 3: shrink by lowering CO two. What we're going to do
Speaker 3: in our future surgeries is keep the CO two concentration
Speaker 3: actually quite normal, maybe even slightly elevated, and I'll allow
Speaker 3: the brain to stay its normal size and shape during surgery.
Speaker 3: That should eliminate this air pocket that we saw in
Speaker 3: the first participant that air pocket we think may have
Speaker 3: contributed to eating up some of the thread slack as
Speaker 3: the air bubble migrated to be under the implant push
Speaker 3: the brain away from the implant, and so that's easy
Speaker 3: enough to fix. Another consideration that we want to focus
Speaker 3: on for our upcoming participants is that the brain. Think
Speaker 3: of it like a really complex folded onion. It's layer
Speaker 3: upon layer of sheets of neurons all over the surface
Speaker 3: of the brain, folded into this odd looking shape.
Speaker 1: The folds of.
Speaker 3: The brain traveled down deep into the brain, and along
Speaker 3: with it go those onion layers of neurons. And if
Speaker 3: we insert very close to one of the folds where
Speaker 3: there may be very useful information encoded in neurons, we
Speaker 3: may end up traveling with our threads parallel to some
Speaker 3: of the layers of neurons that were most interested in
Speaker 3: avoiding them Entirely. To avoid that possibility, we're going to
Speaker 3: insert in our future participants more close to the middle
Speaker 3: of the apex of the folds, ensuring that we're crossing
Speaker 3: the layers of interest layer five of the cortex.
Speaker 2: I also think that it's important to highlight here those
Speaker 2: tiny wires that Elon mentioned.
Speaker 6: They're fraction of a human hair.
Speaker 2: They're very flexible intentionally so because brains constantly moving and
Speaker 2: you want the electros to be moving with the brain
Speaker 2: causing less of the scarring. And it's actually impossible for
Speaker 2: human eurosurgeon, however talented matthew Is to actually maneuver them
Speaker 2: by so we have a surgical robot that we built
Speaker 2: that can actually precisely target them in any three dimensional
Speaker 2: space x, y as well as z with micron level
Speaker 2: precision while avoiding bascoature so that you don't disrupt and
Speaker 2: cause immune response from happening. So we actually have the
Speaker 2: technology to be able to place them exactly where we
Speaker 2: want them in three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's truly amazing to see the surface of the
Speaker 3: brain after the robot had inserted all the electrodes on
Speaker 3: the first participant, without a drop of blood in sight.
Speaker 3: It's really quite an achievement.
Speaker 1: Yes, something that probably most people don't realize is that
Speaker 1: the brain appears to be sort of somewhat undifferentiated. So
Speaker 1: if you look at the cortex, it looks like a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of folds that were you know, maybe like that.
Speaker 1: It's not obviously just looking at to take a picture
Speaker 1: of the brain. That that it's the brain is highly differentiated.
Speaker 1: That there's you pretty much know exactly where the part
Speaker 1: of the brain is that controls your right hand and
Speaker 1: your left hand and your leg and that kind of
Speaker 1: thing or vision. It's it's actually quite precisely located. It's
Speaker 1: not some people like might might think look the brain like, oh,
Speaker 1: could be it could be anywhere, but actually we it
Speaker 1: it's it's your brain is highly differentiated, even though it
Speaker 1: doesn't look it. It's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you want to describe how we actually were,
Speaker 2: like how we identify word to drill the quen So.
Speaker 3: We can we can put a patient that is considering
Speaker 3: this implant into an f MRI so a functional magnetic
Speaker 3: resonance imaging machine and ask them to imagine hand movements
Speaker 3: that you know, because of the spinal cord injury don't happen,
Speaker 3: but just imagining those hand movements causes these areas of
Speaker 3: the brain to light up in the fMRI scanner. And
Speaker 3: so we have a pretty good idea based in in fact,
Speaker 3: for each individual participant which part their brain is going to,
Speaker 3: you know, respond to imagined movements of the hand. And
Speaker 3: so we can map those imagined movements, much as we
Speaker 3: all do when moving a mouse to controlling a cursor
Speaker 3: on a screen, even without the use of a mouse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think it's kind of an important point that, like,
Speaker 1: it's not like your the part of your brain that
Speaker 1: controls your hand might be anywhere in the cortex. It's
Speaker 1: this is not the case. It's going to be in
Speaker 1: a very specific region, and it's going to be extremely
Speaker 1: common across people. Precision is key too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the left handed right handed in my mind too, Like,
Speaker 5: if you're right handed, you want.
Speaker 6: The fight on the left side.
Speaker 5: Let the lotto side to the hand gets your commet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the left side of your brain controls right right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, everything's crop.
Speaker 3: Another of the risk mitigations we're looking at in the
Speaker 3: future is that, you know, the implant has a certain size.
Speaker 3: The depth of the bottom of the implant. It's actually
Speaker 3: dinner than the average human skull. And so what we
Speaker 3: want to be able to do is control the size
Speaker 3: of the gap under the implant, give the threads that
Speaker 3: travel from the implant into the brain as much slack
Speaker 3: as possible. We didn't do this in the first participant
Speaker 3: because we didn't want to manipulate any of their tissue
Speaker 3: that we didn't absolutely have to in upcoming implants.
Speaker 1: Our plan is to sort.
