The Joe Rogan Experience - #2167 - Noland Arbaugh

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Noland Arbaugh is the first human recipient of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface implant: an innovative new technology that allows him to control digital devices with his thoughts. Noland Arbaugh: https://x.com/ModdedQuad Neuralink www.neuralink.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. What's up, Nolan? Nothing much. You guys hear me through this? Yeah. Is this too far away? Cool. No, it's perfect. It's perfect. It's a pleasure to meet you, man. Hey, you too. You too. Thanks for having me. I have a feeling if there's a movie that they do in the future of how the world

changed in 2024, you're going to be in that movie. Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, that'd be cool. I wonder if they'd get to play me. Yeah, I, they probably don't need people by then. They probably just do movies with AI and probably really quickly. You could probably like take a really great great novel like The Great Gatsby, run it through an AI video creator and it would just make you the most amazing version of The Great Gatsby.

Yeah, that's true. Probably. Yeah, that'd be sick. But if we're talking about historical moments in human beings and in technology, the implementation of Neuralink on the first human patient, that's you? Yeah, yeah, I guess so.

No, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was, I keep thinking about it like, you know, BCI have been around for a while. So I've told people. What is BCI? Brain-computer interface. So like just implants that they've done in people, different ways that they've found,

they've given people the ability to control electronic devices, they've been able to control computers and stuff. There are a couple things out there, the Utah Ray Synchron came out with something where basically they go through the artery in the neck and they kind of thread something up into the brain that expands in a vein up there, in an artery up there neck and that they kind of thread something up into the brain that expands in a vein up there and an artery up there and then they can like control the brain through that. So BCI has been around for a while, a few decades at least, I think since like the 90s. So I always say that we're standing on the shoulders of giants sort of thing, but I know Neuralink just has, it's in a league of its own. And I know that, you know, with Elon's name attached to it,

it's gonna blow up way more. But I think this is the beginning. I think everyone else that, you know, comes after this basically is gonna be pulled up by the progress Neuralink's making. And the fact that they are trying to like open source, basically all of it, I think the whole field is just gonna grow exponentially at this point. Well Well we can only hope so and that really is

fascinating and it really is fascinating how many different ways and strategies they've employed to try to connect computers to human beings and brains. So what do you know what year the first one was they did this? 98. Oh wow. Yeah I think so. I think that was the Utah array. That just was, it looks like a chip with like more fixed like threads on it. They were I think a lot smaller and it just sat on the brain. So obviously another open brain surgery and they put it in there and then it would read a section of the brain motor cortex I think as well. Have you seen some of the stuff now where they're using

some kind of scanning imagery where they can actually see thoughts? No, I haven't. Yeah, they're doing, where they think they're gonna be able to record dreams eventually. And what they're able to do now is get like an Approximation of what someone is seeing and thinking well keep that find that Jamie so we could figure out exactly what they did

Yeah, here it is scientists read dreams using brain scans is an older one Okay, that's crazy. I mean I've always heard that This is not the newer one. Oh, okay. That's crazy. I mean, I've always heard that scientists really don't know what dreams are and what is going on or why we do it. I've heard plenty of people say, like, yeah, we still don't know why you even need to sleep or what's going on in your dream.

I don't know if that's changed recently, but I don't know. Dreams are an interesting thing. The whole sleep thing is interesting. Yeah. MRI scans reveal what we see in dreams. Japanese researchers unveiled dreams visuals with 60% accuracy using innovative MRI scans at pivotal Kyoto studies showcasing a breakthrough

in sleep science. Wow. Wild stuff. That picture just looked AI. Are we dreaming in AI now? I think we're close. I think if the simulation is real it seems ridiculous now, less so than it seemed five years ago, but I think five years from now it'll seem likely. I think

it's all interconnected in some very bizarre way. I think we were slowly building toward that connection with all of this technology and all of these new innovations and all of a greater understanding of quantum physics and space and all these as they build on all this stuff i think it's going to become more and more likely that this whole thing is somehow another real but not real at the same time. Yeah. Neither a simulation nor like actual reality, like a hybrid of these things. Oh yeah. That'd be crazy.

That's one of the things I'm really excited about with Neuralink is how much we're going to learn just about the brain from this. Like the amount of data that they're collecting. I mean, little things like the fact that all that they're collecting. I mean little things like the fact that all the stuff with the thread pullout going on with my brain, one of the reasons that they think it happened is because, well I don't know, have you heard about like the thread pullout and stuff? Yeah. So basically there are 64 threads implanted in my brain

With 16 electrodes on them each and over the Course of a month We saw a lot of the threads Start retracting from my brain. So the threads that the robot implanted Were retracted and so we were getting less signals from a lot of them and they can't see that on like brain scans or anything So like the threads are so small, you know Not even the size of a human hair that in order to get a scan of them You'd have to use such a big machine that it would probably just fry my brain so they can't just go in and look at them

so a lot of the data that we have that shows that they were moving or coming out of the brain was literally just whether or not the electrodes on the threads were sending signals anymore if they were picking up neuron spikes. So a lot of the threads were getting pulled out and that led to some decline in performance for a while. They kind of fixed that in a way. But some of the reason that that happened, at least we think, is because the brain moves more than they thought it would, which is something that was so bizarre to me when I first heard that.

I was like, you guys don't know how much the brain moves? Like, this feels like, like that should have been something that was solved, you know, ages ago. I never even thought it moved. Yeah. And so it pulses, like with with like your brain, with your heart, I mean. So like as your heart pulses and stuff, your brain pulses as well. Because, you know, there's blood running through it and everything. So it's just pulsing. And they thought that it move like pulses at about a one millimeter rate. So that's how much it'll pulse like move is

one millimeter. And they found in my brain that it was moving three millimeters pulsing. So that's on a scale of three X times what they had made the whole neurolink and the threads and everything for to be able to withstand. So they think that that might have had something to do with it as well. So is that a normal thing that like does the brain have a range? Yeah I don't know I think that's gonna we'll know more. Stiffness pulsation of the human brain detected by non-invasive time. The human brain pulses every time the heart beats. Scientists have used the tiny jiggle to reveal new insights about

our neurons. Neuroscientist, try that name. Yuli Rutishour. Yuli Rutishour. PhD thought he'd uncovered a strange new phenomenon about the human brain. So it pulses every heartbeat. So if your heart beats a lot, if your heart's beating fast, if you're jacked up, does your brain pulse fast too? Yeah, I'm sure I mean I get like What happens with me is if my heart rate's higher I'll get like headaches and stuff. So like I have a lot of weird things with my With my body with being a quadriplegic or like I can tell like if I have really high blood pressure My head just gets like really really like I get really bad headaches and stuff but um yeah so

Brain moves more than we thought it did which blew my mind once we get more People in the study then we'll really know if for some reason my brain just moves a lot more than it should I imagine that we'll see Something around the same and then we will be able to determine like a range like you're talking about if it's you know a range of one millimeter to say five millimeters or if it's pretty consistent around three millimeters I'm not sure. So what this implant allows you to do is you can interface with a computer and you can use keyboard you can type in URLs, you can play video games. How does it work? Yeah, so basically, excuse me, my implant has like a Bluetooth connection to the

computer and then through that Neuralink has created an app that they have uploaded to the computer and through that app I can interface with the computer. What it does is all of the electrodes on the threads are sending neuron spikes, neuron signals. And through my, so it's all implanted in my motor cortex, through my intentions, so say if I want to try to move my hand left, right, up, down, I can't really move it.

I have a little bit of movement in my hand, but I can't really move it. But the neurons are still firing. That intention is still there. So those signals are being sent. There's just a cutoff in my spinal cord. So obviously, it's not getting down. But it's still going on in my brain and those electrodes are picking up those signals and there's an algorithm

like machine learning going on in the background that is You know taking those intentions and over time it is Learning what I'm trying to do and that translates to cursor control. So Yeah, so if I want to try to move the cursor to the left, I move my hand to the left, but that's not necessarily what I would need to do. If I wanted to move the cursor to the left, I could kick my foot or I could do any sort of motor action

to train it to learn that's what I want it to do to go left. So there will be a visual on the screen that says move your hand to go left. So there will be like a visual on the screen that says like move your hand to the left and then they will train that left movement to left on the cursor control. But that visual could be anything. It could be like do a little jig and that'll move it to the left.

Like anything that it can do, anything you can do, I mean it can learn and you can map that to anything. So does this include facial movements? Yeah. So you can like move it with your nose? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. We haven't tried anything like that. We haven't tried a lot of stuff.

