From TechCrunch, December 5:
Six years ago, I
asked Sam Altman at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco how OpenAI, with
its complicated corporate structure, would make money. He said that
someday, he’d ask the AI. When everyone snickered, he added, “You can
laugh. It’s all right. But it really is what I actually believe.”
He wasn’t kidding.
Sitting again in front of an audience, this time across Max Hodak, the co-founder and CEO of Science Corp.,
I can’t help but remember that moment with Altman. Pale-complexioned
Hodak, wearing jeans and a black zip-up sweatshirt, looks more like he’s
going to jump into a mosh pit than pitch a company valued at hundreds
of millions of dollars. But he’s got a sly sense of humor that keeps the
room engaged.
Hodak started programming when he was six,
and as an undergraduate at Duke, he worked his way into the lab of
Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneering neuroscientist who has since become
publicly critical of commercial brain-computer interface ventures. In
2016, Hodak co-founded Neuralink with Elon Musk, serving as its
president and essentially running day-to-day operations until 2021.
When I ask what he learned working
alongside Musk, Hodak describes a specific pattern. “We got into lots of
situations together where something would happen. In my mind, I’d have
two diametrically opposed possible solutions, and I would bring them to
him, and I’d be like, ‘Is it A or B?’ And he’d look at it and be like,
‘It’s definitely B,’ and the problem would never come back.”
After a few years of this, Hodak took what
he’d learned and roped in three former Neuralink colleagues to launch
Science Corp. about four years ago. Like Altman, Hodak describes his
team’s improbable goal so placidly that I find myself believing that the
limits of cognition are about to be overcome sooner than most of us
realize. And that he’ll be among those who make it happen.
As I was doomscrolling…
While I’ve been consumed with the AI data center craziness and the talent poaching wars, momentum has been building in the background.According to World Economic Forum data, nearly 700
companies around the world have at least some ties to brain-computer
interface (BCI) technology, including some tech giants. In addition to
Neuralink, Microsoft Research has run a dedicated BCI project for the
last seven years. Apple partnered earlier this year with Synchron,
backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, to create a protocol that lets
BCIs control iPhones and iPads. Even Altman is reportedly helping to stand up a Neuralink rival.
And in August, China released its
“Implementation Plan for Promoting Innovation and Development of the BCI
Industry,” targeting core technological breakthroughs by 2027, and
aiming to become the global leader by 2030.
Much of the neuroscience isn’t new. “A
legitimate criticism of the BCI companies is that they aren’t doing new
neuroscience,” Hodak said. “Decoding cursor control or robotic arm
control from a human – people have been doing that for 30 years.”
What’s new, however, is the engineering.
“The innovation at Neuralink is making [a device] small enough and
low-power enough that you can fully implant it and close the skin, and
have something that isn’t an infection risk. That genuinely was new."....
....MUCH MORE
Related:
"A wave of biological privacy laws may be coming as tech gadgets capture our brain waves"
Those gadgets'll get nuthin' from me.
Musk's "Neuralink Will Offer Telepathy and then Brain Control of Teslabots"
Throw in Full Self Driving and paraplegics will recover a lot of agency/autonomy.
Watch Out Elon: China Unveils Neuralink Competitor
"Big Tech sees neurotechnology as its next AI frontier" (ELON)
"China's brain-computer interface technology is catching up to the US. But it envisions a very different use case: cognitive enhancement."
The Race To Put Implants In Your Head Is Heating Up
"Folks Lining Up for Elon Musk's Brain Implants"
Now I'm as open-minded as the next guy, so to speak but...ummm...après vous, M. Musk, après vous.
And many, many more going back to 2016.
And the outro from "Brain implant startup backed by Bezos and Gates is testing mind-controlled computing on humans":
The city of Chicago should probably keep an eye on this. There are
neighborhoods, Austin, Garfield Park, Englewood, where you will see
paralyzed young men out and about in their mobility chairs and you
realize that even though it is the killings that make the headlines the
fact is the wounds and injuries are awfully grievous and affect many
more people.
If interested we have a few dozen posts on Mind- Machine interfaces including on the work of Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., PhD and his laboratory at Duke University Medical Center.
"Disruptions: Brain Computer Interfaces Inch Closer to Mainstream"
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
—Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)
And on Professor Nicolelis:
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)
Ya gotta love this guy. He's a showman but he publishes in open-access journals, in effect letting the whole world have at it. More after the jump.
Oh Great, Now Our Brains Can Get Hacked I knew this was going to happen. Knew it. Afraid to say it, sound like crazy person, but knew it. Links below.
