Future Neuralink Whole Brain Interfaces for $1000 Each

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Elon Musk gave a 30-minute lecture on @Neuralink last month at the 2024 Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS). The roadmap is achieve millions of electrodes connecting to billions of neurons for a whole brain interface that costs about $1000-2000 each with implant surgery only taking 10 minutes.

The first generation Neuralink device has 1000 electrodes and 100 electrodes are reading at about 10 bits per second per electrode.

The second generation Neuralink device should have 3000 electrodes and 1500 electrodes will be reading.

Future Neuralinks will have a million or more electrodes.

Neuralink will be able to fix any brain related problem that involves signals in and out. This means curing blindness where the optic nerve is damaged by directly stimulating the visual cortex. It could cure epilepsy and paralysis caused by nerve or spinal cord damage.

There are about 3000 neurosurgeons in the USA. Neuralink needs to scale the surgery with automation to ultimately provide the service to tens of millions and then billions of people. The neurosurgeons would shift overseeing the operating machines. This is similar to eye surgeons overseeing the LASIK laser machines.

In high volume (millions?), the Neuralink device will drop to $5000-10000. In really high volume (tens or hundreds of millions per year) the Neuralink device will drop to about $1000 each.

They have a plan for 600 second (10 minute) implant surgery. They will also be able to remove devices and switch in an upgraded device.

01:26 BCI and the Bandwidth Problem
07:01 Applications and World Records
09:25 Timeline for Exceeding Human Performance
12:09 Vertical Integration, Recovering Implant Function
13:07 The R1 Robot and LASIK Metaphor
16:54 Technical Challenges with BCI
19:49 Brain Surgery or Rocket Science?
21:48 Treatment of Disease
24:47 Digital Bridge to Unlocking Human Potential
27:00 N1 Implant Upgrades and Reversibility
28:56 Scaling and Access, The 600-Second Surgery
30:38 Physics and Musk Philosophy on the Possible
32:06 Neuronal Signatures and Network Detection
34:09 Final Thoughts for Neurosurgeons

10 thoughts on “Future Neuralink Whole Brain Interfaces for $1000 Each”

  1. The improvements can be hard to give up on once people have tried them:

    “The results were better than even Kahana could’ve hoped, with the brain stimulation leading to a 28% improvement in recall.”

    “Just last year, patients in a Stanford Medicine study were so amazed at their memory improvements after a 90-day treatment with brain implants that a few of them refused to have the devices turned off.”

    See:

    https://nypost.com/2024/09/15/tech/brain-chips-may-help-us-remember-where-our-keys-are-scientists/

  2. On one hand, I like the idea of using technology to enhance my body. Neural implant to make you smarter or fix physical problems like paralysis or blindness. On the other hand, after seeing the business practices of tech companies, the social engineering of the World Economic Forum, and the Orwellian nightmares that is the surveillance state and social credit system, I feel like the price for those enhancements would mean being Bill Gates and George Soros’ mind slave. Hell, if they have their way, you wouldn’t get the cool stuff like bullet-time thought processing and hyperintelligence. Instead all you get is the “privilege” of being a cybernetic drone zombie linked in the hive intelligence ran by the globalists.

      • Oh, come on. Given current tech company practices, you’d absolutely have to worry about a neural interface being used to skew your politics and warp your buying habits. If they’d do it with search engines, why not with neural interfaces?

        That sucker better have one hot firewall.

  3. I have a hard time believing this will ever be safe or reliable enough long-term to be so widely implemented. Sure, for people with debilitating conditions, the risk/reward is in their favor, but at this scale he’s reaching for the masses, and the risks are just not worth it when an iPhone could do most of the same things.

    • In 30 years ASI surgeons will easily do this anywhere in the world (and in space) for less than $1000. Getting the latest device by then will be like getting the latest iPhone.

  4. Of all Elon’s companies…this is his weirdest. I have a hard time (ignore pun) wrapping my brain around these numbers. While it’s awesome what these will enable, I think a better route would be for AI to get god-level intelligence, and fix/cure (call it what you want) all human body problems, diseases, cancers, vision or hearing loss, limb loss, and even cure ageing.

    • Musk has rationally arrived at the same conclusion I did back in the 70’s: That in the long run, the only way we stay on top of our technology is to become one with it. That’s why my college majors were computer engineering and human biology, after all.

      The computers are getting smarter, we’re not. Even germ line genetic engineering can’t meaningfully help that, because the design cycle for humans is just too long, it takes many decades to roll out an improvement even if you could implement it across ‘the product line’.

      Computers are going to leave us in the dust.

      Unless we meld with them, that is. Make “AI” stand for “Amplified” intelligence, give our frontal lobe artificial frontal lobes of their own.

      And that requires ultra-high bandwidth two way communications with the brain. So he’s working on it. Just another “Save humanity” project, like colonizing Mars.

      • May I reply? First, the computers are getting faster, that does not imply “smarter”. A fast enough computer can give one the impression it has a “sense of self”, a personality, a soul, if you will. You make some excellent points, when you mention it takes a long time for living things to change based strictly on genetics. Ah, but us living people can learn, and invent both new things and ideas. that can change the very nature of our world, in a heartbeat. No kidding. Some of us have. (Well, everyone needs a hobby…)

        Computers “leave us in the dust”? Using AI, and the data we give them, (To me, there’s a BIG difference between data, information, and knowledge. More about that later) computers will be able to anticipate many persons actions, before they “do” them. But not everything, all the time. You see, to me, living beings embody certain “intangibles” that digital technology, using 1’s&0’s never will. One digit, in a line of code that’s “off”, my computer has a HISSY FIT!. I call my computer guy and yell (not at him, at the situation). He has solved some of the most “interesting” problems.

        I have told him, I know digital two-D IC based technology is NOT self, correcting or self repairing. or self improving. Yes, I know certain SW protocols can, to a limited extent, “adapt”. About how strongly I feel how robust living things are compared to digital tech and our current computer tech? I’ll give you a very intimate, personal example:

        About 30years ago, I was infected by a uber virulent, highly aggressive bacteria. To this day, that “strain”, has never been categorized. (As far as I know). I almost died. I was on a respirator for several days, because I stopped breathing. Only because of excellent medical care, and my bodies ability to fight what was medically UNKNOWN to us, at that time, am I here. The strongest antibiotics, did more harm then good. But? Still here. Thanks to many people who had no idea what they were dealing with, but used what they DID know, to save my life. I am forever grateful.

        My computer has a signal digit off a line of code IT FREAKS! What does that say about what’s more robust?

        • Hey, I’m an engineer, I use CAD software every day.

          Today that software does stuff automatically that I had to do laboriously in detail, like radiusing intersections of complex surfaces. I haven’t hand edited a NURBS (Non Uniform Rational B-Spline) surface in a couple decades now.

          The software IS getting smarter. The people aren’t. That doesn’t end well for us unless we can change that dynamic.

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