According to news on November 8, on Tuesday local time in the United States, biographer Ashlee Vance published an article revealing that thousands of people are waiting in line to be implanted with Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company. Brain implants.
Neuralink is said to have performed 155 surgeries on sheep, pigs and monkeys in 2021, compared with 294 last year. But the company has yet to implant its device into humans. Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Neuralink for human trials of its device, which Elon Musk described as a “Fitbit for the skull.” In September, the company began recruiting volunteers for its first human trial.
Neuralink plans to perform 11 human surgeries next year, 27 in 2025, and 79 in 2026. Thereafter, the number of surgeries will jump from 499 in 2027 to 22,204 in 2030. The company expects annual revenue to reach $100 million within five years.
The following is the full text of the translation:
Elon Musk is preparing for the most important launch event of his career. But this time it’s not electric cars or rocket science, it’s brain surgery. Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company, is looking for volunteers for its first clinical trial, which means it’s looking for people willing to let surgeons remove a piece of their skull so a large robot can insert dozens of electrodes and ultra-thin wires into their brains. When the robot completes the surgery, the skull fragments will be replaced with dime-sized computers. The machine’s job would be to read and analyze a person’s brain activity, then wirelessly transmit that information to a nearby laptop or tablet.
For the purpose of this clinical trial, ideal candidates are adults under 40 years of age who are quadriplegic. Such patients might have Neuralink’s implant implanted into the hand knob area of their premotor cortex, which controls the hand, wrist and forearm. The goal is to demonstrate where the device can safely collect useful data from parts of a patient’s brain, a key step in Neuralink’s ability to translate human thoughts into a series of instructions that computers can understand.
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Several companies and research teams have created implants that help patients use their minds to perform basic tasks, such as clicking on objects on a screen with a cursor. But Neuralink’s goals appear to be even more ambitious. Over the past four years, starting with the company’s first public demonstration, it has felt as though there would soon be ubiquitous clinics where anyone could walk in and undergo about 15 minutes of robotic surgery, followed by a hybrid human-machine Come out in a physical way. These cyborgs will be able to download information like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, or upload their own thoughts into memory or even into the minds of other people. “It sounds weird, but eventually we’re going to have symbiosis with artificial intelligence,”Elon Musk said during the first demonstration in 2019. At the time, the company said human trials could begin in 2020.
Setting unrealistic timelines is one of Elon Musk’s favorite management techniques. To his credit, he ended up achieving several impossible dreams. But while rockets and cars are both important, neural implants require perfection on an entirely different level. Companies won’t rush to bring brain implants to market and hope for the best.
Two other companies, Synchron and Onward, are more than a year ahead of Neuralink in human trials of brain implants and related technologies. However, Neuralink has received more attention than previous decades of incremental (mostly academic) research, although not all praise. Some neuroscientists say Neuralink is hyping the technology. Animal rights groups accuse the company of cruel implant testing on monkeys, pigs and other mammals. The point is that Elon Musk, whose increasingly manic and reactionary online persona doesn’t make him the ideal candidate for mass-producing mind-control devices.
All of these concerns are legitimate. However, Neuralink’s trials are also exciting. The company seems to be making strides in this slow and steady field, and now it has made the world’s most powerful and highly anticipated brain implant. If this product lives up to expectations, future iterations could do wonders to improve the lives of millions of people suffering from paralysis, stroke, Lou Gehrig’s disease, hearing and vision loss. At the same time, Neuralink’s high popularity has caused investors to start looking for the next Neuralink.
Driven by Elon Musk, the Neuralink team has made considerable achievements in both technology and ambition. As they prepare for human trials, the pressure to succeed is like nothing Elon Musk has faced before. After all, it took Tesla years to mass-produce cars, and SpaceX’s first three rockets exploded. When it comes to the brain, “we can’t screw up the first three,” said Shivon Zilis, director of special projects at Neuralink. “That’s not an option for us in this area.”
The modern history of brain implants begins with technological advances in the 1990s. Normally, thinking causes neurons to fire in specific patterns, and these patterns remain somewhat consistent across the brain. In fact, when someone wants to move their arms and fingers, roughly the same neurons are activated regardless of whether they can move them. The brain fires in a similar way when people want to move the mouse cursor to click somewhere on the computer screen. The same goes for speaking: If you can think of saying a certain letter or word, this causes the same neurons to fire. Even if you can’t speak, a well-trained computer should be able to discern your intentions. In theory, it could speak for you.
