WEBVTT - BONUS: Would You Put Neuralink In Your Brain? 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:06.840 Well, Elon Muski is now the richest person on the planet. 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:10.000 More than half the satellites in space are owned and 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:12.040 controlled by one man. 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:16.440 Starting his own artificial intelligence company. Well, he's a legitimate, 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:20.520 super genius. Legitimate, he says. He's always voted for Democrats, 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:21.960 but this year it will be different. 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:23.000 He'll vote Republican. 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.720 There is a reason the US government is so reliant 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:26.160 on him. 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.920 Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:33.280 Anything he does is fascinating the people. 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:47.680 Hello, and welcome to bonus episode of Elaning. I'm David Papadopolos, 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:50.400 your host of the show, where we discuss Elon Musk's 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:54.000 vast corporate empire, his latest gambits and antics, and how 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:57.000 to make sense of it all. We are coming to 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:00.280 you twice this week. Trust me. Now, this be a 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.200 regular thing, but we have something really special to share. 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:09.039 Elon Musk. Biographer and BusinessWeek reporter Ashley Vance has written 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.640 a cover story for the magazine on Neuralink, Musk's biotech 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:16.600 startup that makes SpaceX goal to go to Mars look pedestrian. 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.040 This company aims to do nothing less than put chips 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.840 in human brains. Here's how Musk explained the idea back 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.200 in twenty nineteen at the Neuralink launch event. 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:30.279 Meaning that we can ultimately. 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.480 Yeah, those are gonna sound pretty weird, but achieve a 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.920 sort of symbiosis with artificial intelligence. 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:40.920 Ashley has gotten exclusive access to Neuralink's labs and has 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:45.280 done intensive reporting on what is and isn't happening inside 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:49.720 one of Musk's most controversial companies. To discuss this and more, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:54.600 we've beamed him in from powel alto Welcome Ashley, Thanks 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.920 for having me. We've also got with us Sarah McBride, 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:05.120 who covers Neuralink for Bloomberg. Hello, Sarah, Thanks so Ashley. 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:09.320 We'll start with you. You spent lots of time inside 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:13.360 the lab these past few years for this story. You know, 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.680 hit me with your with your main findings. I should 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.160 I be, should I in humanity be more excited than 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:23.760 scared about all this? Or vice versa? 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:27.360 Well, I think you know. 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.200 My big takeaway is that neuralinks a little bit different 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.600 that Elon has been pitching it for the last couple 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.600 of years. Elon always brings us as like this big 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:40.760 leap forward and creating cyborgs between between humans and machines, 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:44.240 and you know that that billions of people are gonna 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:46.799 put their hand up to have this elective surgery to 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.600 put a brain implant into their heads. The reality is, 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:54.600 you know, for the foreseeable future, this device really will 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.240 be aimed at people in the worst you know, suffering 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:01.720 from very debilitating conditions like prows, the strokes, als, things 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:06.360 like that, and this brain implant has the promise of 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:10.160 helping them communicate with their loved ones, to use a computer, 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:13.880 possibly even to when they're paralyzed, to get sensation and 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.240 movement back in their limbs. And so, you know, this 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:18.400 was my big takeaway from the story is that, in 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.839 typical Elon fashion, he's kind of presented this thing in 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:26.000 its most fanciful terms, but the actual reality of it 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:29.040 is very exciting and just just more pragmatic and aimed 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:30.440 at a different group of people. 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:35.000 You also have Musk quoted in here talking about how 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.360 down the road, the reason why this thing all has 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:41.840 to happen super fast is to stave off and defeat 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:45.640 artificial intelligence. The quote is, we need to get there 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.040 before the AI takes over. We want to get there 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:54.920 with a maniacal sense of urgency maniacal. I mean, Sarah, 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:55.680 help me here. 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:01.920 I'd say maniacal is on target. He's definitely reporting. He's 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:06.960 just pushing those employees so hard to move fast. And 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:09.360 you have to be a little bit maniacal to talk 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:14.160 about putting implants in somebody's brain. One thing that surprised 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.280 me when I started reporting on neuralink was how many 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:21.360 thousands of people are walking around this earth with implants 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.960 in their brains already. But what he wants to do 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:28.880 is just far more ambitious than some of these other 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:35.040 companies which are really specialized. These chips might fix episodes 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.240 of epilepsy, for example, or help somebody with Parkinson's, and 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:40.599 his ambitions are just so much broader than that. 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:42.680 Yeah, So talk to me for a second about what 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:47.320 the rest of the industry looks like. There are companies 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.960 out there that are ahead of neuralink, Sarah. 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:54.080 Yeah, in some ways. In some ways, there are companies 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:58.560 that you know, for years have put implants in people's brains. 