Nolan Arbaugh
Appearances
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It was sort of a freak thing that happened. Imagine you're running into the ocean. Although this is a lake, but you're running into the ocean and you get to about waist high and then you kind of like dive in, take the rest of the plunge under the wave or something. That's what I did. And then I just never came back up. Not sure what happened. I did it running into the water with a couple of guys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so my idea of what happened is really just that I took like a stray fist, elbow, knee, foot, something to the side of my head. The left side of my head was sore for about a month afterwards. So must have taken a pretty big knock.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
and then uh they both came up and i didn't and so i was face down in the water for a while i was conscious um and then eventually just you know realized i couldn't hold my breath any longer and i keep saying took a big drink um people i don't know if they like that i say that it seems like i'm making light of it all but um this is kind of how i am and i don't know like
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
i'm a very relaxed sort of stress-free person i rolled with the punches for a lot of this i kind of took it in stride it's like all right well what can i do next how can i improve my life even a little bit um on a day-to-day basis at first just trying to find some way to heal as much of my body as possible
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
to try to get healed, to try to get off a ventilator, learn as much as I could so I could somehow survive once I left the hospital. And then Thank God I had my family around me. If I didn't have my parents, my siblings, then I would have never made it this far. They've done so much for me, more than I can ever thank them for, honestly. And a lot of people don't have that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
A lot of people in my situation, their families either aren't capable of providing for them or
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
honestly just don't want to and so they get placed somewhere and you know in some sort of home so thankfully i had my family i have a great group of friends a great group of buddies from college who have all rallied around me and we're all still incredibly close people always say you know if you're lucky you'll end up with one or two friends from high school that you keep throughout your life
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I have about 10, 10 or 12 from high school that have all stuck around and we still get together all of us twice a year. We call it the spring series and the fall series. This last one we all did. We dressed up like X-Men. So I did a professor Xavier and it was freaking awesome. It was so good. So yeah, I have such a great support system around me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so, you know, being a quadriplegic isn't that bad, but, I get waited on all the time. People bring me food and drinks, and I get to sit around and watch as much TV and movies and anime as I want. I get to read as much as I want. I mean, it's great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yep. I was face down in the water. Right when I, whatever, something hit my head, I tried to get up and I realized I couldn't move and it just sort of clicked. I'm like, all right, I'm paralyzed. Can't move. What do I do? Um, if I can't get up, I can't flip over, can't do anything, then I'm going to drown eventually. Um, and I knew I couldn't hold my breath forever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So I just held my breath and thought about it for maybe 10, 15 seconds. Um, I've heard from other people that like look on liquors, I guess the two girls that pulled me out of the water were two of my best friends. They are lifeguards. Um, And one of them said that it looked like my body was sort of shaking in the water, like I was trying to flip over and stuff. But I knew. I knew immediately.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And I just kind of... I realized that... And that's what my situation was from here on out. Maybe if I got to the hospital, they'd be able to do something. When I was in the hospital, like right before surgery, I was trying to calm one of my friends down. I had like brought her with me from college to camp. She was just bawling over me, and I was like, hey, it's going to be fine. Don't worry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I was cracking some jokes to try to lighten the mood. The nurse had called my mom, and I was like, don't tell my mom. She's just going to be stressed out. Call her after I'm out of surgery because at least she'll have some answers then, whether I live or not, really. I didn't want her to be stressed through the whole thing. But I knew.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And then when I first woke up after surgery, I was super drugged up. They had me on fentanyl like three ways, which was awesome. I don't recommend it. But I saw some crazy stuff on that fentanyl. And it was still the best I've ever felt on drugs. Medication. Sorry, on medication. Yeah. And I remember the first time I saw my mom in the hospital, I was just bawling.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I had like ventilator in, like I couldn't talk or anything. And I just started crying because it was more like seeing her. Not that, I mean, the whole situation obviously was pretty rough, but it was just like seeing her face for the first time was pretty hard. But, yeah, I never had like a moment of, you know, man, I'm paralyzed. This sucks. I don't want to like be around anymore.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It was always just, I hate that I have to do this, but like sitting here and wallowing isn't going to help.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, there are days when I don't really feel like doing anything. Not so much anymore. Like, not for the last couple years, I don't really feel that way. I've... More so just wanted to try to do anything possible to make my life better at this point. But at the beginning, there were some ups and downs. There were some really hard things to adjust to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
First off, just like the first couple months, the amount of pain I was in was really, really hard. I mean, I remember screaming at the top of my lungs in the hospital because I thought my legs were on fire. And obviously, I can't feel anything, but it's all nerve pain. And so that was a really hard night. I asked them to give me as much pain meds as possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
