Elon Musk’s Neuralink – Ex-Employees Reveal Company Struggles

hi welcome to this week's episode of cold fusion i've got an exciting announcement to make at the end of this video so be sure to stick around for that this week we'll be talking about neural link we'll cover the updates of the neural link device working in animals but will also take a deeper look into neural incorporation and what's been happening behind the scenes according to ex-employees there's been some conflict within the neural link company walls so let's get into it you are watching cold fusion tv so starting with a quick overview and recap neural link is a brain machine interface that will be connected to the brain soft tissue via a thousand tiny wires these tiny wires are connected and inserted into the brain by a robot that can be likened onto a sewing machine according to early animal testing these implants don't cause any bleeding or noticeable trauma on the soft tissue future patients should be up and out of the hospital within a few hours and there's no need for general anesthesia the medium-term aim of the neural link product is to bring to market a device which can help with certain severe brain injuries the end result will be allowing paraplegics to regain motor function make the blind see again or even help with anxiety so here's a quick overview of how it works this device with the help of algorithms is able to send voltages to the brain and receive voltages from the brain in other words the neural link is able to read and write to the brain i've already done an episode explaining how this works and the technical details behind it it's an absolutely fascinating watch if you've missed it i'll leave a link below recently the research team took to the stage to give some updates overall the updates covered things like clarifying security concerns and also how they're making animal testing ethical and some other things but probably the most notable was the demonstration of the long-term use of a neural link in a pig for the past two months and counting they demonstrated the implant sensing pulses from the brain whenever the pig snout touched something they outputted this information in the form of audio beeps [Applause] and the this neural link is implanted in the region of the brain that are where the snout snout is located which is actually quite a large part of greg's brain and there was a particularly interesting showcase beyond this the team could take readings from neurons and use this information with the help of on-board algorithms to predict how the pig's legs are going to be moving from there the research team were able to compare the predicted motion with the measured motion of the pig and the results were very consistent this demonstrates that the neuralink chip can potentially understand the motion of joints just by reading input signals from the brain obviously this could be very useful in controlling the movement of limbs this new version of the neural link is smaller than version 1 shown last year and will be inductively charged according to an employee during the question and answer session the device shares some hardware components with some other high volume tech like smart watches and smartphones this means that the final cost will be within the realm of a few thousand dollars it was also revealed that the neural link corporation had been granted fda approval under the breakthrough therapy designation at this point it should be noted that neural link as a concept isn't some far out wacky idea as described in the previous episode it's a decades-old technology in the field of brain machine interface research even as far back as 2006 people with spinal cord paralysis were able to play pong just by using their mind after receiving a brain implant since then researchers have continued to explore ways to use computers to improve brain function neural link just aims to do this with much higher precision and orders of magnitude better performance behind the scenes however things have been a little less smooth a report by the stat publication has revealed years of internal conflict there is a clash within the neurolink corporation as to how it should be run on the one hand it seems like a rapid-paced high-tech company but on the other hand it's a scientific research company that really has to wait for the slow nature of scientific discovery unsurprisingly this has caused some friction four former employees who wish to remain anonymous told the stat publication of a chaotic internal nature since its founding in 2017 neuralink corporation has lost most of its founding original scientists the number has gone from eight to three these included leading experts and rising stars in brain machine interface research some had previously worked with pioneering teams at places such as ibm mit and stanford university one former employee stated quote they are building a medical device and surgical approach to implant that medical device and they're approaching it with the use of a high-tech company move fast and break things end quote an example of this for neural link happened in 2017 the company pushed forward with an effort to implant 10 000 electrodes on an array into the brain of a sheep in one single procedure according to a former employee instead of first trying steps such as implementing a smaller number of electrodes they went in full guns blazing and the experiment failed the company has had its fair share of internal strife neural links mechanical engineers have sometimes been at odds with its academic neuroscientists over the company's strategy engineers naturally think very different to neuroscientists but in some cases they were even pitted against each other by leadership elon predictably sided with the engineers whenever this