Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #438

Nolan Arbaugh, the first human to receive a Neuralink implant, shares his journey from a paralyzing diving accident to becoming a pioneer in brain-computer interface technology. Overcoming initial challenges and setbacks, Nolan collaborates with the Neuralink team to refine the device, achieving groundbreaking control of a mouse cursor through both attempted and imagined movements. His story highlights the profound impact of the technology on his independence and quality of life, offering hope for future advancements that could benefit many others with similar conditions. Despite the hardships, Nolan's unwavering positivity and determination shine through, driven by his faith and the support of his family and friends.

• Conversation with Elon Musk, DJ Saw, Matthew McDougall, Bliss Chapman, and Nolan Arbaugh about Neuralink and its implications for humanity.
• The podcast is noted for its length and technical depth.
• Elon Musk's fifth appearance on Lex Fridman's podcast.

"The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, DJ Saw, Matthew McDougall, Bliss Chapman, and Nolan Arbaugh about Neuralink and the future of humanity."

• The conversation covers the historic step of Neuralink's first human implant.

"Big congrats on getting your link implanted into a human. That's a historic step for Neuralink."

• Discussion on the scaling of human participants and regulatory approvals.

"We're hoping to do 10 by the end of this year, a total of 10, so eight more."

• Plans to increase the number of electrodes and improve signal processing.
• Achievements in bits per second (BPS) and goals to exceed current world records.

"We were able to achieve 2 bits per second, which is twice the world record."

• Potential for entirely new ways of interacting with computers and humans.

"Maybe five years from now, we might be at a megabit, faster than any human could possibly communicate by typing or speaking."

• Discussion on the potential improvement in the quality of intellectual discourse through faster communication.

"Imagine you could speak at 10 or 100 or a thousand times faster than normal."

• The concept of "effective bit rate" in communication and the role of vocabulary.

"If your vocabulary is larger, your effective bit rate is higher."

• Memes as a form of data compression, conveying complex ideas quickly.

"Memes are like data compression; they simultaneously hit you with a wide range of symbols that you can interpret faster than words."

• Speculation on the number of electrodes needed to alter the human experience significantly.

"Certainly, if you're anywhere at 10,000 bits per second, that's vastly faster than any human communicates right now."

• The process of communication involving compression and decompression of concepts.

"You have to model the mind state of the person to whom you're speaking, then compress that into a small number of syllables."

• Long-term aspiration of Neuralink to improve AI-human symbiosis by increasing communication bandwidth.

"The long-term aspiration of Neuralink is to improve the AI-human symbiosis by increasing the bandwidth of communication."

• Concerns about AI getting bored due to slow human communication rates.

"If the AI can communicate at terabits per second, and you're communicating at bits per second, it's like talking to a tree."

• Discussion on the human mind's limbic and cortical systems and their roles.

"The cortex is much smarter than the limbic system and yet is largely in service to the limbic system."

• The role of the limbic system in driving human actions and its implications for AI.

"Your cortex is putting a massive amount of compute into trying to figure out how to do that."

• Humans already being cyborgs with tertiary compute layers like phones and laptops.

"You're actually already a cyborg; you have this tertiary compute layer in the form of your computer."

• The potential for AGI to expand human compute capabilities.

"If we merge with AI, it's just going to expand the compute that we humans use."

• The fundamental question of the meaning of life and AI's potential role in it.

"If our simple limbic system provides a source of will to do something, that then goes to our cortex, then to our tertiary compute layer."

• Dual track of medical and non-medical applications for Neuralink.
• Focus on solving basic neurological damage first.

"The first several years are really just solving basic neurological damage."

• Vision restoration and other medical applications as initial targets.

"Our second product is called Blindside, to enable people who are completely blind to be able to see."

• Potential for Neuralink to give people superhuman abilities.

"We're aiming to give people who have neuron damage a communication data rate that exceeds normal humans."

• Vision restoration could include enhancements beyond normal human capabilities.

"You could see in different wavelengths, like infrared or ultraviolet."

