[Music] uh hi everyone welcome to bold conjectures with paris chopra today i am with ladan jirasek who is a graduate student at the university of florida and host of the most famous and perhaps the only podcast dedicated to brain machine interfaces called the neural implant podcast i've listened to many of his episodes and he talks to worlds experts scientists engineers probing them about what they're developing in brain machine interfaces and how do they see the field moving forward so these days i'm investigating the world of brain machine interfaces and i thought what better way to get an overview of the field and it's percent potential than listening to someone who's been interviewing uh uh people who are pushing the field forward so here i am with uh dan uh he has 178 podcasts uh sorry episodes on his neural impart implant podcast so doing a conversation with him feels a bit like cheating because i'll get to uh probe him for insight from all of them uh i'm very excited about this uh welcome ledan uh thanks for taking time out to talk to me yeah thank you thanks for coming thanks for uh having me on the show and then uh yeah i'm excited to talk about this it's my favorite subject fantastic so let's start with uh laying the scope of brain machine interfaces it's a broad term uh but i'm curious uh what technologies or approaches do you usually sort of uh consider falling into this you know umbrella term yeah so it is a it is a broad term brain machine interface is actually the name of the podcast is the neural implant podcast so to me that's a little bit more broad it's not just implants into the brain but like the peripheral nerve as well um you know various nerves throughout the body uh the spinal cord um and so so there are different um categories of this but brain machine interface is usually uh what you imagine almost like in the movie the matrix where somebody plugs something into your brain and then you know you learn something and believe it or not this already exists and it has existed for some time there's a company that's called blackrock microsystems and they're they're probably the most famous one they have something called the utah electrode array and basically it's like a hundred little needles that get stuck into the brain and they've already done this with humans and not only animals and they stuck this into um uh usually paraplegics so people who are paralyzed from neck down and uh with this you know they put it into what's called the motor cortex which is basically the um the part of the brain uh that is um controlling movement that that sends movement signals to the rest of the brain and uh basically bypasses you know a damaged part of the spinal cord and what that does is uh you can train yourself to then move like a robotic arm almost like you'd be moving your own arm and uh there is you know a few people and i've met a lot of them i've interviewed them on the show that are implanted they literally have uh something sticking out of their head uh which is an implant and uh yeah one one guy even fispo fist bumped uh president barack obama you know back when he was president and uh and he felt it you know so it wasn't only implanted into his motor cortex but also into a sensory cortex so you can only not only send information but you can receive information so he felt he felt the fist bump so it was very cool right so like you said uh your podcast is called neural implants um which is sort of uh indicates more i mean it indicates the invasive approach where you're literally putting things inside the body be it central nervous system or peripheral nervous system uh i'm curious whether you also sort of interview experts around non-invasive approaches uh and uh how do you sort of differ the potential for invasive versus non-invasive what's your v on it yeah for sure uh i i would say at least half of um half of the guests are non-invasive and and i i'd categorize this more as generally like neurotech neurotechnology and um yeah there's lots of um stuff like this there's uh you know functional uh stimulators you know surface stimulators uh there's infrared units so so there are different technologies that are based on different i guess physics if you want to say it um and you know a lot of them have proven to work very very well um and especially um yeah people are people are kind of looking for um you know simulating what part of the body is good for stimulating you know for for solving this kind of illness or disease or whatever and it's kind of funny because a lot of times they're very much based on acupuncture so ancient chinese acupuncture ayurvedic medicine as well and and so it's kind of we're doing a full circle we're kind of coming back to where we were you know a few thousand years ago but you know with new technology maybe more um maybe more repeatable or more precise you know that than uh somebody with a needle you know a few thousand years ago but uh it's very interesting stuff and and it's also holds a lot of promise and of course it's much better because it doesn't you know involve opening up somebody's skull and putting something in your brain you know like to do that like if i wanted to convince you to do that you'd be like uh maybe later but if it's something like hey i'm gonna you're gonna wear armband and it's gonna send a small electrical signal which you can't even feel um you'd be like oh okay yeah that sounds good um so yeah it's a very promising field and and uh uh i i really like it right um yeah i mean again on the topic of convincing people to get uh brain surgeries done i've been reading uh about the same uh utah array i mean i i think the clinical trial is called brain gate 2 where they're trying to sort of uh put this micro electrode array into people's motor cortex