Speaker 3: Of sculpt the surface of the skull very intentionally to
Speaker 3: minimize the gap under the implant, such that the bottom
Speaker 3: of the implant travels perfectly flush with the normal contour
Speaker 3: of the inner side of the skull. That will put
Speaker 3: the implant closer to the brain. It will eliminate some
Speaker 3: of the tension on the threads, and we think it
Speaker 3: will reduce some of the tendency of threads to retract.
Speaker 6: And we actually built the tool to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is actually this is a very important detail.
Speaker 1: You really want the inner contraur of the skull to
Speaker 1: be blushed so that the implant there's there's no the
Speaker 1: brain doesn't want to pucker up into the into the gap.
Speaker 1: That's really quite a big deal. So, like like minimizing
Speaker 1: the air procket and the implant being flushed with the
Speaker 1: inside contour of the skull are two very important improvements.
Speaker 2: The additional benefit here is that, uh, you know, you
Speaker 2: do see some amount of stick up what we call
Speaker 2: stick ups, so you might have bumped in the head,
Speaker 2: but this actually eliminates it even further.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like, really our goal is
Speaker 1: that that if you run your hand over the top
Speaker 1: of the skull, you don't feel any any momp, you
Speaker 1: don't feel any any device, and that even if someone
Speaker 1: was bold, you wouln't really even notice it. And uh
Speaker 1: and then from the inner inner contraur of the skull
Speaker 1: that the brain from physical standpoint, doesn't really notice that
Speaker 1: there's a divot in the skull because there's no dibit. Okay.
Speaker 3: Another aspect of the human brain that you know, obviously
Speaker 3: differs from any of the animals that we tested in
Speaker 3: is that the human brain is a lot bigger. And
Speaker 3: so you may not realize that that means the human
Speaker 3: brain moves quite a bit more than any of these
Speaker 3: other smaller brained creatures. And so when we open the skull,
Speaker 3: we see the brain travel toward and away from the
Speaker 3: robot about three millimeters in total, as the heart beats
Speaker 3: and the breathing takes place. And so that movement, you know,
Speaker 3: it adds a small challenge for the robot in precisely
Speaker 3: choosing a depth to insert each thread. It's not an
Speaker 3: enormous challenge, and we've already upgraded the robot's capabilities to
Speaker 3: be able to even more precisely target depth in even
Speaker 3: a very rapidly moving brain with a high amplitude of movement.
Speaker 3: You may think the most obvious mitigation for threads that
Speaker 3: pulled out of the brain is to insert them deeper.
Speaker 3: We think so too, and so we're going to broaden
Speaker 3: the range of depths at which we insert threads. So
Speaker 3: for the very first participant, we had an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of data from our animal work, and we had very
Speaker 3: highly optimized our insertion depth to maximize the crossing of
Speaker 3: the layers of interest in the cortex with the electrodes
Speaker 3: that we're recording from. Now that we know retraction is
Speaker 3: a possibility, we're going to insert at a variety of
Speaker 3: depths that even in several cases of different amounts of
Speaker 3: retracting threads, we're going to have electrodes at the proper
Speaker 3: depth and with the deepest threads be able to track
Speaker 3: how much retraction has occurred across the surface of the
Speaker 3: brain from each thread. And so we're going to you know,
Speaker 3: both have more threads in the right layer and have
Speaker 3: better data on how much retraction has occurred.
Speaker 5: If you're a pc I NERD. You might know that
Speaker 5: being able to control individual z depth per thread it
Speaker 5: is not something that most neural interface devices offer. Most
Speaker 5: neural interface devices are kind of a static, fixed rigid
Speaker 5: array that you push in and all the lectures are
Speaker 5: on depth.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: To be able to do this is actually pretty pretty
Speaker 5: novel part of the robots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the historical approach is to actually pound in a
Speaker 3: sort of bed of nails with an air hammer into.
Speaker 1: The Look it looks crazy that that is, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: with a with a aumuntic hammer. That's the that's what
Speaker 1: this is. It sounds come somewhat by braic. This is
Speaker 1: not what we do, but this is the what's been
Speaker 1: done before. Is that's literally just hammering and what looks
Speaker 1: like a better nails with the brain, which actually works.
Speaker 1: It's astonishing that.
Speaker 5: Some people like man like DBS props you're just sticking
Speaker 5: in by hand.
Speaker 3: But those are several several or is a magnitude more
Speaker 3: volume of brain tissue that you're destroying.
Speaker 6: Compared to what we're doing.
Speaker 1: But that deep brain simulation stuff does actually work and
Speaker 1: it actually helps people a lot. Yeah, Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great product. Yeah, I mean I think we'll be able
Speaker 1: to do a much more finessed version of that down
Speaker 1: the road. So I mean it's really difficult. Like the
Speaker 1: neuraling device is something that really absolutely minimizes damage to
Speaker 1: the brain, absolutely minimizes the load on the patient, and
Speaker 1: the goal is to allow someone to live a completely
Speaker 1: normal life that you won't even notice that someone even
Speaker 1: has the device. So, like I said, restoring the ability
Speaker 1: to control your computer and phone, that's a telepathy. And
Speaker 1: then next device being able to allow people to see
Speaker 1: that could not see before. In fact, you could allow
Speaker 1: people to see kind of like Doorty of the Forge
Speaker 1: and Star Trek in any whatever. Yeah, infrared ultraviolet radar
Speaker 1: are so so I think another way of saying is
Speaker 1: that we want to give people superpowers. So it's not
Speaker 1: just that we're restoring your prior brain functionality, but that
Speaker 1: you actually have functionality far greater than a normal human.