This is very, very, like it's still very new. So there are things that we're working on what works well at this point. So like a lot of it is like my right hand stuff. We have mapped a lot of things to like individual fingers, hand movements in general, but we've done like left hand stuff, we've done like foot kick stuff, and it doesn't look like the signals are as good, but that also might be just due to the fact that some of the threads are pulled out. So when they fix that issue with the next people, then those things would be much, much better. And if that's the case, then you could theoretically do multiple things at once. It's not just, you know, you map, say, my right hand to the

cursor control, then you map my fingers and my other hand and my toes to like key control. So I could be moving the cursor and typing at the same time with my toes or something. Wow. Yeah, there's a lot, a lot to explore with this. That's so interesting that it's tied to your mind telling different parts of your body to move. I'm very, obviously very ignorant to this stuff. I thought like you were just using your mind and telling the cursor to go around. Yeah, so it's something, that is true. So it's something that we differentiate. There are what are called attempted movements

and imagined movements. So at the very beginning, I did a lot of attempted movement. Attempted movement is just what it sounds like. I attempt to move my hand in a certain direction. I attempt to move my fingers, like lift your finger up, down, left, right. I attempt to do something, and then the algorithm will take that

and translate it to cursor control. But what I realized maybe a few weeks in was that I could just think cursor go here and it would move. That, it blew my mind when that happened for the first time. Like, like I said, with everything going on in my brain, all of it still works. All the signals are still there. Like I think something to try to move and the signal gets sent So when I'm attempting to move my hand and the cursor is moving and it's moving basically where I want it to you I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. It didn't really shock me that it worked I I assumed that it would work because all the signals are still working. It's just my spinal cord that's jacked up

But when I moved it for the first time because all the signals are still working. It's just my spinal cord that's jacked up. But when I moved it for the first time with my mind without attempting to move it all, like I was giddy the entire day. I could not believe what had just happened. And I think we're gonna find that with a lot of things. Right now we are doing like, I'm trying to map like sign language, like the sign language alphabet in order to text, like write words and stuff.

And it's pretty promising. It worked. I'm sure there's a video out there of me somewhere that Neuralink has of me spelling a couple words with sign language. Wow, so you're thinking in your mind or you're trying to get your hands to make the signs of sign language and then the computer interprets that as the language and types it out. Yep, and I think the same thing is going to happen where I went from attempting to move my hand to imagining just moving the cursor.

I think it's going to be the same way with the texting. I'm not, I haven't had this confirmed yet, but I don't see why not. I think at some point the computer's gonna learn like me trying to do certain letters if, like attempting it, at some point I'm just gonna think that letter instead of actually trying to move and it'll type it.

Oh, wow. Yeah, because I think it's both like me learning what like the computer is trying to do, the algorithm, and the algorithm learning what I'm trying to do. And so over time, it's just going to be completely thought based. I don't see why it wouldn't get there. From what I've seen just with the cursor control, it makes sense that as I'm attempting, it's learning. And then instead of even needing to attempt, it'll just understand what I want to do, and it'll do it.

So you were saying that you were one of the first people to do this, and that there's going to be more people in the trial, and that maybe they'll learn the things that are going wrong with yours Can they do yours again? Can they redo it? Yeah, they could It was something that you know when the thread Retraction had happened. I was obviously pretty broken up about it. I thought that

So like when they told me I didn't have very good control of the cursor anymore It was really hard for me to get the cursor to go where I wanted it to go. I thought my time in the trial was coming to an end. And that's really hard. It's something hard to come to terms with because they had just shown me this whole new world. Like all these new capabilities that I had and they had introduced so many things. Like before that point I had played video games for, you know, 10 hours without needing any sort of help.

And it was hard to, you know, internalize that it could all be coming to an end. I know that it will at some point because I'll be out of the study and I won't be able to use it anymore. So my first thought was, can you guys go in and fix it like go in take it out put in a new one? and they Basically said we're not at that point yet. We're gonna see if we can fix it We're gonna see if we can do things on the software side to fix it

Which they ended up doing it works better than it did before now even with like fewer threads. So I'm glad we didn't, because they learned a lot. If we would have just gone in and taken it out and put in a new one, they wouldn't have learned the last, like anything that they had learned over the last three months. They could go in and do it. They're not going to. I don't think that they need to but at some point I know that the whole point of Neuralink is to be upgradable so at some point they're gonna go in hopefully and take it out and give me a better one. Now what is the extent of your injury?

Sorry. I dislocated my C4, C5. People keep calling it a diving accident. It wasn't really a diving accident. It was just sort of like a freak accident while I was swimming in the lake. So I dislocated my C4, C5, which they told me was good because I didn't sever my spinal cord. It was just kind of like my spinal cord bounced out of place for a split second then hopped right back where it was supposed to be.

And so I cannot move anything. I have no control or sensation below my shoulders. I got a little bit back. I can move my hand a little bit, but not enough to do anything. I couldn't control a joystick or anything so yeah no no movement or sensation below my shoulders is there anything that if you looked into what they do with stem cells for yeah yeah I'm so I applied for studies before neuro link and I never got asked to be in any of them I never never even heard back from anyone, which is

kind of what I assumed would happen with neuro-linguism honestly, but I had applied for things because I obviously don't want to be paralyzed anymore. I don't want to be a quadriplegic, so it would be great if I could get into something and have them fix as much of me as possible. I mean even if I had more control over my hands, the amount of things that I could do Would like skyrocket like an order of magnitude Better in my life would be better. My independence would be better everything. Yeah, don't I Mean, I don't think it would hurt to try and I you familiar with a lot of these clinics like the cellular performance Institute in Mexico

No, they do a lot of UFC fighters. They do, like you can do things in other countries that you're not allowed to do in America because of regulations. But what they're able to do down there is they're going right into discs and they're alleviating people's disc problems where they're actually making the discs grow larger

and heal people with back injuries. And I know I've read things about spinal cord injuries and improvements, but I would love to connect you with them. And they, you know, they're the experts on this. They'd be able to tell you like what, what the state of the art in terms of like the research shows that stem cells can and can't do. Yeah.

I don't think it could hurt. I mean, it's a healing thing, right? If you're getting some sensation, a little bit better movement, maybe they could accelerate of like the research shows that stem cells can and can't do. Yeah. I don't think it could hurt. Yeah. It's a healing thing, right? Yeah. If you're getting some sensation, a little bit better movement, maybe they could accelerate that. Yeah, that would be great. I'll connect you with them.

Cool. I don't know if I'm allowed to at this point. Oh, really? Because I'm in the Neuralink study. I'm not sure that... Maybe you should lie. Yeah. I mean, it would be great.

No, you shouldn't lie. It would be great. You shouldn't lie, but that would suck to get out of the study too. Both things would suck. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would be great. You shouldn't lie. But that would suck to get out of the study too. Both things would suck. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Maybe they would allow it.

Yeah. I mean, we'll see. We'll see. I mean, it's only something that would help you heal. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just know that like in a lot of studies, something like that, they might not want to take on like the added risk.

Understandably. Also, it would kind of mess up their the control exactly like what happens You juice somebody up with stem cells and does the brain pulsate more does the fibers come out more? Yeah, how does it interplay with any sort of rice? Right yeah, I get it. I get it um Is there of a hope in the future of utilizing this technology to help people regain movement? Yeah, yeah, that's one of the plans. I don't know if you've seen anything on it. Basically, they do something similar to what the stem cell, a lot of the stem cell research is. A lot of the

stem cell stuff is, you know, implant stem cells above and below the level of injury, and those stem cells will migrate basically and create a bridge. Some of them have even talked about injecting right into the level of injury. So with the Neuralink, the plan is to implant one in the brain and then implant one below the level of injury, and then the Neuralinks will just talk right to each other. All the brain signals that it's picking up in the brain, wherever it's implanted, motor cortex in this point in this scenario would go straight to the other one and it would send it right through your body like it should and are

they do they have a plan on when to try this they're already trying it in animals they have one in a pig you can watch the video of it where basically they have an implant in the pig's brain and an implant in the pig's spinal cord I think in the thoracic section of the spinal cord and they have been moving the pigs like legs on its own the pigs not paralyzed or anything but basically they like tell the pig come to this section of you know they like grid off the floor and they put food in a section of the grid and they're like if you're okay with us Testing on you pig come over here

basically and the pig will go in there and then they will take control of the pigs leg and They will like start playing around with it like making the pig. Yes, so this right here So all those movements right there the pigs leg are them They're doing it so And this is just the beginning obviously so this is flexor movement. It's saying it's saying it in the pig is lifting its leg up Unconsciously, it's not doing it on its own. Nope. They're they're doing it all Dude how long before they can hijack people For the CIA can hack into you?

Yeah, I know, right? That's like, I mean, that is the ultimate fear of human beings becoming cyborgs is that we're going to be subject to all the problems that our computers and our phones have with malware and spyware and hacking. Yeah. I mean, people ask me all the time if this thing can be hacked and short answer is yes. But at this point at least hacking this wouldn't really do much. You might be able to see like some of the brain signals, you might be able to see some of the data that Neuralink is collecting and

then you might be able to control my cursor on my screen and make me look at weird stuff. But that's about it. I guess you could go in and like look through look through my like messages emails something like that but I'd also have to be like connected already so if I'm not connected to my computer or anything you can't get in there on your own so it would have to be a time when I am on it and you are able to hack it and then you're giving it basically a guidebook on how to ruin your life it it's gonna crank up the Volume put gay porn on full blast meat spin dot com

Yeah, I mean it it It is what it is. It is what it is. Yeah, I think if it happens it happens I've it's something that they had to tell me about before I got into the study. This is possible But I'm not worried about what kind of a piece of shit would they be to hack your brain get the fuck out of here? Yeah? I know there's plenty of bankers out there. Yeah money go concentrate on them You know along that line. It's something I've thought a lot about with like doing interviews and stuff is Like some of the people that I've done interviews interviews with I'm like are they gonna try to attack me to get to like Elon Musk or something?