to get say communication done by a sort of maybe an electronic diaper or arm and so on and i was it struck me that um this clinical trial is recruiting 15 people and they've not been able to find 15 people in the last 20 years and they started i guess in perhaps you know maybe uh 15 20 years ago and they're still in the process of recruiting all so is it really hard to convince people to get a surgery done yeah actually i hadn't heard about those challenges um i'm a little bit surprised about that uh i don't so obviously the people that i've talked to that were implanted you know they were just like yes sign me up you know one guy he was even saying like um uh they didn't they barely didn't even finish telling him about everything he's already like yeah i want to do it i want to do it so obviously uh my experience is a little bit more biased towards the people that want to do it um i think uh it could be it could be an issue but it because it's also a very specific type of person um you know it has to be somebody that's injured in this specific way you know c5 c6 i don't know i'm just kind of making up things uh c5 c6 injury so it has to be a specific part in the the spinal cord that that they were injured and then um you know that they're injured in this way and then obviously like you were saying like you have to be willing to do it so maybe you're taking down from a thousand people uh you know in let's say the u.s or in the world or something like this down to i don't know 10 or 200 or i don't know whatever the number is but but um i i actually i'm i'm a little bit surprised about that because like i said i've talked to a lot of people at these companies i've and i haven't heard this yeah i was listening to talk by one of the investigators and they said it's difficult to recruit people because right now the benefit for them is not that much because uh the sort of the typer that they've developed that allows people to type even the best performance is worse than what they can get through say eye gaze typing so typing through eye gaze i think it sort of uh is at 20 25 words per minute and through this sort of technology i think they're able to push it to 18 words so uh so really these people have to be literal volunteers who have to be there for pushing the tech forward for little benefit uh for themselves and that's that's what i heard in the talk and i was very surprised like you are uh at the fact that it's just hard to get people for clinical trials yeah very much so i mean uh the the implantees uh the neural uh pioneers that i've talked to they very much talked about this and they were very much like uh that they're giving back or they're they're using their injury for some kind of benefit and um there was a very um yeah like community or pride or something like this so that is that is maybe uh some kind of um you know common factor between them because yeah i mean your elective brain surgery like that's a very you know not many people do that yeah true um so i was curious in your experience i mean when we don't understand brain entirely i mean it's the most complex object out there but a new experience how how well do we have to understand brain in order to create uh effective brain machine interfaces i don't think i don't think we yeah you're right we don't uh don't understand it at all and i don't think we need to though because it's just so complicated like even the the utah electric array which is you know some a technology that's been in use for uh 10 15 20 years but it was invented even like 30 40 years ago and so on the scale of things it's actually more i would say maybe more primitive or more you know earlier generation but even that is a hundred channels a hundred spikes and um the other but we're gonna need much much more and even a hundred if you imagine like going through 100 signals and having to find some kind of pattern and doing whatever it's just impossible so it all has to be done by computers and um i think in the end the computers will understand it that like if we have you know a thousand channels ten thousand hundred thousand million hundred million you know that's way too much for a human to go through and the the computer will be able to find you know some patterns and then pull out some uh results and everything like this from from this so i think in the end like we won't really understand it too well but like somehow it'll work you know it's almost like an airplane like uh the we don't really know or a cell phone you know like we don't really know how it works the average person doesn't know how it works there might not even be a single person that knows all the components you know very well and can understand you know the manufacturing design a use troubleshooting of a you know typical cell phone but uh it just works you know and then maybe you have specialties for for people you know in individual things and bluetooth modules or you know electrochemistry or whatever and and and then just somehow comes together so it's it's very very multi-disciplinary i guess right i think the analogy that struck my mind is these deep learning models for example google uses it to translate languages and now there's gpt 3 that produces humor like language they work beautifully but nobody knows how deep learning models work under the hood i guess similarly uh we could create very useful and practical uh brain interfacing technology yet not know how brains work under the world yeah for sure it just kind of happens yeah the the uh the the neural networks you know and by google like nobody ever wrote those programs they're like like they they wrote it they started it but then like where the program took itself is like somewhere that's completely different and even the the engineers don't know what's