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So this is a different type of episode, but you got to stick with me because

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one of the most interesting frontiers that I've been personally obsessed with

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is brain computer interfaces, especially Neuralink, which is what I believe

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to be the last personal device that will ever need to make.

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As I went down this rabbit hole, I was fascinated at how awe-inspiring that

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technology is, but also its inevitability.

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This technology is here today and it's becoming sci-fi level great incredibly

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quickly. So what you're about to listen to is a short video essay on just that.

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It's most exciting to watch this visually, either through YouTube or you can

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even watch the video straight from your Spotify feed.

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Everything you need is at limitless.bankless.com or you can click the link in

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the top of this episode description.

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Thank you as always for the support and sharing these episodes with any friends

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who might be interested in this cool frontier crazy tech stuff.

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So with that said, let's get right into this mini episode on Neuralink.

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Would you allow a developer you've never met to install software in your brain

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that gives total access to all of your thoughts, your memories,

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and everything that makes you, you, the same way you install an update on your iPhone?

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The knee-jerk reaction is probably no. That's creepy. It's weird enough that

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my phone knows everything about me.

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The last thing I want is a company to see my literal thoughts and fears.

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But what if I made you a few promises?

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Like this chip can remember your dreams and memories and then play them back

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as if you were reliving them for the first time, fully viscerally.

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It'll hijack your senses and you'll feel everything you felt as if you were

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right back there for the very first time.

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It can give you super sight that allows you to see night vision or infrared rays.

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It can teach you the language overnight before you get on that plane to Japan.

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It could cure you of injuries, curing paralysis and blindness.

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It can remove your depression, fix hearing loss, remove that annoying tinnitus you have.

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It can stop your loved ones from suffering from Alzheimer's,

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dementia, and strokes. Oh, and you'll be able to communicate with others totally telepathically.

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Suddenly, this sounds a little more compelling, doesn't it?

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If you're thinking this is just like an episode of Black Mirror,

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you're right, but this technology is real, and just this week,

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two more patients answered yes to that question.

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They received the chip that will eventually do all these amazing things,

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but for now, in these patients, it's doing just one job, and that's fixing people's paralysis.

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The company is called Neuralink, and their first product is called Telepathy,

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and just last week, they embedded the Telepathy chip into patients number eight and number nine.

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These are some of the first people in the world to benefit from this technology,

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and the results are pretty remarkable.

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We'll get into that, but first let's peel back the skull figuratively and see

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exactly how this thing works and why it matters.

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So there's two reasons Neuralink is important, and they actually couldn't be more different.

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The first is human liberation. If your spinal cord quits on you or you become

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paralyzed, telepathy can give you digital hands, and this isn't sci-fi.

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Patient number one is this guy named Nolan, who's already trash-talking friends

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in the popular video game called Civilization VI, just by thinking about it.

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And just recently, the Neuralink team gave this super cool demo of their patients

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actually playing Call of Duty together using just their thoughts,

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walking around the 3D world, pointing their gun, then actually shooting enemies.

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And as a fellow Call of Duty player, seeing someone telepathically walking around

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Nuketown, it's pretty freaking cool.

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They also continue the demo with an example of how a person can telepathically

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connect to an optimist humanoid robot.

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Picture you're disabled, but want to interact with the physical world?

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Well, with the chip, you can telepathically embody a humanoid robot and walk

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and talk and one day even feel the sensory inputs that the robot also feels.

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They gave an early demo of this playing rock, paper, scissors and the optimist

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hand flipping off the audience, which, you know, nice touch.

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The second reason Neuralink is important is for civilizational survival.

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Elon's gamble is that when AI superintelligence levels up to god mode,

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we'll need a bandwidth upgrade to stay co-pilots and not turn into passengers.

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If artificial general intelligence keeps compounding, human decision-making

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bandwidth becomes the bottleneck that turns us from stewards of the future into mere spectators.

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Elon frames the link as a defensive and democratizing upgrade,

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a direct cortical interface that scales our input-output rate.

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So, to explain that simply, think of your body as a computer for a second.

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Over the course of the day, how many operations per second, on average, can you do?

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It's pretty low. You can say a couple of words, type a few things into your

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phone, walk a step or two, and that's really it. we're pretty low bandwidth.

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Like, think about it. You're using your two thumbs on a slab of glass that you

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call a smartphone to communicate incredibly complex thoughts with this device.

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There's a ton of compression of your big ideas reduced down to just a few keystrokes.

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And the same is true about communication.

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As I'm talking to you, I'm having this whole rich idea of how I want to describe this technology.

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That idea then has to be compressed into words, then spoken to you, the listener.

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I make my vocal cords vibrate. Those vibrations resonate against your eardrums,

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where you interpret the words I'm saying and build your own model of what you

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believe my message means.