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:01.520 They some of them have been very ugly and required 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:05.159 you to only use them in lab settings. You might 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.640 have some sort of protrusion from the back of your 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:13.560 head while using these what Elan Musk has done has 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:18.560 kind of raised the standards, so that now baseline for 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.080 anybody who's trying to make an implant is it has 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:25.640 to be invisible. It has to be hidden under the 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.599 skin of your scalp at the very least. That's table 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:33.200 stakes now. And because he's interested, hundreds and hundreds of 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.520 millions of dollars have flown into this space. 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.359 Yeah, to that point on the difference between what he's 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:41.919 doing and what others have done so far already. You know, 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:46.040 Ashley in the piece, you call it the world's most 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.360 powerful and elegant brain implant. 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:53.800 Why well, you know, to Sarah's point, the existing devices, 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.560 if you look at some of their immediate competitors, just 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.880 in terms of raw computer horsepower, the typical devices have 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:04.039 about sixteen electrodes on these these thin wires that get 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:08.239 embedded somewhere in your body, and neuralinksaplant will have more 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:10.160 than a thousand, you know, I mean, this is just 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.719 a huge leap forward in terms of computing. And then 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:16.000 also to Sarah's point, you know, the other devices have 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.800 a separate, very large hardware unit that contains the battery 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:25.240 computing systems to amplify signals coming from your brain. Neuralink 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.360 has baked everything into a quarter sized device that fits 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:34.640 completely flush with your skull and is rechargeable wirelessly, So 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:37.280 you know, it's much closer to like what you would 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:40.600 think of with a consumer electrotronics product, whereas everything else 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:44.360 really looks like it's come from a research laboratory of. 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:49.080 The existing products. But there are also several companies in development. 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.320 There's you know, at least one other precision neuroscience that's 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.320 also working on over one thousand electrodes. So you can 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:01.240 see a future where there'll be many companies with variations 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.480 on this theme, and maybe Neuralink will have more of 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.159 something and another company will have more of something else. 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.160 So the ideas we're going to stave off as muscas, 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:13.920 that we're going to stave off sci fi, and we're 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.560 gonna defeat AI with this, and we're going to defeat 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:19.680 the bots. I guess my question is if I'm having 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:23.000 an implant put in my brain in which I am, 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:27.360 information is being downloaded in my brain and so there's 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.000 this flow back and forth, isn't there not the risk 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.760 that I become essentially controlled, I become a bot myself. 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.920 This is the central flow with most of Elon's AI. 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:41.000 You know, shoebag I me he this is a guy 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:46.000 who says AI might ruin the human species and send 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:48.720 us all into doom. And yet you know he's He's 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:52.680 funded now too. AI research startups. Tesla has as many 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.600 AI researchers as you could possibly have. 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.680 Remember when pacemakers came out and people predicted that those 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.880 with pacemakers would die in their thousands when people took 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:06.680 over their pacemakers and turned them off, and that just 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:09.400 never happened. I mean not to say it won't, right, 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:16.680 but I sometimes think the worst case scenarios are over dramatized, 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.680 and then the medium and poor case scenarios, or I 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:24.239 think there's far more chance that things will go mildly wrong. 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.600 All right now, Sarah, they have not put any of 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.360 these in any humans human heads yet, plenty of animal heads, 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.480 no human heads. But Sarah, there is no shortage of 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:39.839 Volunteers's right. 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:42.160 You can go on to acts and see them people 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:47.200 tweeting at Elon musk Hey I volunteer. Several years ago, 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:50.320 when Neuralink was at a much earlier phase, somebody who 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:55.000 worked there said they regularly got messages from people sometimes 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:59.240 people standing outside the door of the offices then saying 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:04.360 that they volunteer. And also there are lots of really 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:09.680 sick people whose doctors are recommending they try various trials 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.439 that are along these lines. So I think they can, 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:17.280 through legitimate medical channels, find people who are willing to 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.720 try one of these. And no, they haven't been in 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:24.800 human brains yet, and some of the other companies started 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.720 by people who used to work at Neuralink have already had, 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.439 Like Precision Neuroscience was just in a human brain, albeit 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:36.520 very briefly in a hospital surgical setting. But in some 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:40.800 ways they're behind some of these other next generation companies 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:41.520 all right now. 