necessarily going on and what the program is looking for looking at which can be a problem but it's also you know it's a nice thing and like what you were saying like it might not be necessary in the end i mean the the eye tracking software might be easier there might be other uh hacks or or kind of shortcuts that don't involve putting something in your brain and you can learn just as quickly right yeah i mean i mean our bodies it has so many places to read and write that uh i mean i was surprised when i heard that uh the primitive type of interfacing was actually air puffs where uh i think paraplegics can use uh air puffs to communicate and uh in fact you know people have written uh written novels through this eye blinking i think there's a very popular novel um i'm forgetting the name but the author wrote the entire novel just through eye blinking sort of like a morse code communicating that uh and so in some way i i feel that's also like a brain interface it's just through an eyelid instead of an electrode yeah definitely and i've heard the argument and i agree to agree with it is that you know there might not be a necessity to uh go directly into the brain like if you want to interface with your computer you don't put wires you don't put probes into the cpu you know you plug into the usb you you uh connect with bluetooth or you know whatever and so there are these kind of other uh ways to do that with uh with the body and you don't need to like same thing in the computer like you wouldn't open up the cpu case and everything because that that could damage things kind of like with the brain um so that this is what i've heard as well is that it might not be necessary there might be easier things you know that uh that are possible to interface and yeah so the air puffs is a great example uh i like peripheral nerves you know because those are easier easier to get to and and uh don't require opening your brain and and a lot of times like the brain is already coded it's already wired to receive inputs from that that location and or to send to send something out like your arms your fingers you know like the sense of touch and everything like this it's already coded um to do this so uh there might be some there might be some shortcuts right and even say things like facial muscles where i think some of uh some of the companies take the approach of reading brain waves to find out your emotional state whether you're attentive bored but i guess maybe a simpler way is to simply see whether you are slightly smiling or not because unconsciously i think we communicate a lot more than we want to yeah for sure for sure and and uh uh it could be much more invasive i guess i think a lot of people are are worried about you know the invasiveness of the brain implants and the the data that comes out but like in a situation like this uh people could be collecting data on you and you don't even know and then be like oh that's an angry person over there uh but but yeah it's it's uh there's a lot of there's a lot of questions that right right i was curious whether you're aware of any brain machine interfaces or neural implants that are in the market today available either for medical use or end user commercially so um yeah the the blackrock microsystems utah electric array the braingate one that that is something that's an invasive device that's already um on uh on the market but yeah there's actually a really big um uh number of companies i can send you a list there was a a group that did a like a comprehensive you know landscape report on everything that uh uh all the all the companies and you know some of them have products some of them don't uh but but a lot of them you know have been fda approved and but a lot of them are also um uh you know going to be approved but uh if you are looking for something that you can play with you know for for the time being there are many uh what's called uh tens units and uh basically these tens units you can buy uh you know just just from china and i can't remember what it's called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and um you know they're very cheap you know i i bought some uh for you know ten dollars or something from china and uh you can you can uh try it out see how it works and uh it's basically uh stickers you know that you put on different parts of the body and then it sends an electrical signal in it and it you know shocks shocks the muscles and and you feel a contraction and so a lot of these are for you know building muscles and all this kind of stuff so you can you can try these out and and see a little bit what these uh wearable neurotech devices uh might feel like or look like right um i bought one for myself also never got around to using it but i'm curious i mean i i'm not sure how rigorous is the science behind uh many devices that are out there and some are easy headsets that promise you to have a better concentration or better ability cognitive functions and similarly paint blockers and stuff uh so what is the quality of science that you've seen behind these uh early launches for different types of brain interfacing products yeah for sure i mean uh for uh products like what i was talking about you know something that you get on amazon or just just from china a lot of times there's there's very little science behind it but they they're selling you know a consumer device and so it really depends on how rigorous they want to have the process and if they do want to for example be fda approved then they um they need to supply more science and again like you know they can do science they can show like oh this is this is a clear effect with um you know there's a decrease in you know whatever uh after you do the stimulation but a lot of times people don't know necessarily