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Like right now, I'm imagining this world in which I'm telepathically connecting

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to an optimist robot on Mars and walking around the planet as if it was my real body.

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The visual I have is almost certainly drastically different than yours,

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but if we had a neural link, well, you could just see it exactly how I see it.

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So, to tie back to the civilizational survival thing, we're looking to go from

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sluggish thumbs per second to megabits and then hopefully gigabits per second

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of neural data, letting us collaborate with superintelligent systems instead

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of being outmaneuvered by them.

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In this view, the implant is less a medical device and more a civil engineering

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project for the species, us.

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It's a neural on-ramp that allows every individual brain to tap into the real-time

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computational power that a frontier model AI enjoys.

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By hardwiring humans into the loop, the argument is we keep moral judgment,

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creativity, and lived experience inside the feedback cycle that guides the machines,

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preventing a narrow elite or the AI themselves from monopolizing the layers

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of economics, politics, or even kinetic forces like our military.

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So in short, boost the bandwidth, merge the perspectives, and humanity maintains

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a seat at the negotiation table instead of being placed on top of it.

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And yeah, this is effectively the point at which we merge ourselves with the

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singularity, defined as a hypothetical point in time at which technology growth

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becomes completely alien to humans, uncontrollable, irreversible.

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Resulting in unforeseen consequences for the human civilization.

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Well, good news is Neuralink is trying to avoid just that. And in doing so,

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opens up the door to an ideal called transhumanism, which is a philosophical

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intellectual movement that kind of advocates for using technology to enhance

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human capabilities and improve the human condition as a whole.

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Remember earlier when I said neural link could cure blindness?

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It can do a lot more than that. Think of your eyeballs as a camera and then

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think of all the amazing things that cameras are capable of doing today. It gets pretty wild.

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Blindsight could deliver high resolution vision that's equal to or better than

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perfect 2020 eyesight but with even more fun features on top.

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Imagine built-in telephoto capability to zoom in and see things further out,

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or a macro ability, just like your iPhone, to see microscopic objects without

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any external tools. But it gets even cooler.

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It can let you perceive beyond normal human limits, like infrared for detecting

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heat in the dark, spotting warm objects in the night, or ultraviolet for hidden

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patterns, even radar to see through fog and walls.

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And imagine augmented overlays too, with real-time info like navigation directions

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projected right into your view. No need for glasses, just your eyeballs.

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And for those born blind, your brain would just adapt these new signals creating

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vision from scratch now that's for the advanced versions in the future but for

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the initial versions well it still works.

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It won't be like your natural crystal clear eyesight at first.

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It'll be basic and low resolution, kind of like pixelated graphics from an old

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video game on Atari or early Nintendo.

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You'll perceive the world in blocky images, maybe grayscale or with simple colors,

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spotting large objects, basic outlines, movement.

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Think navigating a room, dodging obstacles, or noticing a door or a person nearby,

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but not being able to make out the specific details just yet.

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But it gets really good, really fast, and they've laid out a pretty cool timeline

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for when we can expect these things to work.

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So as of this month, which is July 2025, Neuralink has nine human implants,

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patient one through patient nine, with patient eight and nine done in one day, which is a first.

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Bandwidth is about nine and a half bits per second, with the team aiming for

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40 by end of year, so about a 5x, at which they will plan to have the chip implanted

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in 30 patients, as well as roll out their blindsight and the robot arm controller

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project they call Convoy.

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From 2027 to 2029, they plan to increase the throughput of the chip to 25,000

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channels, which basically means a full HD neural feed to the chip.

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Also during this window, they want to release a pair link with spinal cord stim

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to reanimate your limbs.

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You can think of it like a digital bridge on steroids in the case that you've

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actually damaged your spinal cord.

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Then by 2030, things start to get pretty weird. We get elective cognitive coprocessor

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for memory search and language translation,

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which means real-time translate and searching through your past memories,

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whether you are excited to do that or not.

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This comes with always-on-cloud AI creating a true symbiosis for the first time between human and AI.

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You are always connected all the time. As well as creating a chip mesh network.

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This is also when we can expect to see what Neuralink is calling the telepathy party mode.

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So humanity now has a USB-C port poking through the blood-brain barrier.

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Today, it's letting nine paralyzed pioneers swipe, click, and maybe soon see again.

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Tomorrow, it can beam Grok10 straight into our visual stream.

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So ask yourself, when the install wizard pops up and you have to click the terms

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of service, with the risk-adjusted return on investment of civilizational survival, do you click accept?

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Because whether we're ready or

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not, the age of downloadable upgrades for wetware has officially booted.

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Our next grand task isn't actually inventing the tech, it's just deciding,

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together, what it means to stay human while we use it. Thank you so much for watching.

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Music:
Music