Elon really needed a win this week after the Ron DeSantis Twitter Spaces debacle,
he just needed something to end this week on, and
he finally got it because the US Food and Drug Administration,
the FDA, approved the Neuralink for human clinical trials.
That is his company.
And here they are tweeting their successful approval.
We're excited to share we've received the FDA's approval to launch our first inhuman
clinical study.
This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close
collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step
that will one day allow our technology to help many people.
Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial, but
we'll announce more information on this soon, that's right.
All you Elon reply guys, you can volunteer to have a chip implanted in
the back of your brain and then go slowly mad, although you already are.
So, hey, maybe it'll be improvement.
But it's important to know the FDA has a statement because he kind of jumped
the gun on this.
Neuralink tweeted this out, the FDA wasn't enthusiastic about that announcement, so
they had a statement.
The FDA is according to the Washington Post, they reported this,
doesn't usually confirm approvals for human clinical trials, but
they offered their statement, which says, quote, the FDA acknowledges and
understands that Neuralink has announced that its investigational device
exemption for its implant r one robot was approved by the FDA.
In other words, we understand you put us on blast and
that it may now begin conducting human clinical trials for its device.
That is, according to an agency spokesperson.
So, effectively, yeah, we sort of approved this.
And you got to wonder why.
My god, why?
Again, the reason that Musk says this is necessary or that Neuralink this could be
incredible and a breakthrough is that it could treat severe neurological diseases
like Parkinson's and epilepsy as well as degenerative diseases like ALS.
It could be pretty cool.
And yes, a little bit more on the technology.
Let's go back.
Musk-owned brain computer interface is one of many startups racing to connect human
brains with computers via implantable brain chips.
Neuralink's small circular implant called Link requires patients to undergo invasive
surgery to attach the device directly to the brain,
where it then reads neural signals.
A bed of tiny wires stemming from the device hovers over the patient's brain to
monitor activity and uses electricity to stimulate certain areas.
Pretty cool, but also pretty untested.
Here is who has been tested upon up until this point.
Take a look.
>> Telepathic typing.
So, to be clear, he is not actually using a keyboard,
he's moving the cursor with his mind to the highlighted key.
Now, technically, we can't actually spell.
And so I don't want to oversell this thing.
>> [APPLAUSE].
>> He can't actually doesn't know what is,
we're just hurting this monkey even though he can't spell.
Idiot.
In fact, a lot of the controversy around Neuralink has to do
with its treatment of its chimpanzee and monkey test subjects.
Last year, an animal rights group, Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine, publicized a complaint filed with the USDA accusing
the company of torturing its monkey test subjects during trials.
Some of the monkeys equipped with a device, according to the rights group,
allegedly experienced extreme vomiting and exhaustion,
while others, overcome by stress, allegedly mutilated themselves.
Neuralink has previously denied mistreating its test animals,
but there is actually staffers who've said, yeah, that's what's happening.
This entire thing has been rushed, and we have done,
and this is in their words, hack jobs on these monkeys.
Guys, why is the FDA approving this?
Who is in the FDA?
Who is linked up with Elon?
And what the hell?
>> Yeah.
>> The FDA's tweet was kinda like, listen, dude,
we said we're just gonna see each other privately.
You wouldn't have to put it on blast.
And then they're like, all right, fine, we're seeing each other.
And the other thing is, I mean,
they should take people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert and
some of those people run experiments, see if we can actually improve
them to make them actual good human beings with good thoughts.
I'm sure at thanksgiving, that's where you can recruit people.
You have that relative who shows up at thanksgiving that used to be sane, but
now has gone down the rabbit hole and just starts spewing stuff.
There should be a number you could call the Neuralink and be like,
I got a test subject for you, and they could try connecting into their brain and
see if they can improve those people, because there's a lot of craziness going
on these days because of all the right wing hullabaloo.
>> Well, to that point, guys, I'm old enough to remember a couple of years
ago during COVID when they were like, I'm not taking the vaccine
because of the five K to Fauci and the Tom Hanks business,
they're gonna put the micro microchip into the vaccine and follow me around.