why that is so a big a big part of this is a vagus nerve stimulation auricular vagus nerve stimulation so so there's a there's a branch of a nerve it's called vagus nerve that that's in your ear and uh if you stimulate that that causes a calming sensation and that that calming sensation is also good for um you know depression or addiction um uh recovery and just just really all sorts of things where uh being calmer could be good and there's a huge debate actually in the in the field is is uh what's causing it you know and the people who have the device they say like oh it's the biggest nerve and then some other researchers are saying oh it's it's not it's it's a it's a different pathway um so you know these are very uh strong debates that are probably boring for the for the majority of the public but um there is a lot of science but but again like you were saying like the the brain is very complicated it's the most complicated you know thing in the universe and we don't know you know in a few a few studies with you know five patients is probably not going to elucidate anything it's probably going to be just as you know complicated as it was before it might be you know 100 years before we realize what's what's really going on right right i think the i mean there is a risk in rushing too soon with technology to consumers because i mean if if they try it nothing happens or not they don't get an effect uh it'll be a disappointment i remember growing up there was this whole thing about binaural beats where you could listen to some audio and supposedly it will make you good at studies and so on and i i guess there is this hesitation in adopting uh things which are not very proven so um yeah yeah maybe maybe it's it's better for the industry to at least debate on science before rushing to you know promise that we have magical cures for a lot of things yeah i i would i would disagree well i'm a little bit i'm the anti-perfectionist you know i'm like the person that starts something and like see how it goes as you go um i i really like this uh which is kind of like a silicon valley mentality just just get something out there and then people will give you feedback and if it works or not because science is a very slow uh slow process you know uh when you publish a paper that can take a few months they have to look at it they have to uh you know review it that's another few months and then maybe ask a few reviews and then it's published and then by the time somebody reads it it's again a few months so it could be a few years before you know potentially groundbreaking science makes it out to the public and um you know many times longer then again there can be a debate somebody published a different a counter argument you know so it could be you could potentially lose you know at the minimum maybe five years maybe even 10 years if you left it only to the scientists until they were completely certain i'm a little bit more of the the um perspective of you know you should you should uh you know just just put it out on the market as long as it doesn't you know harm anybody and and uh you know if it's something as as benign as you know uh uh binaural beats uh then you know it's just a question of time and money right and that's that's uh you know it's not like you're opening somebody's brain so so i guess in in you know invasive stuff that that should be you know the the level of risk acceptance should be should be much higher but uh otherwise i think people and that's that's the great thing is like people can buy these things and put them on all over their body and and see what works and see what doesn't work you know and so so it's kind of that's a basic science like that the scientists and everybody yeah i think that's a fair point uh as long as safety is demonstrated i think efficacy can really be sort of uh delegated to this whole distributed scientists uh that are you know in in so many places people experimenting uh in different modes and experiments i i'm with you on that uh and and also on that note um uh in your experience you know what are the key limiting factors that are preventing this field from going uh even faster like maybe you know having 10x more approaches or devices right now accessible and frankly i don't have a brain machine interface at home and most likely most people don't and i don't even know when when can i have one so what do you think is sort of really limiting this field yeah so i think i think a big thing is that it is very complicated it's just so difficult and uh the like you were saying the the results or the benefits are kind of marginal like maybe they're there but like they're not as good as they should be for the amount of effort or risk that you're that you're doing uh so i think that would be the the number one thing um the second thing there is you're talking about 10x um you're of course familiar with moore's law basically the doubling of computer power over 18 months there is something similar for uh uh neural devices and basically a doubling of the number of channels that are in um are in a device and this is every seven years so it's it's much slower as you see you know like 18 months versus seven years um and and i think it's uh related to i mean he published a paper on this uh stevenson's law as was called and um i think it's related to you know uh you have to deal with nano fabrication microfabrication because as you make more channels they have to be much smaller and uh there's physical limits there too uh computational power is a huge thing i mean uh there's there's one company that's called paradromix and they have 40 000 channels you can imagine what kind of data throughput uh this requires and they're they're burning you know gigabytes per second you know and uh tens of