Speaker 1: That's a super big deal.
Speaker 2: And I also think you know, oftentimes the questions that
Speaker 2: we get a lot is why do you have to
Speaker 2: actually go into the brain, What if you place it
Speaker 2: on the surface or most types of score. Basically, the
Speaker 2: long story short, the physics of how it works, you
Speaker 2: really need to get the sensors, which are these facing
Speaker 2: in the brain next to the source, which neuron as
Speaker 2: close to it as possible. Otherwise, what you get is
Speaker 2: you get a population respond and not be able to
Speaker 2: kind of do the level of controls that we believe of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean maybe a good sort of analogy would
Speaker 1: be like if you're trying to understand what goes on
Speaker 1: in a factory, you kind of need to go into
Speaker 1: the factory. You can't just put a death scope on
Speaker 1: the wall and try to figure out what's going like
Speaker 1: anything on the outside of the Trying to read things
Speaker 1: from the outside is like putting a statoscope on the
Speaker 1: world of a factory trying to understand what's going in
Speaker 1: the factory. It's not going to be effective. You've got
Speaker 1: to be the threads. You gotta be in there. So
Speaker 1: but I just want to be emphasized again, like the
Speaker 1: goal is to give people superpowers, not just to restore
Speaker 1: prior functionality. So I think that's very exciting and I
Speaker 1: think that should give hope to a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the world that the future is going to be
Speaker 1: exciting and inspiring and the technology is going to give
Speaker 1: them superpowers. I mean, that's that's amazing. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, and could can you multitest? But that Yeah,
Speaker 1: In fact, if you look at Nolan's streaming and you
Speaker 1: can just check out Nolan's streams on on the x platform,
Speaker 1: he's multitasking all the time. So he's playing video games
Speaker 1: while talking and uh the podcast podcast. Yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's truly just like if you're using your hands
Speaker 1: and you can be you know, playing a video game
Speaker 1: while talking.
Speaker 5: So and we don't take our word for it, they
Speaker 5: just go watch. I mean, yeah, he's out there on
Speaker 5: the internet doing the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So can you do keyboards shortcuts or is
Speaker 1: it just the mouse?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what you're working on right now.
Speaker 4: Sure, so Godley is walking with the mouse. But we
Speaker 4: are also exploring recording more dimensions out from the newer
Speaker 4: activity multiple clicks, so to shortcuts or just able to
Speaker 4: draw more games games with an xbook controller. But also
Speaker 4: in the future we're expend we plan to expand to
Speaker 4: the code text, not just the mouse control, but also
Speaker 4: allow what participant to type much faster.
Speaker 5: And yeah, actually so maybe going back to the discussion
Speaker 5: of thread attraction, you know, one of the very exciting
Speaker 5: parts to me about this story is that we're able
Speaker 5: to do so much with fifteen percent of channels, and
Speaker 5: you have more channels, what that actually offers you is
Speaker 5: not just faster and mouse control, because in the motor
Speaker 5: cortext neurons don't all represent the same thing. So if
Speaker 5: you're trying to understand, like, you know, what an individual
Speaker 5: finger is trying to do, you might or might not
Speaker 5: have an electro next to it. And the more channels
Speaker 5: you have in the bringing in, the higher likelihood you
Speaker 5: have representation or decodability of all fingers on the hand.
Speaker 5: And so if you're trying to do something like I'll
Speaker 5: put texts at a fast rate is something that matters
Speaker 5: a lot for people who are completely locked in, who
Speaker 5: cannot speak at all, who are trying to, you know,
Speaker 5: just say I love you to a loved one in
Speaker 5: their family, or ask for a glass of water or
Speaker 5: scratch or whatever, you know, being able to type it
Speaker 5: a faster ate.
Speaker 6: It's extremely important.
Speaker 5: And the more fingers you have access to, the higher
Speaker 5: probability you can do that efficient.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, you know, I'm.
Speaker 5: Super excited about how high the ceiling is that we
Speaker 5: can get to as we resolve this tut attraction too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're kindly at approximately ten ten us
Speaker 1: per second PA. Great, but ultimately we want to get
Speaker 1: to a megabit, and I think ultimately whole brain interface,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, many years from now. I think
Speaker 1: gigabit level as possible. So that's pretty soonishing now, you know,
Speaker 1: with there is still version of one of our device.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned, it's version one with only fifteen percent
Speaker 1: of the threads working. The current device has sixty four
Speaker 1: threads with sixteen electrodes on each thread. Our next device
Speaker 1: has one hundred and twenty eight threads with eight electrodes
Speaker 1: per thread. Because as we get more confident about how
Speaker 1: we're exactly to place the electrode the thread, you need
Speaker 1: fewer electrodes per thread. So we can, essentially, with the
Speaker 1: current device without substantial changes, potentially double the band if
Speaker 1: we are accurate with the placement of the threads, and
Speaker 1: then our next generation device will have maybe even more channels.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so next vice amy four Yeah, three thousand channels,
Speaker 1: So this will just keep getting better and better, really
Speaker 1: moving up, I think, and for his magnitude in factors
Speaker 1: of ten, basically in what kind of ad withth So
Speaker 1: I think it won't be it won't be all that
Speaker 1: long before someone with a neural link device can communicate
Speaker 1: faster than someone who is has a fully functional body.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so I think, you know, faster than the
Speaker 1: fastest speed typist or auctioneer.