Are they gonna say things about me? Or like you know try to do like a getcha on me gotcha sort of thing And everyone that I've talked to about that they were just like they would have to be the scum of the earth to try to do that to you But we'll see hasn't happened yet. Maybe maybe someone someone. Oh, there's some scummy people out there They'll give it a go. Yeah, especially if they think you can go viral. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh, it's become in fashion to Criticize Elon Musk. Yeah, I've already had some people who just the way that they're interviewing me. It's just so I Don't know it gives me it gives me the heebie-jeebies

Like I can tell they're trying to get me to say things I'm just like no So what do you think they're trying to do are they just trying to intact well see here's a thing that about? Interviewing that's kind of that a lot of people don't know When you're used to talking to people like I talked to a lot of people I'm used to talk to people if I just meet them This is me if I was at Store buying food. This is me everywhere I can be me, but I'm just because I'm used to it. Yeah, but a lot of people when they sit down They know they're gonna be on camera

They've never been on camera for and they get very nervous and that's why I like to talk to people before the show Just kind of hang out a little get you chilled out. I'm just a person. You're just a person We're gonna just talk it's gonna be easy man. I'm your a person, you're just a person, we're gonna just talk. It's gonna be easy, man. I'm your friend, we're gonna have a good time. Some people don't wanna do that, they wanna do the opposite. So they wanna sit there with a clipboard and they wanna look at you in a condescending way

and it's like a little bit of a power move and what they're trying to do is make salacious content. That's all they're trying to do. That's their job. Their job is different than a person who just wants to have a conversation and ask questions, which is my job. Their job is to make something dramatic happen

that's gonna be shared on TikTok. Yeah. You know, they're barely in the news business anymore. What they're kind of in is the clip business. Viral clip business. They're farming viral clips. So if they can say something ridiculous and maybe you'll say something back

and that'll become the gotcha. Oh, he claps back. Yeah, yeah. It's something like, I'm not nervous talking to people. I never have been, I've never had stage fright. I think people are people. I think I'm pretty good with people. I am not weird about interacting with others. I think people are people. I think I'm pretty good with people I am not weird about interacting with others

I think it's because of my mom my mom's like the friendliest person in the world So I grew up just being able to walk up to someone on the street and start a conversation if I wanted to And so then I can obviously tell things when people are interviewing me like what they're trying to get for me, right? obviously tell things when people are interviewing me, like what they're trying to get from me. Right. Just the way that they ask questions, the tone of their voice, like, hey, I'm your friend, open up to me.

And it's like. It's so sincere. I know, I know. It's just not great. Well, that's the business they're in. If you work for a tire store, you're trying to sell tires. That's their business. You need new tires. Yeah, that's their business You know you need new tires do I really you know their business is talking shit and making things you know

It's just it's a bad format most of those media interviews are bad formats because it's a very limited amount of time And you have to have a clip that fits in between commercials and also that they're not free they have executives and there's too many people that get in there and just, the person talking to you should just be talking to you. And they should have an understanding of what you do and how it happened and what this is all about, what this means for future people. It shouldn't be like going after Elon Musk.

Everyone's so goddamn political right now. It's so weird. They're even making apolitical people political. It's just, so to connect you to that, it's just so stupid. Yeah. What you are is, like I said, I think if there's a movie about the future, one of the very first people that has used this kind of technology and we're learning that these people are getting better at it and they're and now with the use of AI. I mean, who knows what's going to be possible with you just in a few years. Yeah, it's very exciting. It is very exciting. I know a lot of people are really nervous about it. And understandably so. I'm one of them. I'm nervous. Yeah, I've heard I've heard a little bit of what you've said about it And I like I don't have Like good arguments against it. Well, I can come on here and be like Joe don't worry man. Like I'm here to help

Don't worry about it. I would say that's the computer in your Let me let me into your computer your phone. I'll show you there's no big deal. I'm your friend Joe No, but I get it. At the same time, the way I look at it is like how much it's going to be able to help people. How much is going to be able to help people like me at the beginning at least. Like I know a lot of this is like down the road stuff. Like, you know, what it's going to do to normal people who, who get this, they're going to be able to be hacked or controlled or something. But for me, I think about it like how many people who are paralyzed don't have to be

paralyzed anymore. How many people with disabilities, ALS or Alzheimer's or any of these who are blind, how many people are going to be able to live their lives again? And that's my goal at the beginning I know that I feel like people are gonna look at me and say like I really need to be more concerned about a lot of the like things coming down the road and it's something that I'm trying to think more about because at some point people are gonna ask and I don't have good answers for it because all I'm thinking about is you know like I want

to help people and I feel like this is gonna help people and that's what I'm focused on so well I think your perspective is probably the right one because no one knows what's coming yeah no one and you can be freaked out about it like I am but I'm sometimes freaked out about other times I'm just sort of resigned to the fact that this is just the existence that we find ourselves in yeah this is our timeline we live in a very strange timeline and It's happening at a very very very rapid rate and no one has a map of the future. It's not possible It's just all guess. It's completely

It is like an ant trying to figure out how to operate an iPhone. There's it's not we don't have it Yeah, whatever it is, whatever it's gonna be it's not, we don't have it. Yeah. Whatever it is, whatever it's gonna be, it's gonna be, and you're not gonna stop it now. It's, we are a runaway train. Yeah. Let's just hope we're going to a cool spot. Yeah, right.

I mean, you look at a hundred years ago, like, there's no way they could've imagined what our world would be like now. No. So. And I have a feeling the next five to 10 years is gonna be a lot bigger than that Yeah, I mean exponential growth. Yeah, so well, it's just once this stuff goes live

It's just it's gonna be really weird. It's gonna be really weird, but Along the way we're gonna solve a lot of the problems Yeah, that I mean look if I have I've had three knee surgeries two ACL reconstructions If I lived a hundred years ago, I'd be a cripple. Yeah, you know just how it is my knees would be destroyed I wouldn't be able to walk good. Yeah, and now I can do anything. It's that's just medical technology and understanding of the human body implementation of this kind of Device that can allow you to move your body and can as you were saying earlier You can bring back eyesight to some people. This is something that they really are hopeful for

Have they done any of that on animals yet? Um, I'm not sure I know that what The plan is like they did a talk about it a while ago on like a show-and-tell they basically show how like the how the Neuralink works in my brain would be very very similar you would just take you would you would like activate certain parts of the brain or behind the eye the part of the brain the part of the eye that dictate sight and stuff. You would activate certain things

in order to display what's going on around the world to someone, to the back of someone's eye, to their retina, whatever it is. I don't know much about it, but they have done it. Oh, they did it with monkeys actually, yeah. So there's a video of them lighting up parts of a screen and they have like basically an eye tracker in the monkey and so the monkey will look to different parts of the screen and like wherever they've lit up on the brain basically so whatever is

going whatever implant they have in the brain they'll like light up somewhere on the brain and it then they'll light it up on the screen and the monkey will look there and then at some point they stop lighting it up on the brain and it then they'll light it up on the screen and the monkey will look there and then at some point they stop lighting it up on the screen and they're just lighting it up in the monkey's brain and the monkey still looks there so yeah so they know that they can do these sorts of things yeah it's it's amazing I know that there are other companies that have done something similar to this too like giving people like helping people with their eyesight I know one of them like went under which was

It was just a wild story of basically about a company who had Implanted things and people and the company went under and then the people in the study were like well What do we do now? And they didn't know if they were just gonna like continue. That's one of the things about like whoa yeah yeah I should mention that the blindsight implant is already working in monkeys resolution will be low at first like early Nintendo graphics but ultimately may exceed normal human vision holy shit also no monkey has died or been seriously injured by a neural link device yeah March 21st by a neural link device, right? But they did have to kill the monkeys that they

Originally did studies on right? Yeah, do you know much about like studying with animals and stuff like that? Yeah, you have to kill them to find out what damage you've done. Yeah. Yeah exactly Well, like yeah, basically all all animals that are in studies at some point get I think they have a really terrible term for it I think they call them call it sacrificed So they sacrifice that's Satanic. Yeah, it's come up with a new word guys. No, right This day and age there's a lot of fucking not fear. It's not a great. It's not a great Yeah for their cause we could have worked on that. Yeah, all right, just put a little bit more thought into it Yeah, for their cause we could have worked on that one. Yeah, all right, just put a little bit more thought into it