>> Yeap.
>> So instead, I'm going to let Elon Musk attach wires to my brain,
and he could do anything he wants with my brain.
I got this figured out.
Do you?
So now they're giant Elon Musk fans because this is not invasive.
And look, guys, damn it, Jim, I'm not a scientist, I'm a talk show host.
So I didn't study all the data here to see if Neuralink and
the other companies involved have got it exactly right.
I am a little concerned about the mutilated monkeys.
And remember, they're not just mutilating the monkeys for
the test, after they put the Neurallink, the monkeys are mutilating themselves.
But I know you're really worried about the vaccine, okay?
But at the same time, I get it.
Parkinson's, ALS, there's many other uses for this that can be super helpful.
So I'm pro science, and I want us to keep testing it,
I want it to be super safe before we go to humans.
But I got to be honest at this point, I trust any company that isn't Elon Musk
more than I would trust an Elon Musk company.
Why?
Did you guys see the Twitter Spaces the other day with Ron DeSantis's
announcement?
I mean, he's turned Twitter into a total joke.
He can't get anything to work, right?
There's glitch after glitch after glitch,
but this one's only attaching wires to your brain, so good luck with that.
If you still trust Elon Musk to rewire your brain,
there's nothing I could do to help you.
>> Yeah, and
whistleblowers inside of the company have testified to the exact same thing.
Basically, it's a complete rush job.
Let's go to graphic ten.
The rush schedule the employee wrote resulted in under-prepared over-stressed
staffers scrambling to meet deadlines,
making last minute changes before surgeries, raising risks to animals.
Musk has pushed hard to accelerate Neuralink's progress,
which depends heavily on animal testing, current and former employees said okay.
Okay, the US Department of Agriculture is investigating them for
animal welfare violations.
And Department of Transportation, get this,
speaking of the COVID hypocrisy is investigating Neuralink currently,
because apparently they've been transporting and throwing away the little
sort of monkey brain chips with little pieces of monkey brain on it.
They've just been, like, willy nilly throwing it away.
Just like, not properly disposing of hazardous,
potentially, materials with pathogens on it.
Just throwing that away.
So I don't know what's going on, but it might be, look,
they applied for FDA approval last year and were rejected.
Seems like they weren't rejected now, but we shall see.
And again, I think Maz is right.
I think not only Lauren Boebert and not only Marjorie Green, but look, any of
the Elon stands who still believe in this dude, yeah, maybe it'll make it better.
At least, and this is my feeling on animal testing,
especially monkeys, at least the humans will have consented.
>> Yeah, and Cenk, I agree with you in that who knows long term,
this could be a good thing and help solve a lot of things.
But at the same time as Francesca, you're saying, this guy's rushing this in.
It feels like to get it going, it feels like he needs an intervention.
Elon Musk is a smart person, intelligence wise, but he's way I mean, listen,
he's in many ways, you gotta give him credit for being a smart person in certain
things, but as we've seen now with the failures of all the other things he's
got his hands in, he's got all these kids, he needs an intervention.
For someone to be like dude, spend time with your family,
just you've got these you're worth billions of dollars.
And then if you really want to invest in this other company, let's do it in
a timely and in a fashion that's not gonna have you launching spaceships and
having them explode and then trying to launch a presidential campaign,
having that explode, and then having monkeys self mutilate themselves.
These are not good things that are happening.
And I know that it takes failures to get to success, but
the dude is just spread way too thin.
And I think somebody needs to have an intervention with him and
find out what are you running from, dude?
>> So my last thoughts on this are, you could be smart in some ways and
really dumb in other ways.
So John von Neumann was in, brilliant mathematicians.
Some think that he was the smartest person to ever live.
He thought we should nuke the Soviet Union before they nuked us.
He would have gotten everyone on the planet killed.
So even if Elon Musk is smart in some ways,
it doesn't mean it translates to politics or to other things.
