Elon Musk defines Neuralink as AI safety project while second human trial participant receives brain implant

During a podcast interview spanning more than 8 hours, Elon Musk sat together with Neuralink's President DJ Seo, its Head Neurosurgeon Matthew MacDougall, and Brain Interface Software Lead Bliss Chapman, to discuss the enhancements to the human mind that the brain-computer interface (BCI) implant project can bring.

One of the reasons for the wide-ranging talk was the second human trial participant in whose brain Neuralink has now implanted its device. "It seems to have gone extremely well with the second patient," says Elon, and they can now control a mouse cursor with their mind, just like Neuralink's first human trial participant Noland Arbaugh.

A lot of the electrodes wired into his brain retracted while the surgery was healing, and the Neuralink team had to rework the data compression algorithms to hit record bits-per-second (BPS) cursor control speeds.

For the second Neuralink patient, the neurosurgeon efforts focused on better skull forming, deeper implant electrode penetration, and zapping the air pockets that form during surgery to avoid the type of retraction that happened the first time.

As usual, Elon Musk drifted into future of humanity territory, and said that the BCI work done with Neuralink could potentially help our inevitable encounters with various artificial intelligence undertakings, too.

One of the goals is to drastically increase the bandwidth speed of human-AI communication to ensure better alignment and prevent AI from becoming "bored" with human interaction, hence contributing to the safety of AI deployment.

Elon Musk reiterated that the Neuralink project will be aiming to recruit 8 more participants for its brain implant by year's end, while the team will be looking to add more electrodes, faster chips, and even multiple brain implants going forward.

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