gigabytes per second so so really it's a it's a huge and then what do you do with that data where do you store it like like how do you this is this is terabytes per minute like terabytes every ten minutes you know so uh this is this is insane amounts of data so and that's that's limited so i think i think uh based on that because of that i think the limiting factor is is money is investment um so far it has only been invested by uh you know universities uh maybe some foundations small companies uh but but the companies are really serving uh universities and their grants and everything like this so um there was the brain initiative you know a number of years ago that put you know i think it was like 100 million dollars into the field and uh so that kind of spurred things that kind of accelerated things but really it needs to be self-sustaining i think and and you need to have some kind of product um that's that drives it forward i think a big thing that is driving moore's law forward you know the doubling of computation power um is is the amount of money that that's going into it like every time you buy a phone every time you buy a computer every time you buy you know any piece of electronics uh that uses a processor you're basically supporting them and you're supporting them to uh to go faster and faster and they've literally broken the laws of physics i mean um there's basically uh in microscopy and everything in it uh they're writing they're writing these things with light and a well-known rule is you can't go below the wavelength of light you know when you're writing it well they've gone down 10 times below the wavelength of light like they just completely just the the physics that they're bending you know to be able to do this is insane and and a single tool can be a hundred million dollars and it's just it's just absolutely absolutely insane uh the buildings are billion dollar buildings but the reason they can afford that is because we collectively as a society are like this is important to us we want faster computers i'm willing to spend my money on this um and so so we do and we spend our hard earned money on on you know slightly double double a faster processor so once this starts happening for nerd technology i think it'll just be it'll even accelerate and uh uh maybe maybe develop faster but maybe maybe still at the slow relatively slow speed uh compared to moore's law yeah i think that's a fantastic point um but the improvements in the computing i think that's driven ultimately not for computing sake but for end user solutions sake i mean we derive so much benefit from mobile phones uh that we're willing to just buy better and better phones so i guess maybe then the question becomes what is that end user benefit uh from neural implants that could really you know sort of kick start this loop of improvement uh do you have any thoughts on that i mean nothing immediately strikes my mind yeah they have done uh papers and i think it was with the utah array that uh basically showed like how many neurons how many signals you need to to be able to i don't accurately control an arm for example and it really wasn't that much i mean you basically need in the end you you have different like vector uh neurons like one neuron that says one signal that says oh go up and another one that says like go right you know and maybe it turns off so so really and it wasn't that many and and it was it was um i i can't remember so maybe some scientific listeners are going to be like oh this is absolutely wrong but let's say let's say it's like 6 to 15 neurons you know to accurately map and have uh be able to control a robotic arm so you only need a few neurons to be able to do this so having a hundred for example might increase the smoothness might increase the quality a little bit um but that difference it's not let's say 10 times better and then if you have a thousand neurons it's not going to get 10 times better it's already smooth it's already you know uh well defined and everything like this so so that is very much the case is uh you know having a neurons a million neurons uh connected you know to a device is that going to be you know a thousand times better than having a thousand neurons so and and it's it there's kind of like a limit that you reach and and so the the consensus is like yeah no it's it really you only need a few you only need a handful and the computer can you know decipher everything and the brain is also very plastic and the brain is also able to learn uh and and then it can you know basically learn to communicate with this device and uh see so you don't need that many actually right yeah uh but i guess my point was when it comes to mobile phone we have like a market of 8 billion people and that's driving a lot of investment and i think control of robotic arms is very very useful for say people who are paraplegic but uh i'm not sure if that will drive the kinds of investments that's needed to push this technology to sort of bring us vision from the matrix and um and we'll ultimately want to have some end user benefit uh for for this to happen um are you aware of anyone who's working on end user applications and not like medical or therapy yeah so uh that that is definitely true i mean there's not that many paraplegics in the world there's not that many amputees in the world you know uh you're right you need something for the masses something that's gonna um benefit you know at least half the people in the in the world so i i i completely agree and what's exciting for me actually and the reason a little bit i like the peripheral nerve is um peripheral nerve system is because there's something called bioelectronic medicine and basically again our old friend the vagus nerve uh if they're finding that simulating