The challenge is to find neurons that correspond to every word in the English dictionary, which requires collecting and studying large amounts of data on brain signaling patterns in many people. To get the clearest signal, you need to place the sensor as close as possible to the neuron. Some researchers have tried to avoid surgery by placing their devices outside the person’s skull, but the increased distance and interference have made the effects less significant. The most precise data usually comes from electrodes placed next to brain cells.
“The long-term goal is to make this technology accessible to billions of people, unlocking human potential beyond our biological capabilities”
For much of the past 20 years, the so-called Utah Array has been viewed as the quintessential brain implant. It’s a small, square silicon chip that goes on your child’s nail. The wires extend from the edges of the chip, which has about 100 rigid spikes on its surface. To implant the Utah array, surgeons must perform a craniotomy, cutting a large hole in the patient’s skull and then gently driving the spikes into the brain. The wires are connected to metal ports that, after being sutured, can visibly protrude from the scalp. To use the device after surgery, a computer the size of an ice cube is attached to the patient’s head.
Researchers have made significant progress in Utah array implantation. They use it to read and translate the brain activity of people with paralysis and other conditions, using the information to create software that allows patients to communicate with caregivers or their loved ones and to operate robotic arms to pick up objects. The problem is that the hardware is designed to be clunky and largely unchanged in over 20 years. The Utah arrays also require large numbers of highly trained personnel to operate the equipment, as well as extensive medical care, making them primarily limited to research laboratory deployments.
Elon Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 with seven scientists using $100 million in funding from him. His investment proved compelling and his commitment to the technology was irresistible to venture capitalists. Neuralink has since raised more than $500 million in funding, including $280 million this year. This attention has also attracted investors to other brain-computer interface projects, including long-standing university projects and newer startups. Thirty-seven such companies raised more than $560 million last year, according to research firm PitchBook.
Most of these companies have the same overarching goal: to create a brain-scanning device that can leave the lab. The ideal implant would have enough computing power to record and input large amounts of data, as well as transmit the data via a strong wireless signal. This all has to be done while using as little battery power as possible, without allowing the device to run too hot, which could irritate or harm the patient. In addition to hardware, BCI companies also need machine learning software skills and thousands of tests.
Neuralink’s implants are hidden beneath the scalp, flush with the skull. It’s also equipped with enough computing power to handle far more than just thoughts and clicks. In the near future, this idea will make high-speed typing and seamless use of the cursor possible. Neuralink is also working on an auxiliary spinal implant designed to restore movement and sensation to paralyzed patients. Neuralink co-founder and VP of Engineering DJ Seo said: “The company’s short-term goal is to build a universal brain interface to restore autonomy to those suffering from neurasthenia and unmet medical needs. As for the long-term goal, it is to enable billions of People can use this technology to unlock human potential beyond our biological capabilities.”
More than 400 animal implant experiments have been conducted in the past two years in preparation for human trials
While some competitors are already ahead of Neuralink in human trials, the company’s original technology comes closest to becoming a general-purpose computer in the brain. The implant has more than 1,000 electrodes used to collect brain data, compared with only about 16 in competing devices. Neuralink hardware integrates processing, communication and charging systems, including batteries and signal amplification systems. Competitors, meanwhile, still have to connect their implants with wires to bulky, pacemaker-sized battery and amplifier units that are usually surgically implanted in a patient’s chest. Neuralink’s battery lasts for several hours and can be charged wirelessly over a few hours via a custom baseball cap.
Another of Elon Musk’s favorite innovations is bringing key manufacturing operations in-house, which increases financial risk but saves time. Neuralink even produces its own semiconductor chips, which is extremely rare in the medical device industry. The company tailors the chip specifically for its low-power, low-heat needs. In Austin, Neuralink turned a bar into a giant implant production line and testing center. In addition to the usual milling machines, lathes and laser cutters, the factory is also equipped with more outlandish equipment, such as refrigerator-sized cabinets filled with synthetic brain fluid that heats, cools and squeezes implants. to simulate years of wear and tear.
The first priority during surgery is to avoid creating any bleeding or scar tissue in the patient’s brain. Neuralink also builds its own surgical robot for this purpose. The robot is white, about 2.1 meters tall, and has a stable, cube-shaped base that supports a tower of electronic equipment.
Once a human surgeon cuts a hole in a patient’s skull, the robot performs the extremely delicate task of inserting electrode wires into the brain. The robot is equipped with cameras, sensors and a tiny laser-ground needle that hooks into a loop at the end of each thread. The needle pushes 64 wires, each with 16 electrodes, into the brain one by one, carefully avoiding blood vessels. Considering that each strand is only 5 microns thick, or about 1/14th the diameter of a human hair, no one is allowed to try this method. To further avoid damaging tissue, the wires are designed to be slender, flexible yet strong, and coated with a special polymer to prevent them from deteriorating over the years.