• Lex Fridman's personal experience with ayahuasca and its implications for perception and consciousness.

"I took an extremely high dose, nine cups, and it was a truly incredible experience."

• Potential for Neuralink to explore and manipulate human perception.

"Neuralink is a generalized input-output device, reading and generating electrical signals."

• Neuralink's potential to restore memory and its implications for human identity.

"We can't get the memories back, but we could restore your ability to make memories."

• The philosophical implications of memory and identity.

"What are we but our memories, and what is death but the loss of memory?"

• Neuralink as a potential tool for AI safety by increasing human communication bandwidth.

"It's an idea that may help with AI safety, certainly not a panacea."

• The importance of adherence to truth in AI development.

"Rigorous adherence to truth is very important."

• Speculation on the widespread adoption of Neuralink in the future.

"I think there will be hundreds of millions of people with Neuralink in the next couple of decades."

• The potential for Neuralink to supersede current technologies like cell phones.

"It would supersede the cell phone, for example."

• The importance of simplifying processes and questioning requirements in engineering.

"First question the requirements, make the requirements less dumb."

• The role of automation and optimization in engineering.

"Any given thing can be sped up, but you shouldn't speed things up until you've tried to delete it and optimize it."

• Neuralink's potential to outperform professional gamers.

"We feel pretty confident that within the next year or two, someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer."

• Discussion on the importance of compute in AI development.

"For AI, that means you've got to have the most powerful training compute."

• The development of Grok and its potential to be the best AI system.

"Grok 3 will be an order of magnitude better than Grok 2."

• The role of Twitter data and real-time video from Tesla cars in AI training.

"The biggest source of data I think ultimately is Optimus."

• Challenges and potential for mass production of humanoid robots.

"Global capacity for vehicles is about 100 million a year; humanoid robots could be more like a billion plus per year."

• The engineering complexities of creating a humanoid robot, especially the hand.

"The hand might be close to half of all the engineering in Optimus from an electromechanical standpoint."

• The need for a government efficiency commission to reduce laws and regulations.

"I've discussed with Trump the idea of a government efficiency commission."

• The impact of accumulated laws and regulations on innovation.

"There has to be a garbage collection for laws and regulations."

• Elon Musk's personal reflections on success and motivation.

"What matters is how many useful things can I get done on a day-to-day basis."

• The importance of curiosity and understanding the universe.

"My motivation is a religion of curiosity, trying to understand the universe."

• The importance of maintaining population numbers for civilization's survival.

"If a civilization does not at least maintain its numbers, it will disappear."

• The role of technological innovation in the rise and fall of civilizations.

"Technological innovation is an important component of empires rising and succeeding."

• Elon Musk's message to go forth and multiply, emphasizing the importance of having children for civilization's future.

"Go forth and multiply."

• Lex Fridman's gratitude for Elon Musk's contributions to building the future.

"Thank you for building the future and inspiring so many of us to keep building and creating cool stuff."

The study notes comprehensively cover all the key ideas and topics discussed in the transcript, providing a detailed and exhaustive overview of the conversation.

• Multiple engagement mechanisms can be used, but currently, electrodes are placed one by one.
• Verification of electrode insertion depth and matching with programmed parameters is crucial.
• Electrodes are placed at varying depths for better signal variation, typically around 3-4 mm from the brain surface.
• Each electrode can record from 0 to 40 neurons, but practically, only 2-3 neurons are distinguished by spike shapes.
• The detection algorithm, called BOSS (Buffer Online Spike Sorter), identifies spikes and their unique values for better data compression and prediction.

"We try to place them all around 3 or 4 mm from the surface because the span of the electrode, those 16 electrodes that we currently have in this version, spans roughly around 3 mm so we want to get all of those in the brain."

• Electrode placement depth for optimal signal variation.

"Each electrode can record from anywhere between zero to 40 neurons, but practically speaking, we only see about at most like two to three."

• Practical neuron recording capability of each electrode.

"The detection algorithm, called BOSS, outputs six unique values to determine if a spike is a spike and differentiates between neurons."