Speaker 6: The esports tournaments are going to be like.
Speaker 1: You literally won't be able to speak faster than someone
Speaker 1: can communicate with a neural link to lepathy device.
Speaker 4: It may it may be a very interesting part of this. Basically,
Speaker 4: we currently connect to stand up inputs to the computer
Speaker 4: through hous and keyboards. Very soon as we will have
Speaker 4: a part of bendwith we need to think about new
Speaker 4: ways to actually the interface for the devices.
Speaker 1: Is this something that makes said, yeah, no, that's that's
Speaker 1: a good point because the the current import devices are
Speaker 1: centered around human hands. So it's like we've got these
Speaker 1: you know, little meat sticks that we move and there
Speaker 1: is a certain rate at which you can move your
Speaker 1: little move your fingers and and so we've got like
Speaker 1: the mouse and the keyboard and or the joystick control
Speaker 1: you know, like Xbox control or something like that. But
Speaker 1: you really don't need that. You can actually, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't, you don't need since you're no longer if
Speaker 1: you're if you're not trying to use your hands, you
Speaker 1: don't you actually don't need those conventional uh control mechanisms.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I like, ultimately I think you'll
Speaker 1: be able to do conceptual telepathy, like where you can
Speaker 1: communicate entire concepts uncompressed to someone else within your link
Speaker 1: or to the computer.
Speaker 5: Even today, we have some problems here where like, you know,
Speaker 5: if you don't feel the mouse clicking under your finger,
Speaker 5: how do you know it actually happened, Because you know,
Speaker 5: you're you're seeing it on the screen, but you don't
Speaker 5: actually feel the mouse click. You don't have appropriate sective
Speaker 5: feedback of you know, the keys under your fingertips or
Speaker 5: the track pad on your So there's all sorts of
Speaker 5: interesting UAX challenges. How to actually give the user some
Speaker 5: sense of what their decoder is actually doing, what the
Speaker 5: EARTHNK is actually doing.
Speaker 6: How we're gonna trying to use.
Speaker 1: So wireless.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's bluetooth, just a Bluetooth connection, just like how
Speaker 5: your normal Apple mouse or like Apple Magic keyboard connects
Speaker 5: to your computer, same exact thing in fact, in yeah,
Speaker 5: we can basically have this exposed as an HID interface
Speaker 5: if we want. HID is just the name of the
Speaker 5: protocol for like sending bits from a mouse into a computer. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I can plug into basically anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think we chose that interface because
Speaker 2: it's ubiquitous. Yeah, basically any devices are have Bluetooth capabilities.
Speaker 2: Our long term goal is to actually have our own protocol.
Speaker 2: You know that is safe and secure, but for now,
Speaker 2: you know, chosen it for interoperability.
Speaker 3: So the question is kind of neuralink should prepare the
Speaker 3: paralysis in the long term. You know, we can't do
Speaker 3: that right now. We have done sort of preliminary work
Speaker 3: planting a second neuralink in the spinal cord, and we
Speaker 3: can restore naturalistic looking hand and leg movements in animal models.
Speaker 3: But this isn't something that is you know, don't don't
Speaker 3: hold your breath waiting for it. It's going to be
Speaker 3: a while. We've got a lot of work to do.
Speaker 3: But yes, there's no reason in theory that we can't
Speaker 3: repair paralysis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, essentially to to, I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: no there's no physics barrier to fully solving paralysis. That
Speaker 1: is perhaps a way to say that you've got signals
Speaker 1: coming from your motor cortex. Uh that if they are
Speaker 1: transferred past the point where the nose are damaged. Essentially
Speaker 1: just it's basically a communications bridge to bridge the communications
Speaker 1: from the motor cortex past the point in the necrospine
Speaker 1: where the nose are damaged. And you should like it
Speaker 1: is physics. It is possible from a physics standpoint to
Speaker 1: restore full body functionality. For physics standpoints, it's a very
Speaker 1: hard technical problem, but there is nothing that it prevents
Speaker 1: it happening from a physics standpoint. So in terms of
Speaker 1: next phases roll out, well, we really want to make
Speaker 1: sure that we make as much progress as possible between
Speaker 1: each neuralink patient. So this is we're only just moving
Speaker 1: now to our second neuralink patient, but we hope to
Speaker 1: have you know, if things go well, high single digits
Speaker 1: this year, and I don't know, maybe this is somewhat
Speaker 1: dependent on regulatory approval and how much technical progress we make,
Speaker 1: but within a few years hopefully thousands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think one thing that is important to
Speaker 2: highlight is that you know, it's not that we built
Speaker 2: only one device and one surgery.
Speaker 6: We've built bunderds of surgery.
Speaker 2: We've built thousands and thousands of devices even for just
Speaker 2: the ability to unearth any sort of low frequency failure mode.
Speaker 2: So we have already been investing very heavily in infrastructure
Speaker 2: to be able to scale this thing on the device
Speaker 2: manufacturing side as well as on the surgery side of things.
Speaker 2: We want to be able to help as many people
Speaker 2: as quickly as well. Yeah, we go through obviously the
Speaker 2: appropriate hurdles, right that are regulatory.