And look, in the case of the Neuralink and for any other company that's doing this
too, okay, it makes sense to take the electric pulses and then, hey,
that electric pulse normally gets sent to these nerves, etc,
I'm butchering how the correct scientific explanation.
But this is all roughly, right?
And then you move your arm because that's that electric pulse would have moved your
arm, right?
I get that part.
And that seems like that's possible and
that's why they're going in this direction, and that's good.
But then Elon adds, totally unnecessarily, we need to improve the human brain.
So we're gonna redo the brain so that we can compete with artificial
intelligence that's gonna come later and destroy us all.
No, no.
So, look, that is at best, wildly, preposterously, speculative.
No, this guy is totally off his right.
Remember when he said,
I'm doing SpaceX because we got to get to Mars because of climate change.
But wait a minute.
In the worst case scenario for climate change, and
I'm worried about it, is that we turn into Mars.
Some of the things he says makes no sense at all.
And remember, he's not the engineer that built Tesla.
He just bought the company.
He hasn't built these things, he just bought things.
>> Yeah, I mean, look at the hyperloop, Cenk, we're talking about a tunnel.
Even the tunnel didn't work.
You reinvented a tunnel and it didn't work.
Maybe slow the roll.
Focus on tunnel first, then get to Mars, then solve ALS, right?
Then do the chip implanting in your brain, which, by the way,
Cenk, the point about the right not being freaked out about this is,
I think I'm willing to call it, it's May.
That's the point of the year.
That's it.
That's it, it's done.
It's done.
Elon Musk is trying to implant humans with an actual microchip, and
no one on the right is saying anything because they love Elon Musk.
Okay, perfect.
That is perfect.
You don't care about Bill Gates.
Bill Gates hasn't done this.
You don't care about 5G, Elon Musk, and you're gonna be like, me.
They're gonna be fighting over themselves to see who can be the scared,
self harming monkey first.
It's absolutely insane, and you're totally right, lastly,
that this is not about actually solving these Parkinson's and other degenerative
diseases of the brain or solving paralysis, it is a vanity project.
[INAUDIBLE] I'm gonna defeat the AI robot.
No, no, it's just you in your little weird blanket fort.
>> [LAUGH]. >> Yeah,
he needs to spend more time with his family.
He needs to stop coming up with these.
They're great scientific ideas and I don't know who's coming up with them, but
he needs to, like you said, focus.
I just bought a Tesla and a lot of people go, what?
You supported this Nazi?
And I go, well, the prices went down, so the prices are so good even as Nazism.
Does this stop me from buying it.
But that said, yeah,
there's definitely glitches with this car that's been around for a while.
And I think I would much rather, and I'm sure the shareholders of Tesla would
much rather have him put his intention towards Tesla and maybe SpaceX and
just move on, but the guy can't, and now he's trying this thing.
And by the way, Francesca, once the people on the right find out that the FDA has
approved it, then they will say, it's a deep state.
The conspiracy is gonna come back in.
It all cancels each other out.
>> You don't know.
>> To both of your points, I wish the deep state would have helped him build a deep
hyperloop instead of that stupid tunnel that he built.
If you don't know that story, he's like, it's going to go hyperloop.
It's going to go, like, so fast, man.
And then he turned it around and built a tunnel in Vegas where the cars
are all trapped and it's like a death trap if you're in there, and
it's incredibly slow, like, okay, you built a tunnel, fine, but
why did you hype it ahead of time with, like, hyperloop?
I have to confess, back then, I didn't know Elon Musk was an idiot.
So the hyperloop sounds super interesting.
Maybe that's a technology that could work, but
somebody else has to do it because Elon clearly cannot do it.
And I'll give the final credit to Ben Mankowitz,
my original co-host here and my co host on old school, of our shows that you could
also get through membership, he was on Elon Musk before anyone else.
I don't remember how many years ago now on old school.
He had us do a poll.
Elon Musk, yes or no?
And he was insistent that it was no, and he was correct.
>> Yeah.
>> Hyper oops.
>> [LAUGH].
The hyperloop, I love it.