• Explanation of the BOSS algorithm for spike detection and neuron differentiation.

• Signal processing, including spike sorting, is done on the device using a custom, low-power, heat-constrained ASIC digital processing unit.
• Latency from signal input to output is less than a microsecond.
• Bluetooth is used for communication due to its interoperability, despite its latency issues.

"All of this for us is done on the device in a very low power custom-built ASIC digital processing unit, highly heat constrained."

• On-device signal processing specifics.

"The processing time from signal going in and giving you the output is less than a microsecond."

• Extremely short latency in signal processing.

"The primary motivation for choosing Bluetooth is that everything has Bluetooth, so you can talk to any device."

• Reason for choosing Bluetooth for communication despite its latency issues.

• Patients sign up through a registry and undergo a pre-screening interview and a BCI home audit.
• The N1 system is designed to be used at home, eliminating the need for lab visits.
• Approximately 180,000 people in the U.S. live with quadriplegia, with 18,000 new cases annually.
• The goal is to enable digital autonomy for quadriplegics through digital telepathy, allowing control of digital devices using just their minds.

"We have what's called a patient registry that people can sign up to hear more about the updates, and that was the route through which Nolan applied."

• Patient registry and application process.

"One of the most revolutionary parts about having this N1 system that is completely wireless is that you can use it at home."

• Importance of the N1 system's home usability.

"The estimate is 180,000 people live with quadriplegia in the United States, and each year an additional 18,000 suffer a paralyzing spinal cord injury."

• Statistics on quadriplegia in the U.S.

• Digital telepathy allows quadriplegics to interact with digital devices using their minds.
• Users imagine moving a cursor or using the force, creating the right kind of brain signals for device control.
• The system learns about the user, and the user learns about the system, creating a mutual adaptability.

"If you are able to control a cursor and able to click and get access to a computer or phone, the whole world opens up to you."

• Potential of digital telepathy in opening up digital access.

"The machine is learning about the human, and the human is learning about the machine, so there's adaptability to the signal processing."

• Mutual adaptability between the user and the system.

"Nolan talked about imagining moving the cursor with your mind, which involves a cognitive step to create the right kind of signal."

• Cognitive process involved in using digital telepathy.

• The entire surgery process, from patient in to patient out, takes 2-4 hours.
• The surgery includes anesthesia induction, intraoperative CT imaging, skin incision, craniectomy, dura reflection, electrode insertion by a robot, and implant placement.
• Recovery involves immediate activation of the device to check neural signal modulation.

"The end-to-end process is anywhere between 2 to 4 hours. In Nolan's particular case, it was about 3 and a half hours."

• Total duration of the surgery process.

"We do intraoperative CT imaging to make sure and double-check the location of the craniectomy."

• Use of intraoperative CT imaging for accuracy.

"He was actually immediately after the surgery, like an hour after the surgery as he was waking up, we did turn on the device to make sure that we are recording neural signals."

• Immediate post-surgery activation and signal check.

• Threads retracting from the brain caused performance drop, which was regained through signal processing adjustments.
• The focus is on keeping threads intact for long-term performance and understanding the dynamic brain environment.
• The company is vertically integrated, making its own thin film arrays and using custom hardware and software testing systems.

"Some of the threads retracted, and the performance as measured by bits per second dropped at first but then eventually was regained."

• Issue of thread retraction and performance impact.

"The main takeaway is that in the end, the performance has come back and it's actually gotten better than it was before."

• Successful performance recovery and improvement.

"We constructed in-house microfabrication capabilities to rapidly produce various iterations of thin film arrays that constitute our electrode threads."

• Vertical integration and in-house microfabrication capabilities.

• Safety is evaluated by examining tissue trauma and immune response through pathology.
• The goal is to achieve minimal trauma and immune response, ensuring long-term functionality of the implant.
• Histology images show minimal trauma and immune response, indicating the effectiveness of flexible threads.

"At the end of the day, the gold standard is to look at the tissue, what sort of trauma did you cause to the tissue, and does that correlate to whatever behavioral anomalies that you may have seen."