this the vagus nerve connects from the body from the brain to many organs in the body as well and so uh by stimulating this and if you can stimulate certain parts you can also stimulate the the functions of the organs and so for example um the pancreas you know and and liver to create more insulin for example in diabetics uh this is something that that would be possible and uh you know i've talked to researchers that have done these kind of studies and so that that to me is the more exciting thing um uh there there was a joint venture between uh glaxosmithkline and google and you know called galvani and basically this was this was meant to do this to be able to look into i guess replacing pharmaceuticals pharmaceutical drugs with uh neurostimulators and these would go into the organs and you can imagine the the benefits would be much much better i mean you're not flooding your body with uh chemicals you know god knows what what kind of uh side effects there are what other parts of the body you know they're they're uh interacting with it for example you want some kind of pancreas uh medication um it's instantaneous you know you could you could turn it on and the the uh the effect is is happening right away versus many drugs might even take you know ssris depression drugs they take weeks to start taking uh uh effect so it can be it can be um you know beneficial for that too and yeah i mean again the side effects uh it's it's only affecting you know that part of the body um and it's more precise you can uh have better metrics you can actually measure better what's what's going on why it's going you can find maybe find the um the reasoning behind it so that's the that's the exciting thing for me and uh that to me is kind of like what the masses of my uh might be interested in is uh you go to the doctor instead of getting tablets uh you get you know a stimulator that that uh maybe fixes uh fixes an organ or something like this and then that's the thing is like after a while it can be fixed maybe you don't need it after you know a few weeks or something like that so um yeah there's there's a few companies that are working on this kind of stuff uh but it is a little bit more early days and again the the results aren't as good as we might hope uh but but i guess they are working on it yeah i mean this is so interesting uh ultimately cells in our bodies communicate electrically and chemically and i think for for an entire sort of his history pharmaceutical has been invested into the chemical mode of treatment but uh i think if we can somehow electrically communicate with different cells in the body and get them to do things that are beneficial for us i guess that is huge uh i think that will be like as you just say the smartphone revolution if someone is able to sort of nail that down yeah for sure and and i mean uh if if the organ is connected to the brain if there is some kind of you know sensory input then than it is you know it is connected to the brain there's no standalone organs that just kind of float there without any any input from from anybody else so so yeah but i i completely agree like we've been focusing on this chemical side and but there's this electrical side that we've completely ignored and in the end what they're finding is is actually we need the combination we it you have much much better um results when you when you have both and which again makes sense you're going from both sides so it might not be something that where you completely replace pharmaceuticals but maybe you make them two three five times more uh powerful or strong or fast or something like this as well right uh so in terms of progress uh in your experience um does academia is academia right now pushing the field forward uh or is it the startups commercial ventures or is it sort of like a bit of both yeah i would say it's it's probably still academia uh pushing things but i think there's kind of a switch there's kind of a transfer going on right now and it's starting to be more um companies and startups and and there's a lot of startups being founded and i would say more uh lately let's say in the last five years something like that so so i think there is something that's uh enabling this and it's starting to be a little bit more uh realistic or feasible for a lot of these things better results i guess um and actually this year has been really uh really big for investment into companies so a lot of companies have gotten tens of millions of dollars of investment for different you know series a series b and so they've gotten a lot of progress and much more in previous years actually um i think i think it was i was just talking to somebody and and this year or sorry 2021 there was more investment than the last you know five years before that you know combined so so uh there's a there's a big thing and then obviously i mean um elon musk has entered the entered the uh you know the match and and with his company neuralink has brought a lot of attention to it and you know i think i think that's a really good thing as well like i think i i really like most of most of the stuff that he does and he kind of has this magic touch and so uh that brings more attention which is more money which which is i think why there's so much more money in the field so i don't know we'll see time will tell but but it definitely is going to more this is a self-sustaining uh role which is what i was talking about before right i mean you mentioned neural link and that is the next thing i wanted to discuss uh i mean everyone i mean a lot of people saw the demo of the monkey uh like controlling pong using brain but uh from what i've read most of the sort of industry insiders were not very sort of impressed because similar things has been demonstrated by academia for