Front Burner - What’s going on at Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company?

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Elon Musk says a person has had a computer chip implanted in their brain as part of Neuralink’s first human trial. The billionaire’s company is racing to develop a device, in an attempt to catch up to competitors in the brain-computer interface industry. Marisa Taylor, an investigative journalist with Reuters, joins Front Burner to separate fact from fiction, as Neuralink tries to revolutionize brain implants. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. So, Elon Musk loves a good sci-fi premise. Self-driving cars, off-world human settlements, sentient AI. And he likes making them happen in the real world, merging tech with the human experience.

His company Neuralink isn't as well known as his other ventures, but it's arguably the purest form of this quest, to make humans and tech one and the same. Neuralink aims to commercialize brain-computer interfaces, so devices that are surgically implanted in the brain. The first implementations will be to enable people who have lost the brain-body connection to be able to operate a computer or a phone faster than someone who has hands that work. So you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than someone who had full body functionality. He says the next step is giving people without vision the ability to see. And you could be like Geordi LaForge from Star Trek.

You could see in like any frequency, actually. You could see in radar if you want. And the ultimate goal, according to Elon, it's to, and I'm quoting, achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence. Well, the world may be one step closer to that symbiosis. Last week, he tweeted that Neuralink's first human trial is underway. Marissa Taylor is an investigative journalist with Reuters. She's been reporting on Neuralink.

She's going to help me sort out the science, the sci-fi, the hope, and the hype. Hey, Marissa, thanks so much for coming on FrontBurner. Thank you for having me. It's great to have you here. So, you know, we all know about Tesla, know about SpaceX. We hear about them all the time. There's no escaping Twitter or X or whatever we call it. But Neuralink is one of these Elon Musk endeavors we don't really hear quite as much about.

So you've been reporting on it. And help me understand what it is exactly that the company aims to do. What's its goal? and recording the neural activity of the brain, and then helping translate that into communication. And eventually, maybe they're hoping that it will help people walk even, but we're far away from that many people say. And they also are seeking to revolutionize the way that these brain implants are put into the brain with a robot that they have developed. And that robot is, they describe as sort of a sewing machine where they would sew in these electrodes that are very, very, very fine. And the hope is that Elon Musk's company will be able to do what so far other companies have not been able to do, which is to commercialize something that has been tested in the lab for decades and has been shown to be successful for a certain amount of time.

But it's not to the point where anyone has been able to get it outside of the lab. So, okay. So yeah, people have been, researchers have been doing this kind of thing for a while. And by this kind of thing, I mean, you know, the, roughly speaking, the inner interface between computers and neural tissue, whether it's brain stemmer or the brain. But so it sounds like there's a couple things going on here. One is there's this proof of concept of whether the tech works. But then you also mentioned, I think the big point here of this company is to make it commercially feasible, right?

Right. Let's talk specifically about this device, this little thing you mentioned. It's about the diameter of a coin. I think it's called telepathy. At least I think that's what Musk has called it. Yes. Okay, what does this device aim to do? So it's taking this very small coin-sized device and planting it in the brain along with the electrodes so they can help pick up the neural

activity and then interpret that person's activity so they can operate a computer or smartphone by simply intending you know to move or to speak with their brain with their thoughts so it's it's recording their thoughts and translating it into an actual, you know, something that actually can be typed. Right. Musk has made the comparison between, you know, the interface that's, you know, the physicist Stephen Hawking's had where he could communicate despite the fact that he couldn't, you know, speak, he could still communicate through a device, but it was slow and laborious. This would allow someone in a similar state to use their phone with just their intentional

thoughts. And I mean, my understanding is that this is kind of where the industry is at, is that in developing devices to help people who are disabled, whether it's maybe a paraplegic or quadriplegic or someone who has something like ALS and can't speak. But Musk has ambitions for this technology that go beyond that, right? Absolutely. And he's talked about it publicly often. He's talked about how he envisions that somehow this will eventually be used as a cure for

depression or obesity. But all of these, all of your senses, your sight, hearing, feeling, pain, these are all electrical signals sent by neurons to your brain. And if you can correct these signals, you can solve everything from memory loss, hearing loss, these signals, you can solve everything from memory loss, hearing loss, blindness, paralysis, depression, insomnia, extreme pain, seizures, anxiety, addiction, strokes, brain damage. These can all be solved with an implacable neural link. Help the paralyzed walk again. I'm confident that long-term it will be possible to restore somebody's full body motion. So if somebody even has a severed spine, they will be able to walk again. It remains to be seen whether any of these devices will do any of the things that he's claiming. I think the thing that, you know,