So yeah, they do that They have to like you said learn right something from the monkeys from the animals that they're testing on So some of them they will you know, let live longer some of them they'll Implant something in and then sacrifice almost immediately to see you because they have to know what it's doing short-term medium term long-term So basically all animals and all animal testing get sacrificed at some point I don't know how true that is because obviously a lot of them once they're done with the study that they're in they let go Live if it wasn't too invasive if they don't need to like study any part of them that we need to be killed for But if you're gonna study the brain if you're gonna study the brain. If you're gonna study the brain, then there's really no other way. You gotta get in there. So then, and then

there was the whole like, um, report that came out about all the terrible things that Neuralink was doing to monkeys. I've talked to the people, I got to meet them, the people who were working directly with the monkeys. Those monkeys have the best animal facility in the world. Someone came in and built it. Basically, they're going around now, that person is going around and changing how other

labs treat their monkeys for the better. They're revolutionizing the world of like animal testing basically. So Neuralink treats their animals better than anywhere else. And then the report that came out and said like all of these terrible things that were happening with animals, it's skewed because all of the things that they brought up were just, it was all of the bad. Like basically anything bad that happens to the monkey has to be or any of the animals has to be reported and gets reported in this like you know xyz format of this is what's going on with the monkey this is what happens what we think happened we had to kill the monkey yes or no but none of the other things

get reported at all none of the time between like if it's five years that the monkey's alive and one bad thing happens, then there's a report about that one bad thing happening to the monkey. And you compile all of that and you're like, look at all of these terrible things that are going on with the monkeys. But it's just not really true. Interesting. Yeah. Well, it's a tough one because some people don't think any study should go on with animals

at all. Yeah. Yeah. And so for them, everything that happens to an animal in captivity for scientific purposes is evil. You know, I get it. I get it from their perspective. Yeah, I get it. You know, they call us speciesists because we're willing to do things to monkeys that

we are, you know, aren't there like a lot of evil people in the world we could practice on? You know, I mean, I don't want to give anyone any ideas. Right. It's terrible. That's a terrible thing to say. Should do that. But an innocent monkey is fine.

Very weird. I mean, monkeys do terrible things to us too. They do provoked, you know, or if they live in urban neighborhoods where they rely on tourists and they steal their phones for food and attack people. Yeah, they're they're fuckers Yeah, they can be fuckers, but I saw I saw a story of a Monkey who basically tore some kids face off is I think he was like outside of the village or in his village and The whole story was about how they were doing reconstructive surgery on the kid and like making him look a bit more normal again

But that's terrifyingkeys are unbelievably strong. There's a video of a guy sitting on the ground, cross-legged, and a monkey hops on his shoulder, and then the guy's like, he's thinking it's cute and smiley, and then the monkey just decides to take a massive chunk of his scalp off, just bites down on his head and just takes like a football-sized chunk of scalp

off this dude's head. It's horrible. Just decided for no reason unprovoked Wow, you know Monkey lives in a rough neighborhood He's not out there just you know picking fruit this is it so this dude is just sitting here With his monkey is sick sitting on his lap and he's like talking to the monkey He's like hello, mr. Monkey something bad about it. Look, it doesn't seem like he's bummed out about the monkey now watch what the monkey does whole G yo

Ouchie wah-wah that is skull. Yes That was a brain. No, not that I mean that would have to be a chunk of skull, right? Yes, but it was the skin. I mean that's gone. That's gone forever yikes No, thanks ouch. Yeah gross, but you know a monkey again probably had a hard life Yeah, you know we need his monkey life reform. Yeah I think um when we're looking at These kind of scientific experiments on animals a a lot of people are going to have a problem with. But I wonder through with new technology if that's even going to be necessary anymore.

If they'll in the future, particularly with the leaps that are going to be made with AI, I wonder if they're going to be able to just be able to map out a study, you know, like understand the interactions between human beings and these devices and be able to map out the possibilities and probabilities without Having to do that Yeah, you would think so. I but who knows Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. I feel like at the beginning they would probably need to do like that Along with a study on a human so they might run say simulations a million times on what you know an AI

Simulation on what how this would interact with a human but then they would have to go in and do it to see how true the Like simulations are and then depending on how accurate they are then maybe they could just go fully to that But if it ends up being different then yeah I have a feeling they're gonna be able to replace parts with artificial parts too like like the eyeball itself I was just thinking about that the other day like how complex like look how small these little cameras are on phones little tiny-ass cameras but one of these can do a hundred X zoom yeah you know one of

these is 200 megapixels this little tiny thin thing like what's to say that they wouldn't be able to come up with something that works way better than the human eye? Well, you could zoom in yeah Just like a phone just like zoom into something like but have like a real optical zoom. Yeah I just hope they don't give them red retinas Be creepy yeah, I know terminator star. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's just seems like they could do better Yeah, it would be very weird talking to someone with two fake eyes It'd be it'd be weird if you couldn't even tell you probably wouldn't trust them anymore, right? Because you kind of like look into someone's eyes, you know, you find out they're cool

Yeah, you're just looking into these lenses, are you even in there anymore? I'm just trusting that you're still there. It's like talking to someone with sunglasses on forever. What's going on there, man? Yeah. What are you looking at? That is a weird thing that we look through the eye. It's the old expression, the windows are to the soul. Yeah. I mean, you can tell, right? Sometimes looking looking at people you look in their eyes. You're like, yeah You're a little angry dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah something like that

Yeah, like I'm saying maybe at some point you wouldn't even be able to tell which is also something to think about like who? Like if you wouldn't be able to tell someone had robot eyes like just looked like a normal person, right? But that's a real part of how we interact with each other It's like facial expressions and like figuring each other out just by like how your eyes are looking at me. Oh Man, well, it's not like you distrust someone because they have like a glass eye or something. No, not a glass eye Yeah, yeah Maybe that's the only way it works. It has to make a little noise Especially when you're alone with them here

All through the night, you know little little movement rapid eye movement in yeah Why you're sleeping? Yeah It's I mean, I'm sure they've worked that wasn't there some sort of a study where they were trying to develop an artificial eye I got one guy who has a 3D printed eye. 3D printed eye. It's got a camera in it or something I'm trying to find. Oh, doesn't it hook up to his tooth? I don't, there's two things I'm seeing here. They've figured out a way to allow people to see things through their teeth.

Yeah, I've seen that. I don't get it. I don't get it. I'm not gonna get that one. There's not enough time in the world for me to figure that out. Thank God for smart people. I mean, how are they getting it through the tooth? Both of them with 3D-printed eye? Here's the one guy, first guy. He's a director, shot himself in the eye in an accident. Oh, yo. Because he's got a camera in there, it says.

And he sees through the camera? That I was trying to get to. Yeah, it's got a transmitter. I don't know if it's going to his brain, but he can see it on a camera. Oh, so he can see it on a phone. Yeah. That's kind of weird.

Maybe that's the first step. That guy would make the weirdest POV porn. Is this made in like the 90s? It's not new. Yes, 12 years ago. I'm thinking of playing that on a Game Boy. It's not a Game Boy, but it's some sort of a proprietary little electronic video player. Hmm.

Yep. Amazing player. Hmm. Yeah amazing times. Yeah, so what is Next in terms of like how long does this study that you're on a blind woman sees with tooth in eye surgery? Doctors in Florida restore a woman's sight by implanting a tooth in her eyes different. No, but I think that's how they do it That is that is the thing that's I was saying like through your teeth, but I mean that's that's how they do it. That is the thing. I was saying like through your teeth, but I mean that is how they do it. Team of specialists, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine announced Wednesday that they are the first surgeons in the United States to restore a person's sight by using a tooth. The procedure is formally called modified osteoodontokeratoprosthesis.

Sharon K. Thornton, 60, went blind nine years ago from a rare disorder called Steven-Johnson Syndrome. The disorder left the surface of her eye so severely scarred she was legally blind, but doctors determined that the inside of her eyes were still functional enough that she might one day see with the help of this thing. This is a patient where the surface of the eye was totally damaged, no wetness, no tears. Dr. Victor El-Perez, the ophthalmologist

at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami who operated on Thornton. So we kind of recreate the environment of the mouth in the eye. What? I don't get that. Three phase operation started with the University of Miami dentist, Dr. Yo Sawatari who removed

the tooth from Thornton's mouth and prepared an implant of her own dental tissue for her most severely damaged eye. The tissue would be used to make a new cornea to replace the damaged one. The doctors then removed a section of Thornton's cheek that would become the soft mucus tissue around her pupil. Whoa. Finally Perez and his team implanted the modified tooth which had a hole drilled through the center to support a prosthetic lens. We used that tooth as a platform to put the optical cylinder into the eye, explained

Perez. Perez said doctors often use less risky and less invasive techniques to replace corneas, but the damage for Thornton's Steven Johnson syndrome ruled those out Whoa? Using a tooth might sound strange, but it also offers an advantage because doctors used Thornton's own cheek and tooth tissue She faces less risk that her immune system will attack the tooth and reject the transplant Patients getting a cornea transplant from a deceased donor on the other hand face chances that their immune system will reject the new tissue Wow yeah Wow yeah I some reason I thought they were using that tooth to like I don't know use it as a replacement for like her vision in some

way but it's literally just a placeholder for like you know different different things like the tissue and different places like like they said hold that lens and stuff that makes more sense yeah I thought it was that too I thought they were seeing through the teeth no that makes more sense like why can't we see through our teeth all the time be looking at what's going on in my mouth right yeah um all this stuff is it's it's just mind-blowing to imagine where this is gonna be in a hundred years. Yeah, and with you do you have the like if they start doing the range of motion studies or the

Being able to recreate motion or restore motion. Are you gonna be available for those studies to can they can you do that too? Are you only? Like locked into this one study. Yeah, I I don't know I imagine I'm locked into this for now at least but at the same time I'm not sure I'm really not sure you would have to do it with someone who already has the implant in their brain so I don't know if it'll be a separate neurolink that they would need, like a different one specifically for the two implants interacting together. I don't see why that would be the case.