so many years before uh so do you think there's a i mean that is a bit unfair the amount of attention neural link gets uh does it take away attention from other interesting projects that are happening or have happened uh no i would say actually that that it brings more attention to uh to the other projects i mean for example i don't know how many of your listeners knew that there were already people with brain implants that could move robotic arms with their thoughts um but i think now because of neuralink there there could be more tension on this kind of stuff like in in a video or an explanation of what neural link does they're gonna also be explaining what the state of the art is and um yeah i mean i agree like looking at the videos and uh watching the updates um it's all been done before and even like you know 10 20 years ago a long time ago so so it's nothing new but i think they did do a really good job of integrating it and and a lot of their work uh i think it was done to a better quality or not quality but like you could tell that that there was more uh channels more more neurons you know uh for for the monkey pong uh because it was just such a smooth um movement and it was very fast and very very clear i think and then maybe some of the um uh the demonstrations before 10 20 years ago they were a little bit more like clunky and didn't really move as well uh so so it really is like i'd say it's it's maybe similar to like the the wright brothers you know airplane their their biplane you know they're flying and then like a world war one uh biplane which is you know maybe slightly faster it you know it is better but it's still not a jet it's still not like you know um a huge leap forward it's a slight leap forward um but i think they've done very good work integrating everything and that that's that's the benefit of you know i mean they got 200 million dollars investment that's the benefit of having 200 million dollars is uh you don't have to be like a lab that only has maybe a two million dollar um grant money uh and and you have maybe eight students working on something you can have 80 people working on something and from all different fields and integrate it all together and then that way it's not just kind of a piecemeal thing it's all already working together and i think that's the big benefit and then based on what i saw there their sciences is like i'm just like wow this is literally the best of everything and uh they they don't waste time on you know going down uh the wrong path i guess you're optimistic about neural links sort of pushing the field forward yeah yeah i i would say so i mean like honestly if they can't do it then you know the there's very little hope for the rest of us i would say because uh they're also i think attracting some of the best talent and and honestly that's the currency in in this field that is the talent um the people the hard-working people that that uh you know make it happen and you know having a smart researcher having like one really smart researcher could be could be worth you know like half the company and uh obviously then there's the money as well um so so that those two talented money and this is i think something that neuralink uh has tons of and and other companies uh they wish they could have it but at the same time they have a hard time retaining talent yeah so it's like a revolving door people are always leaving so um that's that's right and most of their co-founders have left beat scientists or even max hodak who was actually the president of the company so um yeah i think so i think it's a i mean it's it's a it's a it's a pressure cooker right and uh those but that that's that's the case with all i think uh elon musk companies and and uh there there's a lot of people that don't like them don't like the the approach because i think if you're actually living in it it's it's not pleasant and it's not maybe good uh maybe it's like against what you've been trained to do and i think especially as scientists uh scientists were a little bit more um methodical and and perfectionist and and uh wanted to make sure that you don't make a claim unless it's absolutely true and you know versus versus this is a little bit uh a little bit more like aspirational or um a little bit more uh business hyperbolic exactly business and you fake it till you make it and then you know kind of famously you know steve jobs was uh first time he demoed the iphone it was a barely functioning prototype and they had no way of like making millions of them but they did by the time by the time they were ordered by the time it was it was listed uh they had figured out all the bugs and everything like this so that's that that's kind of this mentality uh that that they're bringing to this which you know for medical devices uh not necessarily the best uh but but i think it is a valid and and um you know you you're kind of you're projecting into the future and then you're kind of falling into it as as time goes on and uh but but as i said it's much slower than computation it's it's again like five times slower than you know computation and and technology devices you know uh so that uh leaning into things is kind of like okay it takes much longer it's not like if steve jobs uh showed a iphone you know a barely functioning prototype that would mean okay in five years we're going to have actual functioning prototype versus you know six months uh i think how actually was so um the timelines are different i guess right right so of course elon musk's eventual motivation is what he calls merging with ai that's why he's working on it what do you make of it i mean i uh i fully i mean i don't understand what it means but we have a take on this yeah so he's basically saying that ai will eventually rule the