stood out to me, and I mean, skeptically, I suppose, is that, you know, I think part of his influence for this is a series of sci-fi novels by Ian M. Banks, right? So there's the culture series. And in that, there is a fictional technology called Neuralace, which is basically, you know, a science fiction version of this computer brain interface. But, I mean, he's got this ambition. computer brain interface. But I mean, he's got this ambition. I think he said, you know, that the idea is to, is to, you know, help humans and AI basically merge, right? Right. Absolutely. That is exactly what he said. And he, he has said that he hopes that eventually these kinds of brain implants will turn, turn humans into cyborgs who can fend off a threat from AI. You know, it's a vision that while it sounds exciting, you know, the scientists who are

actually working on these issues sometimes feel like it's an exaggeration to the point where it might get people a little too excited about what's happening right now. So it's more sci-fi than science. Yes. Okay, so let's talk about the science. Well, first of all, let's talk about Elon Musk made this claim last week that it's achieved its first ever human implant. You know, as we understand it, this device has been put into someone's brain. But what do we know about the trial, about this first human trial?

We actually know very little. And in part, it's because of the nature of the type of trial they're doing. But it's also in part because clinical trials, you often don't know everything about clinical trials, unless you're directly involved. And in terms of this company, they have gotten a special approval from the FDA, which allows them to test their device without having other requirements, like they don't have to post publicly, all of the detail related to their trial, like where it's being held, where, you know, because obviously, this involves surgery. So which hospital are they doing these surgeries? What which investigator are they directly working with? Investigator meaning researcher.

How many patients do they plan to implant? All of those kinds of questions they don't have to post publicly because they have this special early testing category that allows them to test it without posting a lot of detail online with NIH, which is usually what clinical trials have to do. If the company decided to, it could make all of these details public. It might turn out that Neuralink might choose later to post it. They just haven't yet. Okay. So what do we know about the procedure? You mentioned that this is planting microelectrodes directly into the brain tissue. Do we know anything about how they do that? I guess more to the point, what are the risks associated with this procedure?

So, yes, it is possible for things to go wrong. You can have an infection. You can have an infection. You can have, during the procedure, you can have, I'm told, you can have a bleed. That's why you have to have a surgeon on hand to make sure that you don't bleed out. There are definitely risks. And the patients are, when they agree and enroll in these trials, they are told of all of these risks. In the past, there have, there's been some safety data published by other companies that show that they were able to do these brain implants or implant the electrodes over time with little safety issues.

But there are definitely risks. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you.

Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. We've been talking about the first human trial. In order to get that approved, there were a bunch of animal trials, right? On monkeys specifically.

This is Pager. He's a nine-year-old macaque who had a Neuralink placed in each side of his brain about six weeks ago. He's learned to interact with a computer for a tasty banana smoothie delivered through a straw. Pager still moves the joystick out of habit, but as you can see, it's unplugged. He's controlling the cursor entirely with decoded neural activity. And there was some controversy about those trials. Can you tell me about that? Neuralink had issues that we reported on. We reviewed Neuralink documents and interviewed sources and described how employees themselves at Neuralink were concerned about the company rushing their animal experiments because of pressure from Elon Musk.

He told them to act as if a bomb was strapped to their heads because he wanted these animal experiments to demonstrate to the FDA that they should be able to test in humans. They needed that animal data in order to get approval from the FDA. And as my colleague, Rachel Levy, first detailed, the employees themselves were complaining about botched experiments that were leading to tests having to be repeated. The number of animals being tested and killed were increasing because of the speed and the mistakes that they were making. And then at one point, you know, for example, there were mistakes made that involved monkeys, including the surgeons, for example, used the wrong surgical glue, which the allegations at the time said that there were monkeys that were suffering and dying unnecessarily from those experiments.

And Elon Musk made a statement about those monkeys that died. What did he say? He said those monkeys, their deaths were not the result of the device and that they either were ill or were about to die and as a result it had nothing to do with the device. There were some terminal monkeys where you know this is actually several years ago where the monkeys were about to die and we're like okay we've got an experimental device it's the kind of thing which only put in a monkey that's about to die and then you know now the monkey died but didn't die because the neural link died because it, you know, now the monkey died, but it didn't die because of the Neuralink. It died because it was, you know, had a total case of cancer or something like that. So Neuralink has never caused the death of a monkey.