Speaker 6: Challenges and proving out the device with one part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the device implantation really needs to become almost entirely,
Speaker 1: if not entirely automatic, in the same way that's a
Speaker 1: laser eye surgery is done. You know, you don't have
Speaker 1: an ophthalmologist with a a cutter by hand, that that
Speaker 1: would be crazy. But the uphomologist oversees the lasic machine
Speaker 1: and make sure that the settings are correct, and then
Speaker 1: the machine does everything and restores your eyesight. It's really
Speaker 1: remarkable how many people have had their eyesight restored with laser.
Speaker 1: And I think there's an one could smile, it's they
Speaker 1: keep making it better. We need to have something similar
Speaker 1: for a neuralink implantation, so that you basically sit down
Speaker 1: and whatever the whatever kind of upgrades or you know,
Speaker 1: brain fixes are needed. That's reviewed by medical expert. Obviously,
Speaker 1: want to make sure that that is reviewed correctly, but
Speaker 1: it really needs to be automatic. So you sit down
Speaker 1: and within ten minutes you have a neuralin device installed,
Speaker 1: very very fast. I mean it's very sort of cyberpunk,
Speaker 1: you know diosex if you played those.
Speaker 4: Games, and we'll annually start to interface with adult devices
Speaker 4: like wheelchair. It's a great question. We're currently focusing on
Speaker 4: john in computers unlock independence in the virtual world. Of course,
Speaker 4: our plan is as you mentioned earlier, body arm and
Speaker 4: a wheelchair to unlock independence in the physical world because,
Speaker 4: of course at the additional risk if you make your computer.
Speaker 4: They shouts to that, but we're welcome with the FDA
Speaker 4: to allow us to quite so, what.
Speaker 7: Seems like if the wheelchair has an app, well, the
Speaker 7: wheelchair just needs to have an airpace, So if the
Speaker 7: wheelchair has a ge tooth interface, you could just go
Speaker 7: tooth interface to the wheelchair and.
Speaker 1: That's probably something we should do. We're working on pretty soon.
Speaker 5: Paperwork it safely you don't drive off.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, well we can limit the speed it
Speaker 1: doesn't go careating often the disaster. But you know, so
Speaker 1: just make it go slowly at first. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: being to sort of it, really, the Nework device just
Speaker 1: should work generally for anything that's got a bluetooth their.
Speaker 2: Face, including potentially an optimism.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you yes, you could communicate with optimists. Uh, yep,
Speaker 1: absolutely optimists. Well we also also be able to talk
Speaker 1: to optimists, but like, but you could just yeah, instead
Speaker 1: of talking, just you could just be in it directly.
Speaker 1: Or if if someone has lost the use of speech,
Speaker 1: then then they can still communicate to an optimist. They
Speaker 1: can humunicate telepathically to optimists or Bluetooth and and and
Speaker 1: so even if someone has completely lost the ability to speak,
Speaker 1: they could still control optimists or their computer or phone.
Speaker 5: We also like, if you have an optimist and you
Speaker 5: have a NERD, you can just directly map the signal
Speaker 5: to control of the physical arm of the robot. And
Speaker 5: that's a very meaningful thing. Like if you're you know,
Speaker 5: folks that have buncod injury, one of the biggest requests
Speaker 5: to be able to scratch yourself. It's something that quite
Speaker 5: annoying actually, And if you have a scratch on your face,
Speaker 5: you can't fall asleep until you scratch it. You know,
Speaker 5: it's very convenient to be able to move something physically
Speaker 5: towards you to scratch. Similar things like eating food. You know,
Speaker 5: if you need somebody to feed, you very hard to
Speaker 5: have dinner with friends in a way that is, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of a normal social experience. And so if you
Speaker 5: can feed yourself, pick up a fork and actually eat
Speaker 5: a piece of chicken on your own, yeah, that's a
Speaker 5: big deal. It prevents and saves a lot of interactions
Speaker 5: with caretakers and other people in your life that you
Speaker 5: rely on to take care of. It really increases you.
Speaker 1: I think an exciting possibility long term also is to
Speaker 1: say if you take parts of the Optimus Optimius humanoid
Speaker 1: robot and you combine that with a neural link. Let's
Speaker 1: say somebody has lost their arms or legs, Well, we
Speaker 1: could actually attach an Optimist arm or Optimist legs and
Speaker 1: do a neural link implant so that the motor commands
Speaker 1: from your brain that goat would goat to your biological arms,
Speaker 1: now go to your robot arms or robot legs, and
Speaker 1: again you'd have basically cybernetic superpowers.
Speaker 5: Actually, so the lenksy from the neuralink to your hand
Speaker 5: would probably be something faster than it is just to
Speaker 5: go to.
Speaker 6: Your physical hand.
Speaker 5: So you can imagine, like if you're a piano player
Speaker 5: or I don't know, anything that requires extremely fast hand movements,
Speaker 5: that you could actually have a pretty imbalanced right hand
Speaker 5: robotic arm control versus left hand physical hand control.
Speaker 1: That's one of them. Yeah, Like I said, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of a cyberpunk dio sex in the future where
Speaker 1: you have cybernetic upgrades that are actually better than your
Speaker 1: biological limbs. And it's certainly that we'll have a much
Speaker 1: you know as particularly as we span to a large
Speaker 1: number of of of customers or patients for neuralink, the
Speaker 1: understanding of the brain will improve dramatically because really there
Speaker 1: isn't a fine, very fine grained understanding of the brain
Speaker 1: today because it's just the sensors are not good enough.