Just like the same thing with people who they're going to have to test to see if the surgery to replace a neurolink is safe at some point. They're going to have to go through a whole thing. So they're going to have to do it on people who already have it in. So I imagine like that sort of study might be something I would be involved in if they're planning on implanting one in someone's spinal cord and then seeing how they interact and seeing if it works. I don't see why I couldn't be in that but we'll see. It's

kind of a long way off I think. How big is the the Neuralink implant? It's kind of a long way off, I think. How big is the Neuralink implant? It's about the size of a quarter. It's thicker than a quarter. I don't know, maybe half an inch, something like that thick. And does it, it's on the surface? Yeah, it's implanted on my skull. So they cut out a chunk of my skull. I think it's called a craniacomy.

And then they left that chunk out and just replaced it with the Neuralink. Do they take that chunk and put it in the freezer so they can put it back in you someday? Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't think so. Talking about it afterwards... That's it? Yup. Yo, that's in your head.

I was talking about it with my buddy afterwards, and I was like, I should have asked them for my chunk of skull. That would have been sweet. Yeah, I don't think they're allowed to give that to people Yeah, I think that's like bio waste or something like that. I think it's like bio has I know I should it definitely should be They give people their testicles back. So right but it has to be in like formaldehyde or something Okay, so let's take your skull and put it into formaldehyde being like formaldehyde or something. Okay. So take your skull and put it into formaldehyde.

Yeah, that's fine. As long as I can have it. How many versions did they go through before they got to the one where they were willing to do it on people? A lot. I saw like from their very first idea of Neuralink through this one. I don't know. I don't know exactly how many there were. I would say at least

one or two dozen different iterations. Yeah, and then the version I have is like thousands and like the thousand or two thousandth iteration of this one. So like they're constantly changing stuff. So like even the next person that gets it, they've probably made, I don't know, a thousand more modifications to it. Little things just like if they've seen certain things in my implant they could improve on. Obviously they're gonna change how the threads work. They're gonna add more electrodes. They're going to maybe update the battery. They might update a lot of things. They're looking at updating what signal it uses instead of Bluetooth. They're looking at different

things like that. So the next one that comes in is probably going to be much different. Maybe the same design. Maybe they found a better design. I don't know. Wow. And I know in the future they've talked about putting this into people that don't have any issues medically. What are they planning on doing? Like how are they planning on that? Do you know? What do you mean how? Like in terms of like, is that going to just be offered for you're going to get what are the long term goals? Is it to get the internet on that? Is that people communicate telepathically? Is you going to get, what are the long-term goals? Is it to get the internet on that? Is it so that people communicate telepathically? Is it going to be like a slow build up to the idea that everyone is going to want to

get one of these things? Mm-hmm. I think once it's proved, so like this study is to prove whether or not it's safe and if it works, basically. I think once that's proven, then they're going to get into a lot more of what it's actually capable of. And then once it's released to the public, I think people are going to rush to get it, honestly.

At least a group of people who have been following it at the very least, because once we know that it's safe, then that's one of the big things that people are going to, once that's lifted, once you're like, okay, it's safe, now we can go through and start talking about being able to communicate with people and being able to, you know, possibly download information or have it be available to you using AI and stuff like that. I'm not sure if that's going to happen. I don't see why it's not possible at the very least. And then they, I know Neuralink's talking about opening up a clinic in Austin, basically where you would go in and get a surgery and like walk out. So it's not like like my surgery was but I don't want to say not invasive because obviously they did brain surgery but it was they were

expecting it to be you know something like three to six hours and my surgery took under two hours. It went super super fast. There were no complications at all. It was not Like obviously invasive in the brain, but there was no damage done really so And this was the very first time so once they get this even better even more tuned in then I imagine people go into this clinic and Going in and come out in a few hours with a nerink and then they can chat with other friends online or something. Jesus. It'd be pretty cool.

It'd be pretty cool. Again, I'm not here to talk about the ethical ramifications of that or how it's fun to think about, like the things that might go wrong or could go wrong. And it's probably something that people much smarter than me should think about whether or not it should be done, but I think there are so many things that you could do with it I think it's going to be done no matter what and if it's not done by Neuralink It's going to be done by someone in another country. Yeah, it's going to be done Technology always moves forward. It never stops over concerns of what could possibly go wrong, hence the nuclear bomb.

It's not going to stop. It's just not what we do. We always try to come up with greater things. If someone does figure out a way to connect human beings to some form of wireless internet or wireless data or some completely new thing instead of thinking as the internet as we know it being these devices that go to websites, it might be a completely different invention that uses a completely different type of technology to sync all the information and all the minds in the world together.

It might not be as dopey as going to a website. Going to a website is probably like an archaic way to do it. Yeah. It'll be like the cloud or the metaverse or something. You can just hop in and everyone will be there. You can go chat with whoever you want around the world. And they can just upgrade your operating system and make you woke. Yeah. Exactly, right? You sign up for the wrong one. You know he gets way crazy ideas.

Yeah, propaganda will take new leaps and bounds. Right, but then who's running it? Like that's what is it one person and everybody else is a robot? Like that doesn't make any sense. What they'll try. I'm sure someone's gonna want to run it all. Someone is gonna want to run it. Yeah. It's gonna need to be hopefully they by that point they will regulate it but as we've seen with like, you know things like AI art even they're trying to catch up with that It's like, yeah Should we should we have like thought about this before all this was released and like no government will figure it out Yeah, good luck with that. Right. Yeah

Well, they're able to scour the internet for every artists work Yeah, and then sort of take pieces of that and create art. And these artists are like, hey, you know, that took me fucking forever to paint that. Like, you just stole it and did a version of it in 13 seconds. Weird. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's just one problem. Another problem is deep fakes and songs. They made a Drake song that became a hit and Drake had nothing to do with it Yeah, it's not that yeah Not that far away from it being out of the barn where you're not gonna be able to ever stop You're not gonna be able you're gonna be able to do whatever you want in terms of like creating videos audios and it'll look Indistinguishable from a real video, real audio. They're already gonna take this podcast

and translate it into different languages without me being able to speak them, just through AI. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think they did the same thing with the deep fake, like you were just saying. I think they did something with like Trump recently, where it was like a deep fake of Trump, and after a while, he had to be like, hey guys, that wasn't me.

Wasn't there, was there a football player that was saying some wild shit that turned out to be fake or a basketball player? Did you hear about this Jamie? Exactly what you're talking about, but there's a bunch of fake press conferences that go yes, that's what I'm talking about It's like a thing someone's doing Yeah, but apparently it was just barely wacky enough for people to go that looks big You have to be very sophisticated. If you saw this, I mean we're getting used to looking for things being fake, whereas 20 years ago you would say that's real.

I see it. It's a video. It's real. It's something that I was actually just talking with my buddy about the other day. I think it's going to be something similar to, you know how we get emails from Nigerian princes and we're like yeah like grandma don't open that don't send them money it's not real. I think it's going to be something that people are able to do like the next generations where they look at something online and they're

like oh yeah that's AI oh yeah that's fake. Yeah I think you're right. Yeah they're just they're going to grow up with it so they're going to be able to figure out but maybe not this stuff looks so real I don't know, but maybe they're gonna have to be required to do like watermarks or something on it I don't think they're gonna be able to stop it. I think we're just gonna get to a real weird blurry place I think the one thing that might help This sounds crazy, but I think ultimately what technology does is closes, it makes things more accessible. It gets you more information, it connects people more, it's with translation, it's connecting

people from different cultures and different countries more. I think ultimately what it's going to do is it's going to be some sort of a mind interface. I don't think it's going to be as simple as language. I think it's going to be a next level mind interface. And if it's something through a technology akin to Neuralink or maybe future versions of Neuralink, I think we're going to be able to know what someone's actually thinking.

I think you're not going to be able to lie anymore, is what I'm saying. I don't think lying is going to be able to know what someone's actually thinking. I think you're not going to be able to lie anymore is what I'm saying. I don't think lying is going to be possible 100 years from now, which would be a really good thing. And if you're a person right now that lives your life without lying, you know this. This is way better. As a person who used to lie and doesn't lie ever now, I'll tell you right now, it's great. I love it.