They're like, you've had as much as you can have. So just kind of deal with it, go to a happy place sort of thing. So that was a pretty low point. And then every now and again, it's hard, like realizing things that I wanted to do in my life that I won't be able to do anymore. I always wanted to be a husband and father, and I just don't think that I could do it now as a quadriplegic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Maybe it's possible, but I'm not sure I would ever put someone I love through that, having to take care of me and stuff. Not being able to go out and play sports. I was a huge athlete growing up, so that was pretty hard. Little things, too, when I realize I can't do them anymore.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
There's something really special about being able to hold a book and smell a book, like the feel, the texture, the smell. As you turn the pages, I just love it. I can't do it anymore. It's little things like that. The two-year mark was pretty rough. Two years is when they say you will get back basically as much as you're ever going to get back as far as movement and sensation goes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so for the first two years, that was the only thing on my mind, was try as much as I can to move my fingers, my hands, my feet, everything possible to try to get sensation and movement back. And then when the two-year mark hit, so June 30th, 2018, I was really sad that that's kind of where I was. And then just randomly here and there, but I was never depressed for long periods of time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It never seemed worthwhile to me. What gave you strength? My faith. My faith in God was a big one. My understanding that it was all for a purpose, and even if that purpose wasn't anything involving Neuralink, even if that purpose was...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
There's a story in the Bible about Job, and I think it's a really, really popular story about how Job has all of these terrible things happen to him and he praises God throughout the whole situation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I thought, and I think a lot of people think for most of their lives that they are Job, that they're the ones going through something terrible and they just need to praise God through the whole thing and everything will work out. At some point after my accident, I realized that I might not be Job, that I might be one of his children that gets killed or kidnapped or taken from him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so it's about terrible things that happen to those around you who you love. So maybe in this case, my mom would be Job and she has to get through something extraordinarily hard. And I just need to try and make it as best as possible for her. because she's the one that's really going through this massive trial. And that gave me a lot of strength.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And obviously my family, my family and my friends, they give me all the strength that I need on a day-to-day basis. So it makes things a lot easier having that great support system around me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've just always thought I could do anything I ever wanted to do. There was never anything too big. Whatever I set my mind to, I felt like I could do it. I didn't want to do a lot. I wanted to travel around and be sort of like a gypsy and like go work odd jobs. I had this dream of traveling around Europe and being like, I don't know, a shepherd in like Wales or Ireland.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And then going and being a fisherman in Italy, doing all of these things for like a year. Like it's such like cliche things, but I just thought it would be so much fun to go and travel and do different things. And so I've always just seen the best in people around me too. And I've always tried to be good to people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And growing up with my mom, too, she's like the most positive, energetic person in the world. And we're all just people, people like I just get along great with people. I really enjoy meeting new people. And so I just wanted to do everything. This is kind of just how I've been.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, a bit. Also, it's just kind of how I am. Like I said, I roll with the punches with everything. I used to tell people, I don't stress about things much. And whenever I'd see people getting stressed, I'd just say, you know, like, it's not hard. Just don't stress about it. And like, that's all you need to do. And they're like, that's not how that works. Like, it works for me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like, just don't stress and everything will be fine. Like, everything will work out. Obviously, not everything always goes well. And it's not like it all works out for the best all the time. But I just don't think stress has had any place in my life since I was a kid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
No, it was cool. I was never afraid of it. I had to think through a lot. Should I do this? Be the first person? I could wait until number two or three and get a better version of the Neuralink. The first one might not work. Maybe it's actually going to kind of suck. it's going to be the worst version ever in a person. So why would I do the first one? Like I've already kind of been selected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I could just tell them, you know, like, okay, find someone else. And then I'll do number two or three. Like, I'm sure they would let me, they're looking for a few people anyways. But ultimately I was like, I don't know. There's something about being the first one to do something. It's pretty cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I always thought that if I had the chance that I would like to do something for the first time, um, this seemed like a pretty good opportunity. Um, And I was never scared. I think my faith had a huge part in that. I always felt like God was preparing me for something. I almost wish it wasn't this because I had many conversations with God about this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
not wanting to do any of this as a quadriplegic. I told him, I'll go out and talk to people. I'll go out and travel the world and talk to stadiums, thousands of people, give my testimony. I'll do all of it, but heal me first. Don't make me do all of this in a chair. That sucks. And I guess he won that argument. I didn't really have much of a choice. I always felt like there was something...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
going on and to see how I Guess easily I made it through the interview process and how quickly everything happened how the star sort of aligned with all this it I It just told me, like, as the surgery was getting closer, it just told me that, you know, it was all meant to happen. It was all meant to be. And so I shouldn't be afraid of anything that's to come. And so I wasn't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I kept telling myself, like... you know, you say that now, but as soon as the surgery comes, you're probably going to be freaking out. Like you're about to have brain surgery and brain surgery is a big deal for a lot of people, but it's an even bigger deal for me. Like it's all I have left.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