Speaker 1: You've got fMRI, which is pretty good, but it's still
Speaker 1: not as good as actually having I bound with electroids
Speaker 1: in the brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is underappreciated as a research tool
Speaker 3: to move that whole effort forward of really knowing, you know,
Speaker 3: what the physical substance of human thought is. We don't
Speaker 3: know to the to the degree that we need to.
Speaker 3: So neuralink is actually a very powerful research tool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we I think we can ultimately understand
Speaker 1: and and fix it quite severe psychosis or like if
Speaker 1: if somebody's got like the if somebody's got like a.
Speaker 3: Like a delusion that they have a chip in their brain.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you're gonna mention that one. We
Speaker 1: just want to be clear if there's only one person
Speaker 1: with a neural link chip in their brain. So for
Speaker 1: people out there who think we've put a chip on
Speaker 1: their brain, would like to assure you or what it's worth,
Speaker 1: you probably won't believe us, but we did not put
Speaker 1: each ep in your brain. Okay, So there's actually a
Speaker 1: remarkable number of people who think we have put a
Speaker 1: trip in their brain, but we have not. But in
Speaker 1: the future, if you would like us to put a
Speaker 1: trip in your brain, which will perhaps help with the
Speaker 1: issue of thinking that you have a chip in your brain,
Speaker 1: then we will be able to do so. So there
Speaker 1: are people that have severeria, schizophrenia, They've got basically things
Speaker 1: that their brain is malfunctioning in some way, and this
Speaker 1: is actually due to really like physical circuitry issues. You
Speaker 1: can think of the brain as like, really it's a
Speaker 1: biological computer and if if some of the circuits are crusted,
Speaker 1: it's gonna you know, it's going to crash. It's or
Speaker 1: it's gonna have issues that it's not work. But with
Speaker 1: a neuralin device, we can fix those issues. And you know,
Speaker 1: give someone who I think has to say serbisica, spraying
Speaker 1: or psychosis of some kind, allow them to live a
Speaker 1: normal life. I think that is one of the likely
Speaker 1: things in the future. So yeah, I mean, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can certainly imagine, like I'm sure people have like parents,
Speaker 1: grandparents who you know, have memory that's not working as
Speaker 1: well as it used to be. Sometimes they forget who
Speaker 1: who their grandchildren are or what day it is, and
Speaker 1: this is something that in your O like device could
Speaker 1: help fix.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's actually one of the personal reasons.
Speaker 6: In many way like forms of you're literally losing and
Speaker 6: then part of your right then.
Speaker 1: Which is just a very very.
Speaker 5: Go through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really just it's a glitch in the biological
Speaker 1: computer that is a fixable glitch. Like it's a short circuit.
Speaker 5: Essentially, how does the device charge and how long does
Speaker 5: the charge last. Yeah, So the current version that Nolan
Speaker 5: has lasts but four to five hours on a charge,
Speaker 5: and it takes about forty five minutes to charge. The
Speaker 5: thing we've learned from Nolan is that that's actually one
Speaker 5: of the main limitters for him using it more. It's
Speaker 5: actually pretty hard to use a product more than like
Speaker 5: seventy hours a week.
Speaker 1: But that's about what he has used it for in
Speaker 1: some weeks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, seventy hours a week.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean just for contexts, like you sleep roughly
Speaker 5: eight hours a night, so that's you know, we're doing
Speaker 5: better than the bed. Like the bed is fifty six
Speaker 5: hours a week if you used roughly, and so seventy
Speaker 5: hours a week uses I challenge you to think about
Speaker 5: products that you've actually used for that duration.
Speaker 1: But that's again some of these points are worth like
Speaker 1: emphasizing again, like the that Nolan, our first a Neuralink recipient,
Speaker 1: has used the neuralink device for seventy hours in a week,
Speaker 1: which is incredible.
Speaker 5: You probably won't enjoy that I'm sharing his computer use publicly,
Speaker 5: but I assure you for productive things only. But actually,
Speaker 5: so one of the things we've learned is that in
Speaker 5: the next version of advice, we really need to like
Speaker 5: double or increase that battery life, and so I think
Speaker 5: the next version is going to be.
Speaker 2: Double actually actually double without without increasing the charge.
Speaker 5: Correct in charging time, to double the battery of life,
Speaker 5: meaning you should get roughly eight hours of use, and.
Speaker 2: The goal is to actually get to all they use.
Speaker 2: So you can just charge, you know, maybe in your.
Speaker 1: Sleep, right, sleep and pillow exactly as soon as you've
Speaker 1: got like sixteen hours of usage, then you basically have
Speaker 1: twenty four hours of usage because you can charge while
Speaker 1: you're sleeping.
Speaker 5: One other thing that's important I think to call out
Speaker 5: your is if you're paralyzed, you can't you put the
Speaker 5: charger over your head yourself, And so it's important to
Speaker 5: think about like it's not just a duration of better use,
Speaker 5: but also can you recharge it yourself and dependently, So
Speaker 5: we spend a lot of time thinking about how to
Speaker 5: make that peaceable because then that means that you can
Speaker 5: this is what no one does. You can use the device,
Speaker 5: charge it, use the device, charge it, use the device
Speaker 5: with out needing anybody to come in and sort of
Speaker 5: help you with that, which is a big deal if
Speaker 5: you're trying to play set up until five am at
Speaker 5: night when your family.