It's a good thing to not lie. And if you live your life in this manner where there cannot be deception, how much more would we get done? How much more would we understand each other in relationships? And if you're bullshitting, you'll understand that you're bullshitting by the way another person sees your thoughts, and then you'll be forced to handle those and go, you know what? I'm trying to put this off on other people and it's really me I'm the problem yeah you'll be able to see it everyone will see reality instead of these sort of

manufactured narratives that people have with this very selective view of memory and their thoughts of the past and you know my boss did me wrong no you're a fuckup you showed up late every day like you know fucking they fucking hated me No, you were super insecure real shitty around people. You know it's like you'll see well Well, we'll be able to solve a lot of our social issues that seem insurmountable Because of poor communication but poor understand and the lack of honesty a lack of real honest conversations instead of just people trying to win arguments Yeah, yeah, that'd be great until people realize

That you know maybe you don't need to lie exactly Maybe you can find ways to work around having to lie with this thing if you can't lie Anymore if you're not allowed to I mean people find ways to kind of sort of lie all the time. And then also if you can hack it and then you're able to lie and no one else is then that becomes kind of an issue too. If in some way you are able to like jailbreak your neuro links so you can't lie anymore and then you're the only one lying everyone's going to believe you. They think that you can't lie and then that brings up a whole new world of problems. You know they think that you can't lie and then that brings up a whole new world of problems. Mm-hmm

My my eyes you're seeing right into the thoughts. Oh, I see. I don't think you have a I don't think there's any there's no that doesn't exist anymore I think I think it goes away and hence leaders go away. That's gonna be a real problem. We're gonna have to have actual understanding of all the different processes that are in play, whether it's environment or resources or, you know, inter-country conflicts, whatever the fuck is going on, we're going to have a, we're going to have to have a real understanding of it without politicians bullshitting us on as to why we're going to do something that won't exist anymore. That would be wild. They would be the ones that would resist it the most.

They were like, we this dangerous mind-reading technology Thank you fucking Nancy blows you to have a press conference I Mean I I just think if something like that ever came about they would never let it happen I don't think they have a choice mmm Cuz China will do it rush will do it everyone will do it someone's gonna do it all these eggheads out there That are willing to push that but they're not gonna listen to the government. Shut the fuck up. The government is just a bunch of people. The super nerds out there, the ones who are really in charge of this stuff, because even we're seeing this with technology and some

of these hearings on AI, the people that are asking the questions don't know what the fuck is going on. Yeah. You know, and I'm sure you saw that with some of the Facebook hearings and some of the other hearings. The people that are actually asking about the tech time. How much time do you have to get into the understanding of this? How much time between worrying about water rights in your district and this and all these other problems that you have as a politician How much time are you actually spending trying to figure out how social media works? Yeah, probably none. They just have aides that are giving them all this stuff.

That's why they have pieces of paper and they're looking down with their reading glasses, no, Mr. Zuckerberg, my phone doesn't go to Google, right? Why is that? He's like grandpas who argue on Facebook. They're not going to be the people that control AI and they're not going to be the people that are going to be able to figure out how to stop mind reading technology. I think when mind reading technology comes, it's going to come so fast that it's going to be just like all these other things like the internet.

It came so fast they couldn't control it. Because if you looked at the internet, if you looked at what the internet has done for like a distrust in mainstream media, distrust in politicians, exposing corruption, all the different things that we know about now that are a fact that just 20 years ago you would have thought been crazy conspiracy talk. If they knew that that was gonna happen and make life so much more difficult for them, they would have regulated the internet from the jump. They would have stopped, stepped in, took over like China did, took over like North Korea did, and you would get their

version of the internet forever and that's it and there's no growth and they'll silence dissidents. And that's how they would have done it if they had ever known that it was going to be what it is now. I think that's exactly what's going to happen with mind reading software and mind reading technology. I think it's going to happen. They're going to be, oh Jesus Christ. I don't think, you know, and also, look, they're just human beings too. They're going to want that. Yeah. If they find out there's a technology that allows you to communicate with people in a completely new way, and it's much more fulfilling, and we understand each other much better, and we really do realize that we are all one,

imagine we can communicate with this technology and it ends war overnight. It makes war literally impossible. You realize that these people that you're about to bomb are you and that we're all the same thing. We're all one consciousness experiencing itself through different bodies and different lives and different experiences and different genes and different parts of the world but we're all genuinely the same thing yeah yeah I don't know it brings up a lot of questions like where we would go from there though like how it's gonna change that's from the aliens land the aliens land we figured out oh finally oh man yeah we were waiting if that's what it takes to bring aliens down then I'm all

for it if that's if that's what it takes to really get us to be face to face the only thing I keep telling my buddy Is like I I am all down for the whole like aliens come in us interacting with them and everything as long as they're not The mantids if they're the mantis people I I don't want anything to do with them. I think that You know I just don't want it.'m with you bro yeah the mantis people imagine mantises were like the size of a dog we'd be so fucked we'd be so fucked yeah one of the most gangster videos I've ever seen online is like a gecko and the geckos trying to eat the mantis and the gecko walks up to the mantis and tries to get it and the mantis like not today I'm gonna eat you and the

geckos like what is happening You can see it look at its face It's like so confused and it's got its claws these fucking these giant things Wrapped around and controlling this just starts eating its face Yep, mantises are like insects themselves like you look really get up close to an insect you like that thing is ugly I do not like it one bit. Now imagine that. And the things I've heard about the mantids is they're not the size of a dog.

They're like the size of multiple people. And no thanks. Absolutely not. The mantis aliens I'm not too familiar with. I've seen a couple things online. How many people have seen the mantis aliens? Yeah, I know of one story where there was a hunter just walking around and it got like dark over him or something and he looked up and

there was just like a ship over him and he looked through a scope and he looked right into some like mantis people and yeah and I'm not okay with that. Like that's the that's the one alien story I think I'll stay far away from and hope it's something else. Well you got to think that Insects have some kind of bizarre intelligence Because that's if you've ever seen leaf cutter ant colonies when they they pour the cement in them and you realize like how sophisticated They are like how did you guys do this? How do you figure this out? There's like they have channels where the air can pass through this so they can ferment leaves. So they have like a fermentation factory inside their ant colony. And the colony is huge. It's so big and you're like, you little tiny

fuckers built a city underground right here. There's got to be some sort of intelligence. Now if ants evolved to the point where they develop that kind of intelligence, there's got to be some sort of intelligence. Now, if ants evolved to the point where they develop that kind of intelligence, who's to say that in a different environment where ants have more access to food, more access to resources, and more competition, that they don't evolve to the point where that intelligence, it keeps getting scaled up, and they get to like a human human level intelligence from an insect or beyond why not yeah they just need some psychedelics or something to really get that brain to grow or a neural link

yeah right that's what I have a feeling I have a feeling that in the future everyone's going to be some sort of a cyborg and everyone else is going to be artificial. That there'll be complete life forms that were developed just with computers. Just like computers, technology, whatever form of chips and and they'll put together things that are more intelligent than us, can communicate with us, can work with us, but that's going to be one of those things. It's not going to be one of us, and that'll be a different life form that exists alongside

with us. But I don't think there'll be very many people like me. No chip, no nothing, just a person. Like, what is that moron doing? You're running around with no chip? You know, I think in the future, it's going's gonna be everyone's gonna have something that enhances them. We already do with our phones. Yeah, you know yeah It's it's going to be something like beyond that where it's gonna be so compelling that everyone's gonna want to do it Mm-hmm, so you're not gonna get it if it comes out. I'm not saying I'm not gonna get it. I'm I get it

Hmm I might have I don't want to be alone. Yeah, I'll be the only person who can't read minds Um, I probably wouldn't want to be the first adopter. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna wait a little bit Yeah, that was an argument that I had with doing this was do I really want to be the first? I mean who knows what kind of problems just gonna be but but yeah for a guy like you I would say like They they're pretty sure it works, and they were right yeah, you know and how cool was it the first day? To be able to play video games. Yeah, it was awesome What did you play? Civilization 6 I don't know I don't you've heard of it. It's a massive game. It's something I've been wanting to play for a long time.

I was able to kind of sort of play it with some different assistive technology over the last few years, but not really. And I played it like all night. I didn't sleep. It was freaking awesome. Man, I just love, I mean I grew up being a gamer. I grew up in kind of this age. So the last eight years I've watched all of my friends play games that I've wanted to play and the fact that I might be able to play some of Them like some of them are still Too far out of reach for the Neuralink at this point, but not for much longer in the next few years I think I'll be able to play anything anyone else play. Hey, I love halo. I'm a big Be able to play that. Yeah, I hope so. Wow

Yeah, so you'll be able to play shooters like Call, I hope so. Wow. I really hope so. Yeah, that would be sick. So you'll be able to play shooters, like Call of Duty. Yeah, yeah, that brings up another thing. I basically have an aimbot in my head. Oh, that's crazy. They'll probably have different leagues for people like me, because it's just not fair.