• Importance of tissue examination for safety evaluation.

"We have an entire department of pathology that looks at these tissue slices to evaluate the safety of the insertion mechanism and the threads."

• Role of the pathology department in safety evaluation.

"The neurons are just attracted to it, and so there's certainly no trauma."

• Histology images showing minimal trauma and effective thread insertion.

• Upgrades involve cutting or extracting threads, with potential for easier extraction through dura insertion.
• Future implants may have a two-part design, allowing for easy upgrades of the computational component.
• The goal is to increase the number of channels for recording more neurons, with advancements in photolithography, circuit design, and hermetic barriers.

"Our current method for removing the device is cutting the thread, leaving the tissue intact, and then unscrewing and taking the implant out."

• Current method for device removal.

"We are looking at ways to insert the threads through the dura, which comes with different set of challenges."

• Future goal of dura insertion for easier extraction.

"We have a pathway to go from currently 1,000 to hopefully 3,000 if not 6,000 by the end of this year, and then end of next year, we want to get to even more, 16,000."

• Goal for increasing the number of recording channels.

• Neuralink is working on restoring sight for blind people by stimulating the visual cortex.
• The process involves converting visual information from an external camera into electrical impulses that create visual percepts.
• The goal is to create many small phosphines to enable object detection and eventually naturalistic vision.

"The way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, and that scene is then converted to a set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex."

• Process of restoring sight using external camera and electrical impulses.

"The name of the game is really to have many of those phosphines and have those percepts be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart the individual pixels of the screen."

• Goal of creating small phosphines for detailed visual perception.

"In the long term, you'll be able to actually get naturalistic vision, but in the short to midterm, being able to at least see the edges of things so you don't bump into stuff."

• Short-term and long-term goals for restoring vision.

• The potential for BCI to understand and influence cognition and thought is explored.
• The hard problem of consciousness and the nature of subjective experience are discussed.
• BCI is seen as a tool for understanding the mind and potentially going beyond the limits of human biology.

"BCI alone probably can't do that, but I think BCI and additional set of tools and framework can help us understand the underlying mechanisms in a broader sense."

• Potential of BCI in understanding cognition and thought.

"The hard problem of consciousness is rooted in this philosophical question of what is the meaning of it all, what is the nature of our existence."

• Philosophical considerations of consciousness and existence.

"When we talk about going beyond the limits of our biology, that's what I mean, being able to see infrared, UV, or other spectrums that we can't normally see."

• Potential of BCI to go beyond human biological limits.

• Neuralink uses highly flexible tiny electrodes to avoid bleeding and immune responses.
• Longevity and functionality of electrodes in animal models are excellent, lasting for years.
• Importance of avoiding rigid electrodes that cause damage to brain tissue.

"Neuralink's approach of using highly flexible tiny electrodes avoids a lot of the bleeding and the immune response that ends up happening when rigid electrodes are pounded into the brain."

• Flexible electrodes improve the health of surrounding brain tissue and enhance electrode longevity.

• The brain controls almost everything, including non-obvious aspects like fertility and blood pressure.
• Potential to treat various conditions by targeting specific brain regions.

"Things that aren't immediately obvious as brain problems are potentially solvable in the brain."

• Brain modulation could provide primary treatments for a wide range of issues.

• Current use cases are limited, but future potential includes rapid interaction with digital devices.
• A natural word-to-computer interface could revolutionize human-computer interaction.

"I think taking that out of the equation and just having a natural, you know, word to computer interface might change things for a lot of people."

• Potential for standardized testing to become obsolete with seamless brain-computer interfaces.

• The evolution of HCI, from keyboards to touch screens, and the potential for brain interfaces.
• High bits per second (BPS) interaction could transform digital device usage.

"If you can get that bits per second really high with the mouse, being able to interact... that changed everything."

• Recording speech intentions from the brain could offer a more efficient interface than keyboards.

• Rapid advancements in decoding speech intentions from the brain.
• UC Davis's Sergey Stavisky's lab achieved high accuracy in decoding speech intentions.