happened it's interesting to note that although elon musk is the majority owner and founder of the company jared bertral is actually the ceo within the company when certain projects ran into roadblocks employees were encouraged to abandon them and then move on to starting new ones according to insiders such issues arose from the company aiming too broadly and lacking focus on simpler but more targeted applications timelines were also rushed while scientists often stressed that research might take months they were sometimes only given weeks to complete certain projects this all gives me flashbacks to my episode on the behind the scenes development for the original iphone just the reality of trying to develop a groundbreaking product but in an environment that was a complete pressure cooker despite this several former employees stressed that they did not want to imply that new ruling corporation was underperforming they actually praised the company for casting a spotlight on the field they also said musk always operates with accelerated timelines and a hefty dose of chaos a strategy that has enabled him to successfully transform the space industry and the automobile market where others have failed they see the chaotic nature as natural for a company with such ambitious end goals and credit where credit is due outside independent researchers are impressed by some of neurolink's engineering accomplishments the sewing machine robot that implants those thousands of tiny electrodes into the brain has been hailed as a great achievement neurobiologist andrew schwartz of the university of pittsburgh a pioneer in the field states quote overall the concept is impressive and so is the progress that they've made end quote according to two former neurolink employees the robotic implanting device cost between 10 million and 20 million dollars in initial investments this includes research and development subsequent robots cost up to five hundred thousand dollars to build and the neuralink corporation has already constructed close to a dozen musk has poured 100 million dollars into the project overall and will continue to pour more into it according to a former employee [Music] so as for neuralink it seems that they did get off to a rough start according to former employees and founding scientists and i wouldn't be surprised if these conflicts are still in place today it's hard to balance the fast pace of tech development with the slow and cautious nature of medical science regardless the company seems to be making progress even if it's unlikely that they'll meet their deadline of human trials by the end of the year so the question remains can the neuralink corporation achieve the medium-term goal of restoring motion sight and much more like memory and hearing loss depression seizures strokes and brain damage maybe so but first they need to keep the internal company structure under control it's impossible to say from the outside if the company culture has improved but even if it is perfect today they're still not out of the woods once the internal cultural issue is overcome the company still needs to push forward major scientific and medical advances as there's still so much about the mind that medical science doesn't understand yet however if neural link can achieve all of this at an affordable price point it could help millions and as elon has stated there could be more on the horizon like telepathy memory repositories superhuman vision and of course interfacing with artificial intelligence though as the saying goes you must crawl before you run no matter the outcome as matt angle ceo of paradromix a competitor to neural link states quote this could be a chance for neuralink to put on stage some of the things that everyone in the neuroscience community knows as possible but many people in the general public don't know as possible if elon can get more attention for this field and get people really excited i think the rising tide floats all ships so what do you guys think are you for a device like the neural link do you think musk and his team can pull it off or are you more skeptical or are you of the view that technology like this shouldn't even exist i'll leave that for you guys to discuss in the comments section below check out the previous episode i did on neuralink so you can get a full understanding and detailed overview of the technology how it works and its plans for future uses a lot of you have been asking for years so i'm finally doing it i'm finally releasing cold fusion merch this is going to be a special first edition limited run each shirt and hoodie will have my signature on it i'll be sending out custom voice messages to as many of you as i can just as a thank you you also receive two unreleased tracks from my upcoming ep nostalgia dreams [Music] this first edition will last for seven days and then that's it so if you do want to support the channel and keep it going check out the links below anyway if you'd like to see anything on science technology business or history feel free to subscribe to cole fusion my name is digogo and you've been watching cold fusion i'll see you again next week for the next episode cheers guys have a good one [Music] cold fusion it's me thinking [Music] you

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 876,428

Rating: 4.8801026 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: 6eA_JIDzza0

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/JupitersClock]

So the theme is rush, rush, rush. It seems Neuralink is more interested in being the first company to market. I wonder if the $$$ just lit up if they can get the device to do any of the magic it claims. It seems odd that they would have a pretty clear price point when they're not even "close".

[u/turmericchap]

that jaw thoo