Wow, is it that accurate? It's that accurate. Wow. And it's just not fair. Wow, is it that accurate? It's that accurate and it's faster. One thing that I found with the Neuralink is something that kind of blew my mind too, is that when I'm attempting to do stuff sometimes or I'm thinking it to like move in a certain place, sometimes it's so good that it's moving before I even like think it to move. It's almost like if you think about moving your hand, the signal is basically already being sent before you move your hand. Like your your mind is saying okay he's about to move his hand basically so the signal needs to be

sent all the way down and back up in order for you to move your hand. So the speed that all that happens, and it's almost a little preemptive, I saw that with the Neuralink where it was moving the cursor before I was actually moving my hand. So with video games, stuff like that, you just need to think for it to move somewhere and it is that accurate and it's quicker than you can even think so There's no way it's gonna like no one else is gonna be able to keep up with it That's gonna be wild for something like quake Like a first person like a fast first person shooter you're running down hallways

And you just catching people and shooting them instantaneously Elon Musk will have a field day Wasn't he like one of the best quake players in the world? Was he? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, I think he was like one of the top Quake players in North America at one point. I don't, I wouldn't doubt that. I know he's a gamer. I know he gets addicted to games. Yeah. Especially something that's that exciting. That's gonna be so dope for you, man. You'll be fucking people up. Yeah I'll just enter tournaments and I won't tell them I have the nerling and I Don't know. I don't know how I would do it. I guess yeah, but If I'm doing it all online like

Cool for you to play them in a tournament like a one-on-one tournament and fuck up like the best players in the world wouldn't that be insane yeah I bet they would play just to see for sure for sure you because like there's tactics and strategy especially if you're like doing one-on-one deathmatch we have to know like when the health is spawning and when the weapons are spawning how to control a map So they'll have like a little bit of an advantage in that. Yeah, if you just can't miss I like it now. What about VR has there been any sort of

interface that allows you to use like Meta's VR or Oculus? No, not yet. I don't think... So like a lot of what we've done is just the computer at this point. Like they're planning on doing it into phones. I did connect to a Nintendo Switch at one point. I was playing Mario Kart. That's something that isn't like too far off as well for me to just be able to do that on my own. But that's going to be every console. I don't see why VR would be any different.

I think at some point in the study they're going to do it just to see if it works. I don't see why it wouldn't at all. The only thing that I would say is that VR actually requires physical movement. Like there's a couple games that we have. Yeah, but if the brain is already interpreting your like motor cortex the movement of your motor cortex Then you can just think move this and it'll move it in VR as well I think it would work right, but you're actually moving these handles in VR. Oh, yeah. I see what you mean Yeah, I see what you know you have the handles

We'll just get get an optimist robot and then have him have him hold the VR handles and then you can control that he's connected to you Yeah, whoa, it would be the same. Yeah, bro You're gonna be inside that thing walking around I'll just I'm on tight. Yeah, I've always thought if you know, you should give me an optimist robot I'll have it get one of those like baby chest carriers or something Carry me around like that and bro great you imagine walking down the street with that. That's so, you'd accidentally step on people. You ever, do you ever watch Dave Chappelle's old like show that he did? There was a... Chappelle show you mean? Yeah I was on it a couple times.

Sorry I didn't know. No worries. There was one about the home stenographers and it's basically like a little person that they carry around on one of those carriers Like they're back and it's just like a stenographer He's typing down everything you say and I just want something like that like a little optimist robot carrying me around on its back Like a kangaroo pouch. Yeah, something like that. Put it right in the front. So you just leave me sitting there Yeah, that's what you want. You want like your head on the chest? Yeah, that's what you want. Yeah, I like your head Yeah, yeah, be sick what's this guy doing the oh there it is

And he just reads back Oh what you said, yeah Yeah, although I do I do remember that bit. Yeah Yeah, that would like I think the future is gonna be very interesting. And I think there's gonna be a lot of really wild discoveries that build upon other wild discoveries and stuff like Neuralink. I'm sure there's competing companies that are doing something similar, right? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I think that, like I'm pretty sure some of the people who have left Neuralink have gone and either started their own little companies or have gone to other companies that are doing something similar. I think Neuralink's advancements now are going to pull everyone else up. I think Neuralink will be at the lead for quite a while, but I don't see why companies that haven't been able to achieve what Neuralink is achieving now won't be able to do it in a year or two time. Like, especially, like I said, cause Neuralink is making everything so open

source and there's people like me out there who are just talking about it, like willy-nilly that, um, I don't see why other companies won't, you know, find some way to catch up over time. No, for sure. I think with them leading the way and the fact that it's been implemented and it's been successful And the fact that they're already improving upon the software and how yours and being able to correct issues with it What is their timeline? like in terms of

Next being able to use something that allows people to move that couldn't move Restore site do they have like a timeline where they think, oh yeah, I don't know. I keep saying that it's all gonna happen in my lifetime for sure. I keep saying that it's gonna happen in the next 10 years, 20 years, where quadriplegics like me, paralyzed people,

won't have to be paralyzed anymore. I have this vision of someone being paralyzed, going into the hospital, getting the Neuralink and walking out like a day or two later, which I think is totally possible. I think it's gonna happen a lot sooner than later, especially how fast all this is moving and the fact that this is like successful now. I think it all, I don't know that it would help me per se, like even though I said it's in my lifetime. Part about being paralyzed in the quadriplegic is my body has just deteriorated so much that

even if they did give me something to make me able to move again, my body is just so jacked up at this point that I'm not sure it would really help that much. I could probably build it back up to a certain point, but even people who have recovered or have been part of studies where they get some movement back, their bodies just don't work the same. Because of atrophy? Because of atrophy. Like, one of my ankles is completely jacked up. It's like twisted the wrong way.

I have to wear this hand brace because if I don't, my fingers are all just like curled up basically. And so like correcting some of that would take probably some extensive surgery. One of my buddies is like one of the top ortho surgeons in the United States. So maybe I could just get him to go in and fix it all. But it would be a lot and I'm not sure it would help and muscle atrophy. So I don't know, but I'm, that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that people won't have to be paralyzed in the future.

Like that, that's more like that's worth more than anything. Well that's also one of the legitimate uses for steroids. One of the legitimate uses for steroids is the people with like muscle wasting disease and yeah, people people who like severely Atrophied and that it allows them to build up tissue better. Oh, yeah Yeah stem cells steroids gonna make you a superhuman, bro Yeah, aren't I already one kind of already one especially if you're playing you quick. I can't wait to see that. That's now with the future of this stuff Especially if you're playing you quick, I can't wait to see that that's a sick now

with the future of this stuff it's going to Eventually get to a point where it's probably like in the beginning It's probably going to be very difficult to acquire right like very expensive, but it's probably in the future going to be much more accessible probably in the future going to be much more accessible. Yeah. When do they, like, if yours is, if they complete your trial, they find it satisfactory, they have like a way to do it, when will the average person who is a quadriplegic be able to start being able to use some of this technology?

I have no idea. I know that my study is, like the main part of the study is a year and then five years kind of extensive like Follow-up stuff in the study. So once that's done and however many people I've I've seen numbers up to like a few hundred people Have it in this five-year Timeline so once all that happens And I don't know what like phase two is with this. I would say And I don't know what like phase two is with this. I would say 20 years, but that's me probably also being very optimistic.

I have no idea. I don't know like what the FDA is going to decide with all this. I don't know how much, how many more phases of the trial need to happen before that. I really couldn't tell you. But honestly, I think it's within my lifetime for sure. And how did they contact you? How did you wind up getting chosen? Yeah, my buddy's probably out there having a freaking heart attack. So basically what happened was I knew

nothing about Neuralink. I was just lying in my bed one day and I got a phone call from my buddy at like 11 a.m. Or something and he I answered the phone. I was like, what's up? And He was like, you know, Neuralink just opened up their first inhuman trials. He's like you should apply for this I was like cool. like what is it? So he explained it to me, gave me like a five minute rundown of what they're doing and stuff. And we applied over the phone. Like I just basically like told him all my information. He applied for me. He spelled my name wrong on the application, which is pretty funny because he was drunk at the time again on

on a On a Wednesday of the week like 11 a.m. He was already wasted respect. Yeah Respect to the day drinkers. Yeah. Yeah, it was he the his justification for it Is that he was like going to a wedding that weekend he hadn't drank in a long time she's like I need to understand what my tolerance is so he drank like a whole bottle of fireball or something like that just to see like how he would be so yeah we we did all that and then within like a day or two they contacted me and I went through about a month long application process of

different like zoom interviews and stuff and then I went through about a month long application process of different like Zoom interviews and stuff and then finally culminating in a like an in-person interview or in-person like full day of testing where they did like eight hours of tests on me, like different scans, blood tests, urine tests, things like that. And then I was just waiting. What was it like when you found out was gonna be you? It was cool. It was cool. You got an email. Did you get a phone call? They called me They called me for the first like so I applied like September late September September like 19th or something around that day A month later October end of October. I had finished all my testing and interviews, and then I didn't find out they had chosen me until maybe the end of November, early December. And even when they said they had chosen me, they said I was going to be one of the first

like three people that they were doing for the first part of the study. So they didn't tell me I was going to be the first. They just said, we selected you as one of the candidates basically. And so that was really, really cool. And then it was sort of back and forth. Do I want to be the first? Do I want to wait until I have someone else? Because being the first, a lot more risk obviously and I have the worst version of the Neuralink

that's ever going to be in anyone. It's only going to get better. So I was like, maybe I'll let someone else get the first and then I get a better version than the second or third one. But ultimately being the first is cool. It's something that I just decided to do. I was like, this is the best way I can help too. If anything goes wrong, I'd rather go wrong to me than passing it up and having someone else struggle, having someone else. Like, God forbid, anyone, like anything bad happen to someone,

I would rather it had happened to me, and I would rather not have passed up and watch it happen to someone else. So, decided to do it, and I was like, yeah, just let me know if I'm gonna be the first or not. Obviously, I wanted to at that point, and then about a month later, they called, and they were like like we're gonna do

your surgery you're gonna be the first person I think in December they had told me that it could be me and they said that we might end up having you be the first and it could happen as early as like mid-December and that kind of stressed me out because I was a little worried that something bad would happen and I would have ruined Christmas for my family forever I was like like, if this is right around Christmas and something bad happens, like Christmas is going to be ruined forever. Luckily, they waited like an extra month and a half. But it was cool.