"They were getting with, you know, very high accuracy, which is so you're just thinking the word and you're able to get it."

• The potential for the brain to adjust and develop new skills, similar to touch typing.

• The possibility of widespread brain interfaces leading to new forms of artistic expression.
• Teenagers could potentially excel in using brain interfaces for high BPS activities.

"Give a neuralink to a teenager... they're going to get like hundreds of bits per second."

• Ethical considerations of brain interfaces and the potential for economic independence for individuals with disabilities.

• The speaker's personal experience with RFID chips and the biohacker community.
• The mysticism around implanting electronic devices in the body and the need to treat it pragmatically.

"We have a kind of a mysticism around the barrier of our skin... there's a mysticism still around the inviolable barrier that the skull represents."

• The speaker's motivation to help individuals with disabilities achieve independence through engineering solutions.

• Neuroplasticity decreases with age, but there are ways to potentially enhance it.
• Electrical stimulation could improve learning and attention in individuals with brain injuries.

"There are theoretical ways to increase plasticity using electrical stimulation."

• The goal of making individuals economically independent and reducing caregiver dependence.

• The brain's delicate and complex nature, with unknown downstream consequences of changes.
• The speaker's view on consciousness as a sensory mapping of brain activity.

"Consciousness is the sensation of some part of your brain being active."

• The importance of understanding consciousness in the context of brain activity and sensory mapping.

• The inevitability of death and the universal nature of human mortality.
• The speaker's acceptance of death's certainty but the struggle with its existential aspect.

"Death is inevitable... it's just one of the hardest things to imagine."

• The importance of appreciating life and the moments of being alive, despite the inevitability of death.

• The speaker's motivation to help individuals with ALS and spinal cord injuries achieve independence.
• The role of BCI and other assistive technologies in providing autonomy and improving quality of life.

"This is actually an engineering problem... with the right resources, with the right team, we can make a lot of progress on."

• The importance of making the world more accessible for individuals with disabilities.

• The experience of monitoring live brain signals during the first human surgery.
• The importance of user experience (UX) design in making brain interfaces intuitive and effective.

"Seeing live in the operating room while he's still under anesthesia, beautiful spikes being shown in the application."

• The iterative process of improving the UX based on user feedback and real-world usage.

• The process of decoding brain signals and mapping them to computer actions.
• The importance of accurate labeling and calibration in achieving high-performance brain interfaces.

"The job of the application is really to translate this wireless stream of brain data coming off the implant into control of the computer."

• The challenges of ensuring low latency and high accuracy in decoding brain signals.

• The continuous improvement of the UX based on user feedback and iterative updates.
• The importance of making the UX intuitive and natural for the user.

"UX is how it works... the ideal UX is one that it's the user doesn't have to think about what they need to do in order to get it done."

• The role of UX in achieving a seamless and enjoyable user experience.

• The use of bits per second (BPS) as a metric for measuring performance.
• The importance of standardizing metrics to compare different approaches and technologies.

"The goal is to help someone with paralysis... to control mouse and keyboard inputs to all the applications that they want to use for their daily jobs."

• The potential for future improvements and the journey to achieve superhuman performance levels.

• The user's role in providing feedback and pushing the limits of the technology.
• The importance of user motivation and dedication in advancing brain interface technology.

"Nolan is extremely focused and very energetic... he views it as his job to make us be the bottleneck."

• The iterative process of improving the technology based on user experiences and feedback.

• The potential for brain interfaces to revolutionize human-computer interaction and improve quality of life.
• The importance of continued research and development to achieve the full potential of brain interfaces.

"Ultimately, we want to give people more levers that they can pull... you want to give people options."

• The ethical considerations and societal implications of widespread brain interface technology.

• Different body parts can be used to execute commands.
• The number of actions is proportional to the number of channels and the information they carry.

"You could imagine wiggling your big nose for opening some menu or wiggling your big toe to have like command tab occur."

