Neuralink and the Brain's Magical Future By Tim Urban

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• link
• technology changed life like crazy
• sponge 600 million BC
• technology of nerves in 580 million BC creates jellyfish
• technology of centralized nerve system in 550 million BC creates flatworms
• technology like heart and inhale in 265 million BC creates things like frogs
• technology like love, anger, and fear in 235 million BC creates things like rodents
• technology like early neocortex in 80 million BC creates things like tree mammal
• technology like full neocortex in 4 million BC creates hominid
• technology like language ~ 100,000 years ago creates passing on of information
• technology like writing ~ 6000 years ago creates more efficient passing of better information

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Neural link team

• Neuralink.com
• Paul Merolla = chip designer at IBM creating chip based on human brain
• Vanessa Tolosa = microfabrication expert and researcher on biocompatible materials
• Max Hodak = groundbreaking BMI tech at Miguel Nicolelis's lab at Duke and ran robotic cloud labatory for the life sciences Transcriptic
• DJ Seo = designed neural dust a tiny ultrasound sensors that could provide a new way to record brain activity
• Ben Rapoport = MIT PhD in EE and neurosurgeon
• Tim Hanson = self taught hisself about materials science and microfabrication methods to develop core tech at neuralink
• Flip Sabes = lab at UCSF pioneered new ground in BMIs
• Tim Gardner = lab at Boston Uni. worked on BMIs in birds in order to study "how complex songs are assembled from elementary neural units" and learn about the "relationships between patterns of neural activity on different time-scales"

Action items

• [ ] apply for Software Engineer, Medical Imaging
• [ ] apply for Software Engineer, Infrastructure & Tooling

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"We are aiming to bring something to market that helps with certain severe brain injuries (stroke, cancer lesion, congenital) in about four years" ~ Elon

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Major Hurdle 1: Bandwidth

• we need magnitudes higher bandwidth like "1 million simultaneously recorded neurons"

• Ben Rapoport believes that "the move from hand manufacturing to Utah Array electrodes was the first hint that BMIs were entering a realm where Moore's Law could become relevant"

  

• Stevenson's Law suggests that # of neurons we can simultaneously record is doubling every 7.4 years. If that rate continues, it'll take us till the end of this century to reach a million.

• Whatever the equivalent of the integrated circuit is for BMIs isn't here yet, because 7.4 years is too big a number to start a revolution. The breakthrough is the paradigm shift that makes the future of this graph look more like Moore's Law.

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Major Hurdle 2: Implantation

• BMIs won't sweep the world as long as u need to go in for skull-opening surgery to get involved
• "The machine to accomplish this would need to be something like Lasik, an automated process - because otherwise you just get constrained by the limited number of neural surgeons, and the costs are very high" ~ Elon

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Other hurdles

• Neuralink plans to work on devices that will be wireless. You'll now need your device to be able to send and receive a lot of data wirelessly.
• signal amplification
• analog-to-digital conversion?
• data compression
• powered inductively
• biocompatibility
• SPACE issue. miniaturization of multielectrodes

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"The least invasive way would be something that comes in like a hard stent like through a femoral artery and ultimately unfolds in the vascular system to interface with the neurons. Neurons use a lot of energy, so there's basically a road network to every neuron" ~ Elon

"there are technologies that are not really thought about in this domain, but we can bring in some principles of their work." ~ DJ

• neural dust is inspired both by microchip technology and RFID (the thing that allows hotel key cards to communicate with the door lock without making physical contact) principles ~ DJ

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"The first use of the technology will be to repair brain injuries as a result of stroke or cutting out a cancer lesion, where somebody's fundamentally lost a certain cognitive element. It could help with people who are quadriplegics or paraplegics by providing a neural shunt from the motor cortex down to where the muscles are activated. It can help with people who, as they get older, have memory problems and can't remember the names of their kids, through memory enhancement, which could allow them to function well to a much later time in life - the medically advantageous elements of this for dealing with mental disablement of one kind or another, which of course happens to all of us when we get old enough, are very significant" ~ Elon

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Imagined Future

You car will pull up to your house and ur mind will open the car door. You'll walk up to the house and ur mind will unlock and open the front door. You'll think about wanting coffee and the coffee maker will get that going. As u head to the fridge the door will open and after getting what u need it'll close as u walk away. When it's time for bed, u'll decide u want the heat turned down and the lights turned off, and those systems will feel u make that decision and adjust themselves.

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• words are compressed approximations of uncompressed thoughts

"If I were to communicate a concept to u, u would essentially engage in consensual telepathy. U wouldn't need to verbalize unless u want to add a little flair to the conversation or something (laughs), but the conversation would be conceptual interaction on a level that's difficult to conceive of right now." ~ Elon

"That type of communication would have a huge impact on the pace of innovation, as scientists and engineers could work more fluidly together. And it's just as likely to have a transformative effect on the public sphere, in the same way that email, blogs, and Twitter have successively changed public discourse" ~ Ramaz Naam

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You can also think with a computer. Not just to issue a command, but to actually brainstorm something with a computer. You and a computer could strategize something together. You could compose a piece of music together. Ramez talked about using a computer as an imagination collaborator: "You could imagine something, and the computer, which can better forward predict or analyze physical models, could fill in constraints - and that allows you to get feedback.

One concern that comes up when people hear about thought communication in particular is a potential loss of individuality. Would this make us one great hive mind with each individual brain as just another bee? Almost across the board, the experts I talked to believed it would be the opposite. We could act as one in a collaboration when it served us, but technology has thus far enhanced human individuality. Think of how much easier it is for people today to express their individuality and customize life to themselves than it was 50 or 100 or 500 years ago. There's no reason to believe that trend won't continue with more progress.

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Right now, u can go on YouTube and watch a first-hand account of almost anything, for free. This would have blown George Washington's mind - but in the Wizard Era, u'll be able to actually experience almost anything for free. The days of fancy experiences being limited to rich people will be long over.

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Often, the battle in our heads between our prefrontal cortex and limbic system comes down to the fact that both parties are trying to do what's best for us - it's just that our limbic system is wrong about what it thinks is best for us because it thinks we live in a tribe 50,000 years ago.

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"I think we are about 8 to 10 years away from this being usable by people with no disability... It is important to note that this depends heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well our devices work on people with disabilities" ~ Elon

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"My honest opinion is that we shouldn't built it" ~ Elon when asked if he would ever join the effort to build superintelligent AI in 2015

In 2017 "I was trying to really sound the alarm on the AI front for quite a while, but it was clearly having no impact (laughs) so I was like, "Oh fine, okay, then we'll have to try to help develop it in a way that's good." ~ Elon

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"I think that the protection of the collective is important. I think it was Churchill who said, "Democracy's the worst of all systems of government, except for all the others." It's fine if u have Plato's incredible philosopher king as the king, sure. That would be fine. Now, most dictators do not turn out that way. They tend to be quite horrible." ~ Elon

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And since Elon sees AI as the ultimate power, he sees AI development as the ultimate "plat it safe" situation. Which is why his strategy for minimizing existential AI risk seems to essentially be that AI power needs to be of the people, by the people, for the people.

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"I think that, conceivably, there's a way for there to be a tertiary layer that feels like it's part of you. It's not some thing that u offload to, it's u" ~ Elon

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[ghost]

i want my f..king github back