Speaker 6: In the way in which he does that is that
Speaker 6: there is a charge of coil.
Speaker 2: That's a bigger you know about this big and we
Speaker 2: actually put it in the sleeve of a beanie or
Speaker 2: a beanie and then he wears it and then says
Speaker 2: with the voice command and.
Speaker 6: Charge charge your energize. That's the one you like.
Speaker 1: Howard writing work. So so uh yeah, the current device
Speaker 1: that Nolan has is reading, so it's trying to read
Speaker 1: his essentially like worst movement from from one one hand.
Speaker 1: That's also you know, worth pointing out like in the future,
Speaker 1: like and we're pretty cool to give Nolan the second
Speaker 1: implant that would allow the other hand to be used
Speaker 1: and also have higher uh obviously higher to ELECTORID accounts,
Speaker 1: so then you could play too, essentially play games two
Speaker 1: had it, because that's not only how you play games.
Speaker 1: And but then with with writing, it's really just it's
Speaker 1: an electrical impulse. Instead of like reading electrical impulses from
Speaker 1: the neuron to you issue an electrical impulse, which is
Speaker 1: obviously critical for visions. So vision is writing, which is
Speaker 1: just traggering electrical impulse in the vision part of the brain.
Speaker 1: And that like activates a pixel. So we actually do
Speaker 1: have this working in monkeys, and we had we've had
Speaker 1: it working with monkeys for a while now where you
Speaker 1: can sort of flash a pixel and then you watch
Speaker 1: where the monkey. Obviously the monkey is like whatever, monkey's
Speaker 1: a little surprised to see, like, hey, there's a flash
Speaker 1: here and a flash here, but it's it gets used
Speaker 1: to it after a while. But it just you can
Speaker 1: see that that the pixel is in the right location
Speaker 1: because the monkey's eyes will dark to that location.
Speaker 5: It's not on on the screen, like there's no pixel
Speaker 5: on the.
Speaker 1: Screen, there's no picks on the screen. On the brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just verify that that the that are triggering pixel in
Speaker 1: the right part of the brain. So you know, the
Speaker 1: initial resolution for vision will be relatively low, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of Atario graphics type of thing, but over time
Speaker 1: it could potentially be better than normal vision.
Speaker 2: And then I guess in terms of some additional applications
Speaker 2: for where writing to the brain can be useful, what
Speaker 2: are applications. As Bliss mentioned, there is feedback, there's appropriate
Speaker 2: sceptive feedback, there's a actile feedback.
Speaker 5: Especially robot arm if you're trying to grasp a cop right,
Speaker 5: you need to know about it.
Speaker 4: You want to an egg.
Speaker 2: It's very much a delicate balance of not just initiating
Speaker 2: the movement but getting the feedback and controlling it accordingly.
Speaker 2: So there is some metasensory cord text that's right adjacent
Speaker 2: to motor cortex that it could be better motor movements.
Speaker 1: So any changes in neural growth the devices and so
Speaker 1: did were don't see any any signs of neural damage,
Speaker 1: but I and I guess we we have seen some
Speaker 1: rebound on some of the electrodes, right.
Speaker 2: Correct, And then also I mean, I guess, I guess
Speaker 2: you know. Brain is very plastic, so it's not that plastic. Well,
Speaker 2: it does diminish quite a bit after each and why.
Speaker 3: Throughout throughout childhood, especially when you get to about twenty five,
Speaker 3: brain really done cooking. Yeah, but there are there is
Speaker 3: a little bit of damage done with each insertion, but
Speaker 3: it's a minuscule amount compared to anything else out there,
Speaker 3: and so it's an easy amount of damage recover from.
Speaker 3: And it's really only detectable on cutting pieces of the
Speaker 3: brain after after the animal is no longer alive, and
Speaker 3: looking at them under a microscope. You can't really tell
Speaker 3: during life that there's been any.
Speaker 5: Brain Another way to interpret this question, have the funded
Speaker 5: changes in neural growth after the device is inserted. One
Speaker 5: way to interpret that is like the user learning how
Speaker 5: to use the device, And I think on that side
Speaker 5: of things, there's been tremendous progress, and he's put in
Speaker 5: hundreds of hours trying to figure out the best way
Speaker 5: to use this device because he really thinks that you know,
Speaker 5: if you can figure this out and you can help
Speaker 5: share this knowledge. I mean, he's like on Friday night
Speaker 5: at eight pm, you know, he's starting a session of like,
Speaker 5: you know, figuring out himself how to how to push
Speaker 5: his own performance to the next level. And that's really
Speaker 5: a unique learning process because there's not many people in
Speaker 5: the world that had the experience of moving something with
Speaker 5: the brain, and so there's a lot of nuance to like, Okay,
Speaker 5: how exactly should I imagine or attempt to move my
Speaker 5: risk to get the thing to me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's really dialed that into it.
Speaker 2: Also, just a sheer number of hours that he us
Speaker 2: He's saying even in the past six months, right, Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, he's using it in his travel, in
Speaker 2: his plain ride effectively PCI has left the lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean one of the questions is
Speaker 1: how close we can voting thoughts into text. I mean, right,
Speaker 1: right now, ask more about moving curse from the screen
Speaker 1: on a virtual keyboard. But long term, you should be
Speaker 1: able to really ask my entire words faster than anyone
Speaker 1: could possibly time.