Unless they're hiding something from me. There are members of Congress that have taken issue with those statements. In fact, they've asked the SEC to investigate whether his statements were misinformation, which the SEC can hold companies responsible for if you issue statements that are inaccurate and misleading intentionally. So the SEC, the Security and Exchange Commission, is investigating around LinkedIn? It's not known because oftentimes those investigations are kept secret. All we know at this point is that members of Congress were concerned about these issues and asked for an investigation.

They're kind of unrelated, but you also reported that Neuralink was fined a fairly small amount, like $2,500 by the Department of Transportation for transporting hazardous materials. Can you tell me about that? Sure. were being implanted in monkeys' brains, and that the concern was that those implants had infections. And the Department of Transportation looked into it, and they didn't find evidence of that. Instead, they found that the company had not registered for the proper licensing for transporting hazardous waste, which means that the company was transporting hazardous waste, and that they weren't following the proper procedure for transporting that hazardous waste. And a lot of the critics of the company, and, you know, some employees say that it demonstrates this disregard that Elon Musk companies tend to have for playing by the rules, by following regulations, and especially when under pressure to do things fast. Like Elon Musk often is said to want things done very, very fast and puts a lot of pressure on his employees.

So it's not the most egregious thing, but it sounds like it tells you something about the ethos of the company, perhaps. And that is something that we have heard over and over again in our reporting on his companies, be it SpaceX or Neuralink, that the employees describe this constant pressure to go faster and faster, they describe to the detriment of their actual work. I kind of want to talk about the industry in general and get a sense of where Neuralink fits into it. So there are other companies doing similar things. There have been some pretty remarkable advances in similar tech where patients have, say, been paralyzed and they're able to regain some of their function with a similar kind of neural computer interface. Can you give me a sense of that field in general? Like what are other companies doing when it comes to brain computer interfaces?

So one of the companies which has been testing in humans longer than Neuralink is Synchron. And they just finished implanting. We reported that they just finished implanting six patients with their device. Their device is different in that it is not as invasive and it's implanted through or it's sort of threaded through the blood vessels. And they they assert that that means that it's safer. But they also acknowledge that because of the positioning of where it is, that it may not necessarily pick up on the brain activity as much as, say, a direct implant. And another company is BlackRock Neurotech, which was established in 2008. And it's already tested brain implants in human beings. And

they've said that their device has shown that it has been able to help people with paralysis control digital devices, and their own limbs. They had said that they hope to get approval to commercialize actually, because they've been planted so many from the FDA, I think now two years ago, but they haven't said anything since then. So they haven't gotten approval to commercialize yet. So there are a whole lot of companies all doing different things with different types of devices and all racing to see if they can show that they can actually make their device work and then have it be safe. Do you have a sense of what folks in the industry think of Neuralink? I guess two things, you know,

what do they make of the scientific claims? What do they make of Elon Musk's ability to pull in lots of investment money? how Elon is able to sort of take these kinds of ideas, generate a lot of excitement for ideas. There's admiration for him as an engineer, the excitement that he brings to an industry like he has done with space and with the car industry. But then there's, you know, there have been many people who have been researching these things for decades that worry that if there's too much hype, that it could actually harm the science as well, because you want patients who are going to have these things done to be able to trust that these devices work in the way that the company is claiming they should work and that they'll be safe. And to have to have that kind of trust from a patient, you know, you've you've got to have data. You've got to you've got to be trustworthy.

And there's concern that a lot of this sort of these assertions being made publicly could erode that kind of trust. Yeah, I mean, I think that like to conclude really my big question is given Elon Musk's, you know, history of exaggerated claims, right? I'm thinking about the claims of, you know, how well the Tesla autopilot was doing, the fact that he tweeted, and I'll quote, because I think it's worth hearing, Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That's our mission. Considering claims like that, I guess, you know, what's the likelihood of Neuralink becoming a commercially viable product? And to what extent do you think it's just Elon Musk bluster? I think that it's impossible for us to say right now because all of the science has to be done first. I think many experts and researchers see a lot of his sweeping kinds of statements. housekeeping kinds of statements. They describe it as misleading and concerning because there's yet to be any evidence of any of these claims. And yet his company, we've reported, has a valuation of about $5 billion, which experts say is surprising given that they don't have any of their data in yet for their human trials. And the other companies that have been doing this research for longer and have been kind of sticking to the facts about their devices,

their valuation is nowhere near that. You know, this is a medical device. This is not a car. This is not a rocket. This is a device that's being put inside people's brains, people who are very sick, people who have very few options. And we have to wait to see, you know,

what the science determines. And that's something that is very different about space and cars. We're dealing with human beings and their lives. Marissa, thank you so much. It was great talking to you. Thank you so much. All right, that's it for today. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner.

I'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.