89. Miracles

In Novem­ber 2022 at Neu­ralink, a com­pa­ny focused on advanc­ing brain-machine inter­faces, Elon Musk sig­naled a trans­for­ma­tive shift in the com­pa­ny’s objec­tives. Estab­lished in Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia, and expand­ed to Austin, Texas, Neu­ralink took root in a facil­i­ty pre­vi­ous­ly hous­ing a venue for axe-throw­ing and bowl­ing, revamped by Shiv­on Zilis to include sophis­ti­cat­ed labs and col­lab­o­ra­tive work­spaces. This strate­gic move was emblem­at­ic of Neu­ralink’s ambi­tious dri­ve toward ground­break­ing med­ical appli­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly for indi­vid­u­als with paral­y­sis.

Musk’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the slow progress, demon­strat­ed by a Mon­key’s abil­i­ty to play Pong via a brain chip—though visu­al­ly impressive—lacked sub­stan­tial impact on human­i­ty’s well-being. Con­se­quent­ly, Musk envi­sioned a more com­pelling appli­ca­tion: enabling par­a­lyzed indi­vid­u­als to regain con­trol over their limbs through direct brain com­mands. This ini­tia­tive promised to bypass spinal cord injuries or neu­ro­log­i­cal dys­func­tions, offer­ing a tan­gi­ble improve­ment in qual­i­ty of life. Such an inno­va­tion was not only about enhanc­ing human-com­put­er inter­ac­tion but fun­da­men­tal­ly restor­ing human capa­bil­i­ties, a mis­sion that Musk deemed “a fuck­ing bold thing. And a good thing.”

The ded­i­ca­tion to this cause was evinced by the rou­tine involve­ment of Musk him­self, who made week­ly vis­its to over­see devel­op­ments. Lead engi­neer Jere­my Baren­holtz exem­pli­fied the team’s tech­ni­cal exper­tise and com­mit­ment to Musk’s vision. Edu­cat­ed at Stan­ford and still youth­ful in appear­ance, Baren­holtz rep­re­sent­ed the inno­v­a­tive spir­it at Neu­ralink. His expla­na­tion of mus­cle-stim­u­la­tion method­olo­gies and the uncon­ven­tion­al hypoth­e­sis regard­ing neur­al sig­nal trans­mis­sion high­light­ed the pio­neer­ing research under­way.

A piv­otal moment in real­iz­ing this vision was show­cased through a demon­stra­tion involv­ing two pigs, Cap­tain and Ten­nille, who exhib­it­ed con­trolled leg move­ments trig­gered by elec­tri­cal sig­nals. This exper­i­ment under­scored the poten­tial to dis­tin­guish between vol­un­tary mus­cle actu­a­tion and invol­un­tary pain respons­es, a cru­cial dis­tinc­tion for the suc­cess of Musk’s ambi­tion. Neu­ralink’s efforts, there­by, not only aimed at bridg­ing the gap between minds and machines but also sought to pro­found­ly alter the lives of those affect­ed by paral­y­sis, embody­ing a leap toward what many would con­sid­er a mir­a­cle.