Like, I kept pretty level expectations through the whole thing. I didn't know what was going to come of it. I didn't know if I was going to end up doing media or anything. It was something that I had talked to my parents about, but it wasn't something that I talked to my parents about, but it wasn't something that I really wanted to do per se. I wasn't wanting to like get famous or anything from this. There are a couple things that I did want to do and ultimately that's why I decided to do media. But yeah, it was cool. It was all right.

You have a very noble and selfless outlook. Have you always had that? No. No, I would say being paralyzed made me just rethink a lot of things in my life, a lot of my perspective. I mean, one thing about being paralyzed is there's, especially being a quadriplegic that you just have a lot of time to think. I thought through

everything I've ever done, all the mistakes I ever made, why I was who I was, where I like where I was. I realized a lot of things about myself. I realized you know that I wasn't the person who I thought I was I Always built myself up a certain way and then going back through all of my interactions with everyone all the mistakes I made I realized I'm painting a much prettier picture of myself in my head than who I Like actually was then a lot of the interactions I had with people You know actions speak louder than words and if I was thinking I was this great person and treating people like absolute

dog crap, basically, like then maybe I'm not as good of a guy as I thought I was. I realized that I wasn't as good of a son as I thought I was. I wasn't as good of a boyfriend as I thought I was. I wasn't as good of a friend. So I found the reasons why I was doing these things and I thought about it for probably a few years just lying in my bed staring at walls for you know eight, ten hours a day just thinking. And eventually I came to this conclusion that And eventually I came to this conclusion that partly through my like faith, my interactions with God, and partly just because I wanted to be better, I wanted to be a better person, I realized that there were things that I could do to help and this seemed like my best chance,

honestly. Wow. That's a wild thing to happen to someone, to have like a radical shift in perspective that's forced upon you. Yeah. Yeah. I heard you say, I was watching, I can't remember who I was watching you interview maybe it was the Tucker interview, maybe it was the Terrence Howard interview because I just watched those ones recently and you were talking about people like people never having been through anything like extreme happen to them and so You know, they're never forced to think certain ways or they just, I don't know, they never grow in certain ways.

That's paraphrasing, but it was along those lines. And I don't know, being a quadriplegic is, I kind of make this joke, but it's easier than people think. I mean, I just get waited on All the time I get to lie in bed and watch TV and read books and people bring me food and bring me drinks And people do everything for me. Like it's really not that bad but Obviously, it was really really hard like being paralyzed Getting all of the things that I love to do most taken for me. Like I was a really

big athlete. I played like every sport under the sun and then not being able to play sports anymore was one of the hardest things that I think I've ever had to go through. And there were a lot of other things. Not having any privacy anymore. Like having to have everyone do anything for me. Like go to the bathroom. Having to take a shower with people Having like my parents scrubbed me in the shower or having my mom like help me go to the bathroom like it's just It's not easy and it's not easy being a burden to everyone around you and people always say like you're not a burden like Look, we love you and we would do anything for you. But like I am, I know I am, it's not something that someone's going to be able to convince

me that I'm not. And I understand that they love me and they're willing to do it. But at the same time, like, obviously there are things that if I could change, I would and I can't. So I just have to try my best to do as much as I can for those around me. And this is part of what I can't so I just have to try my best to You know do as much as I can for those around me and this is part of what I can do I've thought for years like what could I possibly do to help and This is this is it. I think as much as I can I want to do Everything with mirror link to make things better for people in the future. That's a beautiful way of

engaging with this man man. It really is. And I think what happened to you is tragic, but your perspective is pretty fucking cool. It really is. It really is. It's beautiful to hear. And I mean, I wish you all the best. I really hope that this becomes something

that allows you to move again and that they keep improving upon it. And thank you for risking risking this and thank you for being the first guy. Yeah, yeah, no worries. People keep saying a lot of weird things about me like you know you're like an Apollo astronaut. I don't see myself that way. I know that people keep saying you're the first, you're like a pioneer. I don't see myself that way at all. I just think anyone in my position would have done it. I think that I guess it took a bit of bravery. I don't think, I just, I don't see myself that way.

I just think that I did it so to show people, I did it because I knew that I could. I did it because I knew that I was capable of going through it. I did, you know, became a quadriplegic and I made it out the other side. Like I feel good about my life. I feel like I managed that pretty well. I'm a pretty chill guy so I feel like I rolled with the punches pretty well. And I thought the same thing with Neuralink. So like I never thought of myself trailblazing or anything but it's just cool to be a part

of and I'm really happy that Neuralink chose me and I'm looking forward to having some like cyborg buddies in the future. It'll be cool. Yeah, how long before you can link those things together? Yeah, I Guess we'll find out when they get the next patient like The next participant like maybe a couple months, and we'll be chatting with each other I mean I've been You know having telepathic communications with pager the monkey for a few months no one knows about it

But we talk about that kind of stuff all the time He's oddly obsessed with the new planet of the apes movie, but couldn't tell you why what kind of joke is that man? You can't crack jokes like that way. I don't know if you're telling the truth. You're talking to a monkey telepathically No, you're joking. Yeah, see I can tell because you have human eyes. Yeah. Yeah exactly. Yeah Are you sure? I think you do. Okay. Or they're really good.

Yeah. You know, if they could develop an eye just like artificial intelligence can make images like pretty fucking close, maybe they can make an eyeball that just really does kind of like talk to you a little bit. Makes you think. Just know when someone's bullshitting. Dude. Yeah.

Come on. Yeah. There's no way I talk to Pager at all on a daily basis at least Now I'm thinking you do now. I'm going the other way with it Yeah, it's um It's it's exciting times. It's very interesting. Yeah, um the ability that you have right now. It's Limited to computer interfaces, right? What about other smart things can you interact with that like could you interact with other sort of electronics?

Not really, it's all through the computer. Just because in order to even interact with the computer it has to be uploaded with that app and so that's why like putting it on a phone or something you would just upload the app onto it. Any sort of other devices, there's ways to connect to them. So for me, even with the switch, it's through my computer still. But then you run a cord from my computer through a converter box and then into the switch.

So it's all through the computer right now. I don't think it's going to be that way forever. I think it's going to be much easier to connect to other devices in the future. Especially if Neuralink takes off like I think it will, then companies will start just uploading the software onto it, downloading the software onto it, so that way you can connect to it.

Like it's going to be one of those things where like it's Alexa compatible, it's Neuralink compatible. Right. Right, that makes sense especially if there's widespread implementation of this and it turns out to be a real thing. It might be something that someone has to have like you have to have a wheelchair wrap at certain businesses. Yeah, yeah, the new Tesla phone, I'm sure he's just going to build all that into that. All the Optimus robots are going to have it built in. Do you think he's going to make a Tesla phone yeah he might I think when when he said that all they might ban Apple devices because they're gonna use open AI I was like

what is going on yeah I get real nervous when someone way fucking smarter than me gets nervous you know when he's saying that if AI but basically what he's saying is I think to paraphr, he's saying that Apple wasn't smart enough to create their own artificial intelligence, but they're smart enough to keep artificial intelligence from running rampant through their operating system. I don't think they are. Yeah. I don't trust it.

I don't trust it one bit. That's going to be in your head, bro. Yeah. Yeah. One day we're all going to have to trust it. You know, if I had Scarlett Johansson's voice in my head all the time I don't think I would mind. It would be dreamy It would be okay, it would be okay. She's got a dreamy voice well listen man. Thank you very much for being here

Thanks for being you and let's do this again sometime in the future We could see what you know what improvements and and how it's going. Hey man absolutely as we move this thing along then I'm more than happy to come back. Alright yeah thank you very much. Oh do you have social media or anything where people can find out what you're up to? Yeah I have an X like at modded quad I think it's called. I have like an Instagram and stuff and I'm getting other stuff up and running. I'm gonna start like streaming more and stuff so it'll be it'll be out there. You're gonna stream. Yeah Yeah, I did once I did like kind of like a test stream about to do another test stream

Probably this week at some point maybe the next few days then I'm gonna stream from like video games and stuff. That's great, man I think people would love to see that and love to hear you talk about your experiences. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be cool You've got a great perspective man. You really don't you thank you very much. It's a pleasure to meet you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be cool. You've got a great perspective, man. You really do. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to meet you. Yeah, you too. All right. All the best. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everybody.