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:45.960 But actually, if I remember correctly, they have been. Neuralink 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.920 has been and is in the brains of monkeys, pigs, 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:52.480 and sheep. And there have been a lot of reports 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:57.679 out there from our competitors about cruelty to animals and 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:01.160 how they've been excessive in many cases. At neuralink, what 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:03.680 did you find during your reporting. 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.400 I mean, animal testing is unpleasant. You know, we've sort 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:09.640 of made a choice as a species that we're going 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:12.560 to do this kind of thing, and there's no getting 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:15.440 around that. The actual care that the animals had that. 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:17.600 I saw the monkeys, the sheep, the pigs, they have 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.800 things to play with. It's mostly volunteer, you know, So 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:23.840 just so people understand, I mean, I was in a 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:27.640 room with monkeys sitting in front of laptop screens while 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.520 they were playing games using their their thoughts. 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:33.440 I think you wrote Ashley that it's even it looks 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.960 even weirder than it sounds. It sounds pretty weird. 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:37.680 I mean, it's pretty strange to go to room with 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.400 a bunch of bunkies on laptops and you know, sometimes 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:43.080 they're using their their hands and sometimes they're just using 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:46.360 their thoughts to move these cursors around the screen. They 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.079 just kind of go and sit in front of the 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.040 screen and they have a smoothie that they can pick 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.040 from an iPad what kind of smoothie they want. Well, 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.720 they while they do their test. When they're finished, they 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:57.360 don't want to do it anymore. They just they just 0:10:57.440 --> 0:10:58.000 kind of leave. 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.360 During the reporting over these several years, you saw some 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:03.760 of the monkeys throughout that time, right. 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:06.199 Yeah, I mean this has been one of the contentions, 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.400 is that the neuralink, you know, was rushing these procedures. 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:12.079 The stories make it sound like they were sort of 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.560 dying all the time. All I can tell you is 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.760 that I saw the same group of seventeen monkeys over 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.040 three years, and they were always the same, and they 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.040 appeared healthy and were doing their tests. 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:24.520 And that's what I saw. 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.240 And just to be clear, Neuralink stresses that the most 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.199 troubling reports come from its early years before it built 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.600 its own testing facility in Fremont, and it says it's 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:36.360 gone to great lengths to provide better living conditions there. 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.920 I went to the old UC Davis Neuralink facility and 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:45.520 they drove me around the outside pens only. I was 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:49.200 not allowed to go inside where the actual experiments and 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.720 research was taking place. And I think that's telling that 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.920 they just didn't allow reporters in that area at all. 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:59.080 And it sounds like what you saw was very different. 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.040 I think there's a big difference between how are the 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:06.959 animals cared for and how is the surgery done? And 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:11.480 a lot of the reporting indicated many of the mistakes 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:15.360 were during the surgeries, unfortunately, and that's a whole different 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.040 team from the people who actually take care of the animals, 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:21.080 which is totally true, Ashley. 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.920 There are in the story. There are scenes of what 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.120 I call musk speed, where he just wants to go go, go. 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.439 Back to the maniacal aspect of it. How does musk 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:32.720 speed and that we got to go a million miles 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.480 an hour square and jive with treeding the animals? 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:40.000 Okay, well, you know, mostly at the point they're at now. 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:42.840 I mean, he just wants to barrel forward with this 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:46.079 clinical trial on the humans, and so musk speed is 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.080 kind of a I don't just want to implant one person. 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.160 I want to ride out of the gate implant as 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:54.720 many as possible. And so I was in some meetings 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.240 where you know, these poor lieutenants had the job of 0:12:57.400 --> 0:12:59.800 telling Elon that was not going to be possible, and 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:02.679 I think, you know, as a quote in there age 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.000 just as unacceptable, you know, when he's told that they'll 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:07.840 only be able to implant one one human out of 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:12.400 the get go. My overall impression is that, you know, 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:14.960 these stories are hard to read. All I can tell 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.040 you is that my overall impression is that people were 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:19.440 looking out for the welfare of the animals, and they're 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:21.240 all trying to sort of get to this place where 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.719 they can help humans who are in pretty dire circumstances, 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.440 and you know, Elon does add a lot of pressure, 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:30.960 and so you know there's the chance for kind of 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.839 irrational decisions to happen in that. But I did come away, 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:36.440 you know, impressed overall. 