Speaker 5: I'm able to type a little world today correctly, but
Speaker 5: we're still in the early days.
Speaker 2: Making that a pause experience it. I mean, the other
Speaker 2: things that we're looking at is sign language. Right at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, it is a movement of
Speaker 2: and into rights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: Was the brain trying to naturally push the threads out?
Speaker 3: I mean this is sort of a universal feature of
Speaker 3: any implant in the body. The body tries to reject it,
Speaker 3: and the goal of the surgeons and the technology team
Speaker 3: is to fight that. And so with artificial hips and
Speaker 3: with screws and the spine, we've done a really good
Speaker 3: job of finding biocompacts of AWL materials and techniques to
Speaker 3: fix those implants in the body. I mean, past a
Speaker 3: certain age, it's getting hard to find someone without some
Speaker 3: kind of implant, you know, knee, some kind of screws
Speaker 3: in their spine and so we've got this problem pretty
Speaker 3: well solved. So to answer your question, yes, the body
Speaker 3: is trying to get rid of any implant, but we
Speaker 3: can ensure that basically canned.
Speaker 2: It's also worth highlighting that the threads have not actually
Speaker 2: moved in the past five months. There's there's some still
Speaker 2: minor movements in terms of like some maybe maybe getting
Speaker 2: pushed in a little bit, pushed out a little bit,
Speaker 2: but it's it's more or less very stable and been
Speaker 2: stable for more And the reason for that is, you know,
Speaker 2: once you once you do a brain surgery, it takes
Speaker 2: some time for the tissues to come in and then
Speaker 2: and then you know, our tissue or the neo membrane
Speaker 2: to actually come in and then anchor the threads in place.
Speaker 2: And once that happens, it has been stable and seen
Speaker 2: much movement.
Speaker 3: That's where the world record performance starts to come in.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the threads, like it is important that the threads
Speaker 1: be extremely tiny. If they're extremely tiny, then the brain
Speaker 1: does not The smaller they are, the less like the
Speaker 1: brain is to react to them. So that's why you
Speaker 1: want the thread to be extremely tiny and also to
Speaker 1: minimize any damage to your aunts.
Speaker 2: So on that note, we do plan to actually share
Speaker 2: some of the you know, the tissue response in detail
Speaker 2: and some of the later upcoming updates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is quite a challenging. It's challenging on many
Speaker 1: fronts to do something like this because you're trying to
Speaker 1: read and read and write electrical signals, but you need
Speaker 1: to have the threads themselves need to be electrically isolated
Speaker 1: and not subject to corrosion in the body. So like
Speaker 1: the you know, just middle by itself, it's so much
Speaker 1: sub subject to corrosion or being attacked. So it's it's
Speaker 1: it's good like in terms of the various coatings and things.
Speaker 1: To actually make this electrode work while not actually eroding
Speaker 1: its performance over time is very difficult. Human body is
Speaker 1: a very very harsh environment, very harsh envirotment.
Speaker 2: It's a bag of salt water with bad sensors, that's
Speaker 2: elevated temperature that is well regulated. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 2: people have experienced dropping their electronic devices in a seawater
Speaker 2: and in an instant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so we'll we're better sort of wrap this
Speaker 1: up soon and if there's like a few few questions.
Speaker 1: I guess, so a good question. So what about upgrades?
Speaker 1: So yeah, we we do think it's going to be
Speaker 1: important to be able to upgrade the device over time.
Speaker 1: Just like you wouldn't want like an iPhone one stuck
Speaker 1: in your brain forever. You know, if you've got an
Speaker 1: iPhone fifteen, you probably want the iPhone fifteen, not iPhone one.
Speaker 1: So I think people over time will be able to
Speaker 1: upgrade their their new links. We will take the neural
Speaker 1: link device out and put a new one in. And
Speaker 1: we we have done this with some of our animals
Speaker 1: and they're actually in one case we did it with
Speaker 1: we upgrade our device three times and and uh with
Speaker 1: a pig.
Speaker 6: We did with a monkey as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he's he's doing finely.
Speaker 6: Hit his I think his record the last.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the with an upgrade, still beat him though.
Speaker 6: Still beat him.
Speaker 5: Yes, this is true. Humans are top of.
Speaker 1: The species board right now, pages like eight or.
Speaker 5: Something like eight point five bps. Okay, well that's a
Speaker 5: very high score. I'm not trying to put Patriot down.
Speaker 5: And also to train a monkey to do that, it's
Speaker 5: like a whole challenge on it. Something we have like
Speaker 5: the best animal care team world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just do want to have size. We we
Speaker 1: we we do our absolute best to take care of
Speaker 1: the animals and h when we had like a USDA
Speaker 1: inspector come through, she said that this was the nicest
Speaker 1: animal facility she has ever seen in her entire life.
Speaker 6: So breakfast.
Speaker 1: The monkey orders room service, Yes, yeah, we have monkey
Speaker 1: room service, which is rare. We're the only ones who
Speaker 1: offer monkey room service. So we really do everything we
Speaker 1: can to maximize well for the animals. So all right
Speaker 1: with that, thank you everyone for tuning in. I hope
Speaker 1: you found this interesting.