Neuralink’s dozen robots performed 155 surgeries on sheep, pigs and monkeys in 2021 and 294 in 2022. For human subjects, surgical preparation and craniotomy are expected to take several hours, followed by the actual implantation process of approximately 25 minutes. DJ Seo, co-founder and vice president of engineering at Neuralink, said: “For the past two years, we have been focused on building a product for human use, and now it is time to help real humans.”
During my first visit, Elon Musk urged engineers to speed up progress. He hopes robots can perform surgeries in less time, preferably without the help of a human surgeon. He also wants semiconductor experts to forget what they learned in school and try simpler manufacturing techniques. He wants implants to look smoother and last longer, and maybe everyone needs to rethink everything. Elon Musk considered a series of designs in advance so as not to affect mass production. This attitude seemed to give employees confidence that he was right.
There are merits to Elon Musk’s management style, which has helped build the world’s most successful rocket company and most valuable electric car company. Of course, as anyone who has Googled “Cybertruck car windows” knows, his early plans can turn into a mess, and engineers’ efforts don’t always lead to rational product choices. In this regard, Elon Musk’s explanation is: “We need to achieve our goals before artificial intelligence takes over, time is very tight!”
22,204 human implant surgeries will be performed in 2030
Seo and Elon Musk are the only two current founders of Neuralink. The other six people resigned voluntarily or because of disagreements about the company’s development direction. Many of them later founded similar companies. Seo is responsible for the development of implants and surgical robots. Jeremy Barenholtz, a computer scientist just two years out of Stanford University, has become one of the company’s CEOs and successfully passed It has passed the strict approval process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Musk continues to serve as co-CEO.
In July 2022, the author visited the company’s headquarters in Fremont, California, to demonstrate its operations. Elon Musk gathered executives and engineers to update them on the progress of human trials. Team members gather around a rectangular table in the office’s main workspace. It’s a large open space with people huddled in front of computers, robot prototypes and test equipment. Elon Musk, wearing a black suit and holding a Red Bull, stood at the front of the table and began asking about his competitors. As employees were given updates, he peppered them with a barrage of technical questions. He’s particularly focused on Synchron, which has received regulatory approval for its product to begin human trials.
Synchron’s selling point is technology that doesn’t require cutting into the skull. The company makes small products called stents that slip through a patient’s vascular system into blood vessels in the brain. For the best signal, the hardware cannot interface directly with neurons, but paralyzed patients are already using it to browse the web and send WhatsApp messages. “We should be way above that,” Elon Musk said. “They’re leaving us behind right now, and next year I want to catch up.”
His lieutenants grimaced simultaneously. Barenholz has the complicated task of explaining to Elon Musk that the FDA wants to wait at least a year after the company’s first surgery before trying more human implant trials. To this, Elon Musk’s response was: “Unacceptable. If things went well, you would write to the FDA and I guarantee they would take action. It would be like SpaceX getting federal approval to do more rocket testing!”
At another “update” meeting a few months later, Elon Musk set his sights on Onward, a company that makes implants that fit snuggly into the spine. Its device sends electrical pulses that help rejuvenate muscles, allowing paralyzed people to walk again. Although their gait is often awkward, for paralyzed people and their loved ones, standing and walking again can be nothing short of a miracle.
Elon Musk was also preparing to give an important demonstration. Neuralink plans to announce that it has begun research on its own spinal implants to match brain implants. This time, Elon Musk seemed more excited and pushed harder on the project.
Of course, none of this is a joke. Engineer Joseph O’doherty took his time and delivered a long speech about Neuralink’s early advances in spine technology, showing a video of an implant being used to stimulate the legs of pigs to get them to walk on a treadmill. . This project involves different parts of the brain, spinal segments, spine meshes, joint angles, machine learning models, and more. Elon Musk has no formal medical training, but he’s keeping an eye on developments. He offered suggestions on how to adjust the implant, perhaps reducing jitter in the animal’s gait.
His ideas were sometimes far from reality, but they were often on point. After an inspection, semiconductor engineers followed Elon Musk’s suggestion and retooled the process for connecting threads to the company’s chips, making them faster to manufacture, according to Zack Tedoff, the chip unit’s head of brain interfaces. By 50%, defects were also reduced. While the team working on spinal implants went back to the drawing board, trying to make their pigs walk in a more realistic way, Barenholtz began living in the office to satisfy Elon Musk’s every request.