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:38.600 So at the same time, right, so moving away from 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:40.800 the animals to the humans, right, you have musk speed 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:42.920 on the one hand, and then on the other hand, 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.480 you have all the risks that come with this as 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.960 they start going, especially in the human brains. You have 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:52.720 the director of Special Projects there at Neuralink, Shavonzilla, saying 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.720 in your piece, we can't blow up the first three 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.880 being brains. I e. This is not SpaceX putting rockets 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:05.440 up into space. That's not an option here. You also 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:07.480 go on to say, and this is in your own words, 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:10.480 you say, you know, God, if you know chemicals started 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.440 leaking into the brain, which is a frightening thought. I mean, 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:17.680 how great is the risk here in terms of legal 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:19.520 risks and so on. 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:23.960 Well, I mean this is about as risky as it gets, 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:25.640 you know, I mean, if something goes wrong. This is 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:30.120 Historically Elon's companies have had false starts. SpaceX did blow 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.840 up its first three rockets. It took Tesla almost a 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:34.479 decade to be able to mass. 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:35.160 Produce a car. 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.200 You know, there's really not that same sort of room 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.240 for error because this first person presumably will be able 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.280 to communicate on some level, you know, with the outside 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:48.960 where they're going to be paralyzed, but they likely can 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:51.960 just talk and tell us their experience with this implant. 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:57.680 They had to submit fifteen thousand pages of tests data 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.680 and other data to the FDA, which is, you know, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.920 just even more than a rocket to get this. To 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:06.720 get this approved, I saw some strange machines that they 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:09.680 had built to put the implant through, you know, to 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:13.000 simulate five ten years of use in this kind of 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.680 synthetic brain fluid that been that. 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:16.440 They had created. 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.520 And so but you know, yeah, this I think it's 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:22.160 kind of like a make or break moment in some ways. 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:24.000 That was the point I was trying to get at. 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:32.760 So Ashley, we quoted Shavon Zillis talking about the risk 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:36.320 of blowing up brains here. Now, there is some funkiness 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:41.000 here that's made some in the corporate governance world and 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:45.360 in the investing world a little uneasy because she and 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:53.200 Elon have twins together. What's that situation like they're inside 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:57.600 inside the company, and how loud at this point are 0:15:57.640 --> 0:15:59.200 the critics speaking. 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:04.920 You know, Historically, Chavon has been this special projects kind 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.280 of person for Elon, jumping from from company to company 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:10.880 to work on different things, although she did focus on 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:15.600 Neuralink quite a bit for years. And Neuralink is essentially 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:18.280 run by I mean, Elon's the CEO, but he only 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.160 comes in and out every few weeks and it's basically 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:24.960 run by three people. It used to be four, including Chavon. 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:27.600 She's stepped away from the company a lot since she's 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:28.320 had the twins. 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:31.680 The company's shifted its base of. 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.520 Operations from Fremont, California to Austin, Texas, where Elon and 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:37.840 Chevon live, and so you know, that's kind of the 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.080 heart in the future of the company. I think there's 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:45.000 been a ton in the tabloids about Chavon and Elon's relationship. 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.320 It's clearly unusual, I think for investors. 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.480 I mean, Neuralinks had no problem raising money and it's 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:54.280 a it's a private company, and you know, like I say, 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:56.680 Chavon's kind of pulled away from a lot of the 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:58.400 day to day stuff that she used to do. 0:16:58.440 --> 0:16:58.640 There. 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.480 Sarah beck to you, you said, hundreds of millions of 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.840 dollars have been invested in this company, largely by Musk. 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:10.480 Any sense of its value now and where it stands 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:14.960 in the constellation of elon companies in terms of its 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.720 valuation and its place in that constellation. 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.960 Lusk gave I think the first hundred million dollars for 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.200 the company, and since then he has raised money from 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:31.199 other legitimate venture capital firms. So it's very hard to 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:35.160 tell what the actual valuation of the company would be. 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:39.640 I think medical device makers have this issue in general, 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:44.520 where their stock prices, if they're publicly traded, go up 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.879 and down, and nobody really knows until the device or 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:49.880 the jug of whatever it is they're trying to make 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.760 its final approval, and then you see a dramatic rise 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:56.439 in the valuation of the company. So it's sort of 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.560 foolish to try to guess what the valuation of Neuralink 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.879 would be at this point. Maybe there'll be a better 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:08.680 idea after it does finally go into some human brains. 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:11.440 And there is also a point I'd like to make 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:16.399 about this school of thought in brain implants neuralinks, trying 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:20.600 to get those electrodes as close as possible to neurons. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.359 But there are also a lot of very smart people 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.800 who believe that's the wrong philosophy. That it's like, if 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:28.879 you're looking at a painting and you go right up 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:30.960 and look at the job of paint, you're going to 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.359 have no idea what the painting's about. You need to 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:35.600 step back a little bit. So there are a lot 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:37.760 of people who think that the best place for the 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.400 electrodes is on the surface of the brain rather than 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:45.080 deep into the brain. And those companies have raised plenty 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.200 of money as well, and some of them are founded 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:52.560 by former neuralink people. So there are a lot of 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:57.359 smart people who think very different techniques will work for 0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:58.280 the same ends. 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:02.320 Yeah, to that end. Actually, there are also right in 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.439 the industry, there is a sense a little bit related 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.480 to musk speed. It doesn't publish scientific papers and journals 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:11.800 that could be tested and verified by the scientific community 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.199 the way others would. How much of that did you 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.159 encounter and those sort of doubts creeping in. 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:23.600 Well, you know, their only real form of communication with 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.400 the outside world over these last few years has been 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:29.840 these public demonstrations that they've done about three or four times, 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:32.920 and you know, each time they've kind of been knocked 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:37.440 for basically replicating science that had happened many years earlier 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:39.640 in a laboratory and just kind of showing that they 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:42.760 could do it as well. And so and then Elon 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:45.359 gets on stage and it says, you know, we're going 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:48.440 from this thing that's already been accomplished by somebody else 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:50.560 to you know, but we're going to surpass the ball 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:52.320 and by leaps and bounds. 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:54.720 So you know, the proof is in the putting. 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:56.640 I mean, the thing that I was most impressed by 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:00.520 is the surgical robot, which is this like work of 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.040 engineering arts, and nobody else really has. 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:05.879 Something comparable to that. And the device itself really is 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:07.240 like amazing. 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:09.160 I mean, it's a it's got a battery in there, 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.879 Neuralink makes their own semiconductors, it's got all these amplifiers 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:14.400 to send this. 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.080 Like the amount of equipment it's. 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:21.639 Replacing would be like a refrigerator sized stack of computing 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.439 hardware in this tiny thing. And so you know, to that, 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:27.880 to that end, like they have accomplished something. The huge 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.720 question is like what is this human actually going to 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:32.720 be able to do? And is it more than what 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:33.800 has come before? 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:38.000 All right. So this brings me to my last question, 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:43.359 which is on a scale of zero to ten, zero 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:51.439 being no way, ten being hell yeah. Would you be 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:53.240 up for having one of these things be put in 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:53.680 your brain? 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:58.120 Ashley Bands right now, no way. 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.760 If you're a sero, I'll take my rocket, my rocket 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.359 to the moon, first rocket. 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:10.800 Sarah McBride, Absolutely not, unless I was paralyzed. Then we'd 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:14.399 go from like zero right now to like seven. I 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:15.960 would totally consider it. 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:18.720 That's actually it's a fantastic boy. 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.080 I know Sarah begel this before because I've talked to 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:23.760 a couple of people who had spinal implants for the story, 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:27.320 and I mean they're like begging to get this done, 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:31.560 you know. So it does depend on your life circumstances 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:32.440 quite drastically. 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:35.520 Elon said at one point that if one of his 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.200 own children needed this device, he wouldn't hesitate for one 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:41.320 of his kids to have it if they needed it. 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:44.760 All right, So, personally, I'm not having this thing put 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.800 in my brain until I see the whites of the 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:53.760 eyes of the AI bots coming at me. All right, 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:56.919 that's it. Let's call it quits. Thanks for listening to 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:01.000 Elon Inc. And thanks to our special guests and. 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:03.840 Sarah, thanks so much, Thank you very much. 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:07.000 You can read Ashley's article in this week's issue of 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:18.760 BusinessWeek and at bloomberg dot com slash BusinessWeek. Our supervising 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:22.040 producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and this episode was produced by 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:26.800 Stacy Wan. Naomi Shaven and Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors. 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:31.199 The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan. 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:35.639 Blake Maples handles engineering, and we get special editing assistants 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:39.680 from Jeff Grocow thanks a bunch of BusinessWeek editor Joel 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:43.199 Weber as well. The elin ing theme is written and 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:48.720 performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiira. Sage Bauman is 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:52.680