The amount of times I've been like, thank you, God, that you didn't take my brain and my personality and my ability to think, my like love of learning, like my character, everything. Like, thank you so much. Like, as long as you left me that, then I think I can get by. And I was about to let people go, like, root around in there. Like, hey, we're going to go, like, put some stuff in your brain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like, hopefully it works out. And so it was something that gave me pause. Like I said, how smoothly everything went. I never expected for a second that anything would go wrong. Plus the more people I met on the borrows side and on the knurling side, they're just the most impressive people in the world. Like I can't,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
speak enough to how much I trust these people with my life and how impressed I am with all of them and to see the excitement on their faces to like walk into a room and roll into a room and see all of these people looking at me like we're just we're so excited like we've been working so hard on this and it's finally happening it's super infectious and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
and it just makes me want to do it even more, and to help them achieve their dreams. Like, I don't know, it's so rewarding, and I'm so happy for all of them, honestly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
No, I thought I was going to, but the surgery approach the night before the morning of, I was just excited. Like, I was like, let's make this happen. I think I said that something like that to Elon on the phone beforehand, we were like FaceTiming and I was like, let's rock and roll. And he's like, let's do it. Uh, I don't know. I just, I wasn't scared.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So we woke up, I think we had to be at the hospital at like 5 30 AM. I think surgery was at like 7 AM. So we woke up pretty early. I'm not sure much of us slept that night. Um, um, yeah. Got to the hospital at 5.30, went through all the pre-op stuff. Everyone was super nice. Elon was supposed to be there in the morning, but something went wrong with his plane, so we ended up FaceTiming.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
That was cool. Had one of the greatest one-liners of my life. After that phone call, hung up with him. There were like 20 people around me, and I was like, I just hope he wasn't too starstruck talking to me. Nice. Well done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Did you write that ahead of time? No, no, it just came to me. I was like, this seems right, you know? Went into surgery. I asked if I could pray right beforehand, so I prayed over the room. I asked God if he would be with my mom in case anything happened to me, and just to calm her nerves out there. Woke up. Played a bit of a prank on my mom. I don't know if you've heard about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
No, not one bit. It was something I had talked about ahead of time with my buddy Bane. I was like, I would really like to play a prank on my mom. Very specifically, my mom. She's very gullible. I think she had knee surgery once even. And after she came out of knee surgery, she was super groggy. She's like, I can't feel my legs. And my dad looked at her. He was like... You don't have any legs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
They had to amputate both your legs. And we just do very mean things to her all the time. I'm so surprised that she still loves us. But right after surgery, I was really worried that I was going to be too groggy, not all there. I've had anesthesia once before and it messed me up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I could not function for a while afterwards and I said a lot of things that I was really worried that I was going to start, I don't know, dropping some bombs and I wouldn't even know, I wouldn't remember. So I was like, please God, don't let that happen. and please let me be there enough to do this to my mom. And so she walked in after surgery.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It was like the first time they had been able to see me after surgery. And she just looked at me. She said, hi, how are you? How are you doing? How do you feel? And I looked at her and This very I think the anesthesia helped very like groggy sort of confused look on my face.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It's like who are you and She just started looking around the room like at the surgeons of the doctors like what did you do to my son? Like you need to fix this right now tears started streaming. I saw how much she was freaking out I was like, I can't let this go on and so I was like mom mom. I'm fine like It's alright and Still she was not happy about it. She
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
uh still says she's gonna get me back someday but i mean i don't i don't know i don't know what that's gonna look like it's a lifelong battle yeah yeah but it was good in some sense it was a demonstration that you still got that's that's all i wanted to be humor that's all i wanted it to be and i knew that doing something super mean to her like that would show her yeah yeah
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
The first little taste I got of it was actually not too long after surgery. Some of the Neuralink team had brought in a little iPad, a little tablet screen, and they had put up eight different channels that were recording some of my neuron spikes. And they put it in front of me and they're like, this is like real time, your brain firing. I was like, that's super cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
My first thought was, I mean, if they're firing now, let's see if I can affect them in some way. So I started trying to like wiggle my fingers. and I just started like scanning through the channels and one of the things I was doing was like moving my index finger up and down and I just saw this yellow spike on like top row, like third box over or something.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I saw this yellow spike every time I did it and I was like, oh, that's cool. And everyone around me was just like, what are you seeing? I was like, look, look at this one. Look at like this top row, third box over this yellow spike. Like that's me right there, there, there. And everyone was freaking out. They started like clapping. I was like, that's super unnecessary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like this is what's supposed to happen, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, I was wiggling kind of all of my fingers to see if anything would happen. There was a lot of other things going on, but that big yellow spike was the one that stood out to me. I'm sure that if I would have stared at it long enough, I could have mapped out maybe 100 different things, but the big yellow spike was the one that I noticed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Pretty easy for me. It's something that At the very beginning after my accident, they told me to try and move my body as much as possible even if you can't, just keep trying because that's going to create new neural pathways or pathways in my spinal cord to reconnect these things to hopefully regain some movement someday.