(typing sounds)
- [Cory] So maybe you saw this last month.
Elon Musk gave a presentation
for his brain interfacing company Neuralink.
- I think it's gonna blow your mind.
- It was one of the weirder tech demos in recent memory.
- [Elon] I've been trying to get Gertrude out
This is how you know it's a live demo.
- Musk was showing off progress on a device
that listens in on electrical signals from the brain
and could use those signals to control computers or robots.
The tech itself isn't new,
but Neuralink wants to make the system smaller,
safer, and easier to insert.
And if that goes well,
the company has a host of bigger goals.
- [Elon] depression, addiction, strokes, brain damage.
These can all be solved with an implantable neural link.
- Okay, so this all sounds great,
but is this actually possible?
Smaller and more streamlined devices are one thing.
That's a technology problem,
and they're making headway with it,
but to pull off the big sci-fi stuff,
the technology has to connect with, arguably,
the most mysterious thing in the universe, the human brain.
(gentle techno music)
- Musk's first Neuralink demo came in July of last year.
At that presentation, he unveiled a system
of tiny, flexible threads that would sneak
into a patient's brain and monitor individual neurons.
He also showed off the robot surgeon
that would actually implant them.
Last month, we got a glimpse of an updated device.
The threads now emanate from a small coin
embedded directly into the skull.
We also met Gertrude the pig,
who was implanted with the machinery.
- [Elon] The beats you're hearing are real time signals
from the neural link in Gertrude's head.
So whenever she shuffles around
and touches something with her snout,
that sends out neural spikes, which are detected.
- But hold on a second.
If we wanna know how big a deal Gertrude actually is,
we have to talk about how neuroscience got to this point.
We've known for over a century that our thoughts
and moods and actions are mediated by neurons,
which operate via little pulses of electrical activity.
And we have the brain mapped reasonably well,
so we can pin lots of movements or actions
to particular areas.
That's what Musk was showing off with Gertrude.
- She's had the implant for two months,
so this is a healthy and happy pig
with an implant that is two months old and working well.
- [Nicole] The Neuralink device was in the pig's cortex,
the outer layer of the brain that includes areas
controlling motor function and senses.
They even ran her on a treadmill to show how closely
her monitored neuron activity
predicted her real-world actions.
- [Elon] You can see that they're almost exactly aligned.
- Neuroscientists have been recording signals
from animal brains since the 1950s.
They can listen to what's happening
in the parts of mouse brains that remember locations,
and they've tracked which neurons in the fish brain go off
when they're navigating.
It's pretty standard.
Other researchers have gone further
by actually driving machinery
with intercepted brain signals.
A study in 2000 taught monkeys to control a robot
using a device implanted in their brains.
And in 2006, a team used machine brain interfaces
to let people who are paralyzed control computer cursors
with their minds.
There's been a ton of innovations since then,
and a lot of very real potential
for people with disabilities.
So Gertrude made for a good press event,
but didn't actually reflect a lot of new brain science.
- [Elon] It's that little device.
- So far, what Neuralink is bringing to the table
is a little more nitty-gritty.
The threads they're using to connect to the brain
are an improvement over the rigid spikes
used in other systems.
These are tiny and flexible,
so they're less likely to damage the brain.
and they have more electrodes than other interfaces;
that means more information being pulled out of the brain.
A device that transmits wirelessly and isn't clunky
will make a big difference when people
actually start using it too.
Musk says the first human trials
will be in patients with spinal cord injuries.
And it's not hard to envision Neuralink
pulling off the same kind of computer control
that other research has achieved.
But remember, Musk's ambitions go far past that.
He argues that Neuralink will eventually be able
to treat paralysis, memory loss, anxiety,
addiction, insomnia, and he speculated
that it could enable things like telepathy
or merge the human brain with artificial intelligence.
- It's gonna be important,
from an existential threat standpoint,
to achieve a good AI symbiosis.
- [Cory] All with that one little coin
and a procedure he likened to LASIK eye surgery.
- I mean, this is obviously sounding
increasingly like a "Black Mirror" episode.
- And here's where we really have to pump the brakes.
The problem with these ideas is they can't be achieved
by just more electrodes or fancier interfaces alone.
They're not just tech problems.
Musk wants to read the brain's activity,
like he demonstrated with Gertrude,
but he also wants to write to it,
meaning the device will actively stimulate
certain areas with electrical pulses
to make you feel or behave in a certain way.
That'd probably be the idea
behind treating conditions like anxiety.
He was a bit short on how he's going to do that, though,
which isn't that surprising
because no one really knows.
The neurological basis for a lot of these conditions
is still hugely mysterious.
Anxiety isn't as simple as the sensation
you have in your hands.
That, we can trace all the way back
to very specific clusters of neurons in the brain.
Instead, anxiety is the product of tons
of different brain regions working
in a very specific pattern and combination.
Researchers are far from even codifying that,
let alone manipulating it with any level of precision.
And even reading the brain gets fiendishly tricky.
It took a lot of machine learning to interpret the signals
necessary to move a computer cursor,
and the participants' brains needed a lot of training too.
Measuring complex abstract thoughts
and even merging them with AI?
That, again, is little more than speculation.
So Musk and Neuralink can't just
engineer their way to success.
They also have to contend with the very
deliberate pace of science,
which may not be going so well.
"Stat News" recently reported that neuroscientists
at the company are often pitted
against the engineers and given weeks to solve problems
that should take months,
which is a pretty good metaphor
for the challenges of merging computers with biology.
If Neuralink just wanted to focus on better tech systems
for machine brain interfaces, that alone would be great,
but they're trying to do it all,
which might lead to a rude awakening for Musk.
The brain is not a car, and it's not a rocket.
Figuring it out is going to take time.
(silence)
- So knowing all that, how should we feel about Elon Musk
and his band of bionic pigs?
One detail to keep in mind is that the presentation
was essentially a recruiting event,
just like the last one was.
- We need software engineering,
we need mechanical engineering, electrical engineering,
and all the things that a company needs.
- Musk knows he doesn't have a viable product yet.
What he's got so far is about a hundred employees,
an impressive gadget, and a flair for theatrics.
What he actually does with those ingredients
remains to be seen.
(silence)
- Hey. - Hey.
- What's up?
(both exhaling)
So what are your thoughts?
Would you do it?
- You know, I think there's a...
I'd have a lot of questions
before I let Elon Musk put a computer in my brain.
Having brain surgery without a medical condition,
which is sort of what he says he wants to do,
I don't know; it seems like a pretty high bar to clear.
Doctors already have enough trouble
convincing people with, you know,
things like epilepsy to get brain surgery,
and there's really good reasons for that.
So I have a lot I'd wanna see done before we get there.
What about you?
- It seems...
For me, I was thinking about this.
It feels kind of like a novelty, like VR.
Like, I think there will be applications for it,
like controlling video games with your mind,
but that's more of like, just reading...
It goes along the lines of, like,
reading what your brain is doing
as opposed to actually sending signals to it
to make it do something.
I think writing to it just sounds way too farfetched.
- Yeah, and I think that some neuroscientists
are excited about, you know, the hype.
Hype is bad in a lot of ways, but also drives attention.
- And funding. - And funding, yeah.
So that could be, you know, the benefit of having a player
like Elon Musk enter this space.