• The goal is to enable users with paralysis to control a computer as fast and reliably as possible.

"Our goal is really to enable a user with paralysis to control the computer as fast as I can... but then also as reliably as I can."

• Increasing the number of channels improves system reliability.
• More channels mean less impact from noise and neural nonstationarity.

"Scaling Channel count should improve the reliability system without any work on the decoder itself."

• Baseline rate of neurons changes day-to-day, affecting system reliability.

"The Baseline firing rate of any particular neuron or observed on a particular channel is changing."

• Methods to adjust the baseline include behavioral tasks.
• Context effects can cause generalization gaps between open-loop and closed-loop tasks.

"With monkeys, we have found various ways to do this... For whatever reason that doesn't work super well with Nolan."

• Nolan can multitask effectively while using the system.
• The independence provided by the technology is transformative for users.

"It means that they can text a friend at night privately without their mom needing to be in the loop."

• Building a decoder involves constructing a dataset and compiling it into weights.
• Offline metrics do not necessarily correspond to online metrics.

"Offline metrics don't necessarily correspond to online metrics... It's fundamentally a control problem."

• Different neural network architectures have been tested for decoding brain activity.

"We tried a AB test where we were measuring the relative performance in online control sessions."

• Data quality is more critical than quantity for building effective models.
• The challenge is to create multifunction outputs that do not interfere with each other.

"Data quality is the main thing... You need to come up with some way to either in the dataset or in the model build robustness."

• Excitement about scaling channel count and its impact on user experience.
• Interest in how the technology will work for users who cannot communicate at all.

"I'm really excited to understand how this device works for folks that cannot speak at all."

• The potential for fundamental neuroscience learning by expanding electrode placements.

"When you stick more stuff in the brain in more places, you get to learn much more quickly about what those brain regions represent."

• Poetry can convey complex ideas more effectively than literal language.
• The human mind's interpretation of poetry is essential for its meaning.

"The mechanism of poetry is really just to feed or seed that generator function."

• The importance of asking the right questions in understanding human existence.
• Communication with someone who cannot speak highlights the significance of asking the right questions.

"What matters is are you asking them the right question to be able to say yes or no to."

• Nolan's diving accident and its impact on his life.
• The support from family and friends has been crucial for his survival and well-being.

"If I didn't have my parents, my siblings, then I would have never made it this far."

• Immediate acceptance of his paralysis and focus on improving his life.

"I realized that that's like what my situation was from here on out."

• Initial months were filled with pain and challenges.
• Faith in God and support from family and friends provided strength.

"My faith in God was a big one... My family and my friends, they give me all the strength that I need."

• Nolan was not afraid of the surgery and saw it as an opportunity to help others.
• Positive interactions with the Neuralink team and their enthusiasm were motivating.

"I was never scared... I trust these people with my life and how impressed I am with all of them."

• Initial experiences with the Neuralink device and its impact on his life.
• The difference between attempted movement and imagined movement.

"Attempted movement is me physically trying to attempt to move... Imagine movement is you not attempting to move at all."

• Calibration involves following a cursor and training the model based on intentions.
• Web Grid is a game used to benchmark BCI performance, and Nolan has achieved high scores.

"It's literally just a grid... One of those little squares will light up and you move the cursor there and you click it."

• Transition from individual spike detection to spike band power improved performance.
• Nolan's determination to regain and surpass previous performance levels.

"When they did that, it was kind of like a light bulb moment... I could feel it when they switched over."

• Potential future capabilities include vision restoration and speech translation.
• Ethical considerations for memory manipulation and mood regulation.

"There's a lot that's very, very cool about this... I'm not sure what, you know, like how ethical a lot of that would be."

• Nolan's belief in the importance of trials and tribulations for growth.
• Hope derived from the dedication and care of people working to improve lives.

"It gives me a lot of hope for just humanity in general... How much we care and how much we're capable of."

• Gratitude for the support and inspiration from others.
• Nolan's ongoing journey and commitment to helping others through Neuralink.

"Thank you for everything you've done, man... The whole world is rooting for you."