world and they will become our robot overlords uh and then they'll crush us like an ant um that that will be eventually so weak and powerless because it's gonna be so much smarter more powerful than us that uh it's gonna destroy us um i think that is uh kind of unfounded i think uh it's a tool essentially and and like any tool a tool is neutral you know a hammer can be used for good it can be used for evil you can use it to you know build a house or you can use it to kill somebody uh it really depends on the user and um i think at that point eventually we'll have if there is an evil you know actor if there is an evil person uh then there'd be so much more good people to stop that with those tools um to be able to stop that so i think it's i think it's a bit unfounded and uh because uh as tools they're inherently neutral um so his his idea is that the best way to control it is to be able to be a part of it and to be almost like to be able to go into the matrix and that way we have more bandwidth more control over what's going on so we don't have to rely on typing we can you know with our thoughts tell to do something or whatever so so that's kind of the um the idea behind it uh again i think that's that's a little bit i don't know silly or it's a little bit uh hyperbolic i mean if the ai is literally a thousand times smarter than us if one ai unit is as smart as collectively the whole human race and all all humans on earth then you know it's it's really not going to do much uh benefit to to be able to connect with it and you know potentially not even understand what's going on uh so so it is it does improve you know the communication and i guess control over it but it you know by a factor of um you know years or something like this if if again the computation is doubling every every few years so um i think i think it's a bit yeah hyperbolic because it's a bit much at the moment but like you know whatever gets him to invest in it whatever gets him to to have attention bring attention to this field because um i think i think you know there could be something there and again we could be living in the matrix you know that that could be fun yeah so i wanted to sort of sum up our conversation um conclude it on the note of matrix and get your view on it i mean when most people think of brain machine interfaces i guess the first image that pops in to their mind is being in the matrix and being in living in some sort of a virtual reality that feels like almost living in the physical reality so do you expect that to happen in lifetimes yeah uh i mean to an extent uh i i the matrix is a is a big inspiration for me in my introductory episode you know i play clips from from the movie because uh it's just it's just so cool and um for me the most interesting thing is is probably the learning uh and again like uh being able to learn kung fu in a few seconds just like uh neo did in the movie um i think i think that's very very interesting but again i don't i don't know if that's necessary to have brain computer interfaces to be able to do this and uh for example i don't know if you've ever used uh virtual reality like oculus but they've gotten really good and and i use it i remember i use it once in 2016 i'm just like oh yeah this is this is fine but i used one last year 2021 and i was very very surprised how good it was and how realistic it is and you know and again we're still maybe in terms of computer graphics everything like this we're probably still in 90s for this kind of stuff so we have a long way to go and things are going to get very very realistic very real uh pretty soon and i don't think we necessarily need to have uh brain interfaces to be able to do this we could have haptics we could have a vest that you know like kind of vibrates what if you get shot in a shooting game or something like that and that might be good enough and and you know even even with my vr set like uh the first few times i used it coming out of it uh you're a little bit confused for a little bit like whoa is this real life like what's going on and uh so i think we'll we'll eventually get to such good quality with this um but i mean who knows like maybe maybe there will be an aspect of this like some kind of neural implants that that makes it even more real maybe so you can smell stuff maybe maybe that's that's the yeah the benefit or something like this yeah i don't know i mean yeah i mean you're right i think our senses are so rich i mean eyes provide so much of information to the brain that perhaps providing through eyes information into the brain is much better than plugging into the cortex visual cortex and i guess with companies like apple working on virtual reality augmenting it reality maybe uh that will be the path to getting into the matrix versus getting a literal neural implant yeah yeah yeah we'll see we'll see i mean it's uh i think it's it's a break glass in case of emergency kind of thing and and um you know the the people that are gonna be willing to do the implants again going back to what i said is is the ones that need it you know again the paraplegics uh maybe somebody who's very sick um and then i think we'll start with that and then as it becomes more widespread as the benefits become clear then uh maybe maybe somebody might have a um a voluntary one uh but but we'll see we'll see that's yeah this is an exciting uh note to end our conversation thanks so much uh for getting on this podcast and doing an interview with me um i'll i'll link to your podcast in the notes and if you could send the link that you were talking about with the list of companies in this area i'll link to that also excellent yeah thanks so much for having me on this has been a pleasure yeah thank you and have a great day bye bye take care you Back To Top