It turns out Elon Musk was right about the FDA. Neuralink has received applications from thousands of potential patients, and the agency recently gave it the green light to conduct additional implant trials in 2024 without waiting for a year-long evaluation period. Neuralink estimates each implant surgery will cost about $10,500, including exams, components and labor, and will bill insurance companies about $40,000. The company expects annual revenue to reach $100 million within five years. Neuralink said it plans to perform 11 surgeries in 2024, 27 in 2025 and 79 in 2026. The number of surgeries will increase from 499 in 2027 to 22,204 in 2030, according to documents provided to investors.
Treatment of experimental animals raises concerns
However, testing medical devices on animals is not a pleasant experience. In a way, this practice is seen as a kind of animal sacrifice on the altar of science, increasing their suffering in the hope of reducing human suffering. However, Neuralink has come under special scrutiny for its treatment of animal test subjects, especially this year. Multiple media reports have detailed surgical complications, side effects and long-term suffering in animals, particularly in primates. Some monkeys who received implants scratched and yanked at their heads until they bled, or appeared depressed or distressed until they were euthanized, the report said.
Neuralink admitted it made mistakes in the exploratory surgery, although the company blamed it on human error rather than equipment problems. It emphasized that the most troubling reports came from its early years, before it established its own testing facility in Fremont and when it had gone to great lengths to provide better living conditions there. “I always find a way to protect the animals in front of me,” said Autumn Sorrells, who manages Neuralink’s nonhuman test subjects and formerly directed laboratory animal welfare at the University of California, San Francisco. Being called a ‘killer’ and an ‘animal abuser,’ and then having to come to work and snuggle with a sheep and make sure they have a good day. It’s so hard.” Compared to other labs, she said, Neuralink’s Animals have larger cages, more food and entertainment options, and more socialization.
I watched the same group of rhesus monkeys living in Fremont for three years, all with implants in different parts of their brains. These devices can be removed and some have been upgraded to newer models. Seventeen of the monkeys are still active, healthy, and on site providing brain data to Neuralink. Three monkeys retired to the sanctuary, and one was euthanized during planned end-of-life procedures.
Before entering the animal facility, you must put on gloves, a gown, boots, a mask, and protective eyewear, and you will be given a briefing on how to approach the animals. Inside, spacious enclosures are filled with toys, artificial trees and playground equipment. Music is frequently played throughout the facility, and televisions are readily available, showing mostly nature programs.
The monkeys’ main role is to demonstrate that both the device and the surgical robot work as expected. When they’re happy, they also contribute to the company’s thought translator by playing computer games.
Neuralink has a room full of monkeys sitting in front of computers having their minds read, which looks weirder than it sounds. For several hours each day, they stare at laptop screens pushed outside their cages. They can choose from games that use joysticks and touch screens (such as tracing letters and spelling words), or games that rely on brain-controlled clicks. In one example, a 35 by 35 grid of small boxes appeared on the screen, and then one box suddenly lit up. The monkey’s goal is to move the cursor to the lit box by thinking. Over time, the monkeys completed the task faster and faster, and humans are expected to do the same.
Neuralink is beginning to move its animal testing and much of its operations from California to Texas, where it has a newer, larger campus on a ranch outside Austin. The place houses surgical facilities, with multiple operating rooms, barns, pathology building and a sci-fi themed staff bar. Neuralink said it plans to build an indoor-outdoor space for the primates. Today, there are dozens of sheep and pigs there. During a recent visit, the pigs wore small backpacks containing batteries to power patches on their heads and keep their implants charged. The animals also have buttons in their enclosures that they can press with their noses to request food or a walk outside the barn.
It’s a long way from a button in the nose to the 22,000 human implants performed each year. Like a rocket malfunctioning, a surgical error or an implant leaking chemicals into a person’s brain can set the company back years. In addition to ensuring basic safety, the device must also deliver on Elon Musk’s promises. Humans will be able to tell the world things about the implant that monkeys cannot, including where its limits are. Until now, downloading kung fu into your brain and fighting evil super artificial intelligences were the stuff of science fiction. Future implants may have 128 or more threads, and the next version of Neuralink’s custom chip will extend battery life to 11 hours, Seo said. “The goal is to have full-day charging,” he said. At that point, patients can charge the implant at night through a charging pad in their pillow.
All of this will be difficult for Elon Musk to achieve. However, if his efforts are rewarded, it will go a long way in greatly improving the lives of many people. Even if Synchron, Onward or others become the industry standard, Elon Musk should get some credit.
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