Elon Musk Shows Latest Neuralink Demo of Monkey Typing with its Mind

Dec 1, 2022

Biology

Speaker 1: I’ve often said that prototypes are easy, production is hard. Um, it’s really, I’d say a hundred to a thousand times harder to go from, go from a prototype to a device that is, uh, safe, reliable, works under a wide range of circumstances, is affordable, um, and down at scale. It’s, it’s insanely difficult.

Um, I mean, there’s an old saying that you, that it’s 1% inspiration, [00:00:30] 99% perspiration, but I think it might be 99%, 99.9% perspiration. Um, the best example I could give of an idea being easy if the execution being hard is going to the moon. It’s, uh, the idea of going to the moon easy, going to the moon, very hard Speaker 2: <laugh>.

Speaker 1: So, um, and, uh, we’ve been working hard to, uh, be ready for our first human. And obviously we wanna be extremely careful, [00:01:00] uh, and certain that, that it will work well before putting a device in a human. But we’re, we’re submitted, I think most of our paperwork to the fda, and we’re, we’re, we think probably in about six months, we should be able to have our host neural link in a human.

So, woo. Speaker 1: But as I said, we, we, we do everything we possibly can to [00:01:30] test the devices before, uh, not even, not, not even going into a human before even going into, uh, an animal. So we do benchtop testing, we do accelerator, accelerated life testing.

Uh, we have, uh, a fake brain simulator, uh, that has the, the texture and, uh, it’s like emulating a brain, but sort of rubber and, uh, so any, before we would even think of putting it a ice in an animal, [00:02:00] we, we do everything we possibly can with rigorous bench, bench top testing. So we’re not cavalier and putting devices into animals. Uh, we we’re extremely careful.

And, uh, we, we always want the device whenever we do the implant, uh, if it’s in a sheep or a pig or, um, monkey to be confirmatory, um, not exploratory. So that we, like we, we’ve, we’ve done everything we possibly [00:02:30] can with bench top testing. And, and only then would we consider putting a device in an animal.

Um, and, uh, yeah, we, we’ll actually show you a demo later today of, in a few hours really of, uh, of implanting in a brain proxy. Um, and if anyone the audience wants to volunteer, uh, we have a robot right there. Speaker 1: So let’s say since since the pager demo, uh, we’ve expanded to work with a troop of [00:03:00] six monkeys.

Uh, we’ve, uh, we’ve actually upgraded pager. Um, they do varied tasks, um, and we do everything possible to ensure that, that things are stable and re replicable and that things la that the device last for a long time, uh, without degradation. So <affirmative> and, uh, what you’re seeing there is, it looks like the matrix, but that, that’s, uh, actually, that’s a real output of, of neural signals, so that that’s, that’s [00:03:30] not a simulation or a just a screen saver or something that those are actual neurons inspiring.

That is one of the, what one of the readouts looks like. Speaker 1: And, um, here you can see, uh, sake, it’s one of other monkeys, uh, typing on a keyboard. Now he’s, this is telepathic typing, so to be clear, this is the, he’s [00:04:00] is not actually using a keyboard.

He’s moving the cursor with his mind, uh, to the highlighted key. Now, now, technically, um, uh, can’t, can’t actually spell and <laugh>, so I don’t wanna oversell this thing <laugh> because that’s, uh, that’s the next version. Um, um, so the, but what’s really cool here is, is, um, sake, the monkey is moving [00:04:30] the mouse cursor using just his mind, moving the cursor around to the highlighted key and then spelling out what we, what we want, what we wanted to spell.

But, um, and then, uh, so this, this is, uh, something that could be used for somebody who’s, who’s say, uh, quadriplegic or tetraplegic human, um, even before we make the, the spinal cord stuff work, is being able to [00:05:00] control a mouse cur control a phone. Um, and we we’re, we’re confident that you, that, uh, someone who is, has basically no other interface to the outside world would be able to, uh, control their phone better than someone who has working hands. So, wow.

Speaker 1: And I mentioned upgradability. Upgradability [00:05:30] is very important. Uh, cuz our first production device will be much like an iPhone one.

And, um, I’m pretty sure you would not want an iPhone one stuck in your head if the iPhone 14 is available. Um, <laugh>. So it’s gonna be, it’s um, being able to demonstrate full reversibility and upgradeability so you can remove a device and replace it with the latest version, or if, if it stopped working for any reason, um, replace it.

It’s, that’s, that’s [00:06:00] a fundamental, uh, requirement for the device at Neural Link. And I should say both sake and Page were upgraded to our latest and greatest implants. Uh, so, uh, that, that’s been really over a year and a half now that that pagers had the first implant and then the upgraded implant.

So this is a very good sign that it lasts for a long time with no, uh, observed Ill effect. I think it’s [00:06:30] also important to show that, um, psyche actually likes doing the demo, um, and is not like strap to the chair or anything <laugh>. So, uh, it’s, yeah.

So, um, the monkeys actually enjoy doing the demos cuz they, and they get the banana smoothie and it’s kind of a fun game.

So, um, I guess smart try make is like we care a great deal about animal <laugh>, welfare <laugh>, and um, [00:07:00] and uh, I’m pretty sure like our monkeys are pretty happy, you know, so as you can see, a quick decision maker on the fruit front.