65. Neuralink

The chap­ter “Neu­ralink: 2017–2020” encom­pass­es the evo­lu­tion of human-com­put­er inter­faces and intro­duces Neu­ralink, a com­pa­ny found­ed by Elon Musk aimed at sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanc­ing these inter­ac­tions. The ini­tial por­tion of the chap­ter pro­vides a his­tor­i­cal overview of human-com­put­er inter­ac­tion advance­ments, high­light­ing con­tri­bu­tions from pio­neers such as J.C.R. Lick­lid­er, Doug Engel­bart, and Steve Jobs, among oth­ers. The nar­ra­tive quick­ly shifts to a more per­son­al anec­dote involv­ing Musk’s frus­tra­tion with the slow input-out­put speeds between humans and machines, serv­ing as a cat­a­lyst for Neu­ralink’s incep­tion.

Elon Musk’s vision for Neu­ralink was not mere­ly the­o­ret­i­cal but was deeply influ­enced by sci­ence fic­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly Iain Banks’ “Cul­ture” series, which fea­tures a tech­nol­o­gy called “neur­al lace” that inter­twines human thoughts with com­pu­ta­tion­al devices. This inspi­ra­tion drove Musk toward the prac­ti­cal real­iza­tion of a brain-com­put­er inter­face to facil­i­tate a seam­less infor­ma­tion flow between humans and machines, poten­tial­ly safe­guard­ing human­i­ty from the threats posed by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

Neu­ralink aimed to devel­op a chip that could be implant­ed into the human brain to estab­lish a direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion path­way with com­put­ers. The tech­nol­o­gy’s foun­da­tions were built on the Utah Array but intend­ed to sur­pass its capa­bil­i­ties sig­nif­i­cant­ly by enabling thou­sands of chan­nels for neu­ron activ­i­ty detec­tion. Elon Musk’s ambi­tious goal was cou­pled with prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions, envi­sion­ing ini­tial uses for indi­vid­u­als with neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders to inter­act with com­put­ers more effec­tive­ly.

The sto­ry then delves into the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges and break­throughs Neu­ralink faced, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of “neur­al dust” by DJ Seo and the con­tri­bu­tion of Shiv­on Zilis, who took on a piv­otal role with­in the com­pa­ny. The chap­ter recounts the unveil­ing of Neu­ralink’s tech­nol­o­gy, show­cas­ing a pig named Gertrude as a proof of con­cept, and con­cludes with the chal­lenges of minia­tur­iz­ing the chip with­out com­pro­mis­ing its func­tion­al­i­ty. Musk’s insis­tence on sim­plic­i­ty and ele­gance in design led to sig­nif­i­cant redesigns, push­ing the team towards a sin­gle-chip solu­tion with no exter­nal con­nec­tions.

Elon Musk’s hands-on involve­ment and his dri­ve for inno­va­tion are depict­ed as cru­cial fac­tors in Neu­ralink’s progress, cul­mi­nat­ing in a suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy with a mon­key named Pager, who could play the video game Pong through brain sig­nals alone. This advance­ment under­lines the chap­ter’s core themes of human-com­put­er sym­bio­sis, Musk’s vision­ary lead­er­ship, and the relent­less pur­suit of tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs that could rede­fine human­i­ty’s future.