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, I know. It's bizarre.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It starts reconnecting. And that's about it. I can, if I try enough, I can wiggle some of my fingers, not like on command. It's more like if I try to move, say my right pinky and I just keep trying to move it after a few seconds, it'll wiggle. So I know there's stuff there. Like I know like, and that happens with, you know, a few different of my fingers and stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Um, but yeah, that's, that's what they tell you to do. Um, one of the people at the time when I was in the hospital came in and told me for one guy who had recovered, um, most of his control, what he thought about every day was actually walking like the act of walking, um, just over and over again. So I tried that for years. I try just imagining walking, which is, it's hard. It's hard to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
imagine like all of the steps that go into well taking a step like all of the things that have to move like all the activations that have to happen along your leg in order for one step to occur but you're not just imagining you're like doing it right i'm trying yeah so it's like it's imagining over again what I had to do to take a step. Because it's not something any of us think about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
You want to walk and you take a step. You don't think about all of the different things that are going on in your body. So I had to recreate that in my head as much as I could. And then I practice it over and over and over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. Which, which was hard. It was hard at the beginning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like which way? It was both. Um, There's a scene in one of the Kill Bill movies, actually, oddly enough, where she is paralyzed, I don't know, from a drug that was in her system. And then she finds some way to get into the back of a truck or something, and she stares at her toe, and she says, move, move your big toe. And after a few seconds on screen, she does it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And she did that with every one of her body parts until she could move again. I did that for years. Just stared at my body and said, move your index finger, move your big toe. Sometimes vocalizing it out loud, sometimes just thinking it. I tried every different way to do this to try to get some movement back. And it's hard because it actually is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
like taxing, like physically taxing on my body, which is something I would have never expected because it's not like I'm moving, but it feels like there's a buildup of, I don't know, the only way I can describe it is They're like signals that aren't getting through from my brain down because there's that gap in my spinal cord. So brain down and then from my hand back up to the brain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so it feels like those signals get stuck in whatever body part that I'm trying to move and they just build up and build up and build up until they burst. And then once they burst, I get like this really weird sensation of everything sort of like dissipating back out to level. And then I do it again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It's also just like a fatigue thing, like a muscle fatigue, but without actually moving your muscles. It's very, very bizarre. And then if you try to stare at a body part or think about a body part and move for two, three, four, sometimes eight hours, it's very taxing on your mind. It takes a lot of focus. It was a lot easier at the beginning because I wasn't able to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
like control a tv in my room or anything i wasn't able to um control any of my environment so for the first few years a lot of what i was doing was staring at walls and so um obviously i did a lot of thinking and i tried to move a lot just over and over and over again do you never give up sort of hope there no training hard essentially yep and i still do it i do it
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
like subconsciously and i think that uh that helped a lot with things with neuralink honestly it's something that i talked about the other day at the all hands that i did at neuralink's austin facility welcome to austin by the way yeah hey thanks man i i went to school hey thanks thanks man the the gigafactory was super cool i went to school at texas a&m so i've been around before um so you should be saying welcome to me yeah welcome to texas yeah i get you
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Um, but yeah, I was talking about how a lot of what they've had me do, especially at the beginning, um, well, I still do it now, um, is body mapping. So like there will be a visualization of a hand or an arm on the screen and I have to do that motion and that's how they sort of train, um, the algorithm to like understand what I'm trying to do. And so it made things very seamless for me, I think.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if other quadriplegics, like other paralyzed people, give up. I hope they don't. I hope they keep trying because I've heard other paralyzed people say, like, don't ever stop. They tell you two years, but you just never know. The human body's capable of amazing things. So, I've heard other people say, don't give up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I think one girl had spoken to me through some family members and said that she had been paralyzed for 18 years and she'd been trying to wiggle her index finger for all that time and she finally got it back 18 years later. So like I know that it's possible and I'll never give up doing it. I just I do it when I'm lying down like watching TV.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I'll find myself doing it kind of just almost like on its own. It's just something I've gotten so used to doing that. I don't know. I don't think I'll ever stop.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Which honestly was like... Something that I think Neuralink gave me that I can't thank them enough for, like I can't show my appreciation for it enough, was being able to visually see that what I'm doing is actually having some effect. Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
um it's a huge part of the reason why like i know now that i'm gonna keep doing it forever because before neuralink i was doing it every day and i was just assuming that things were happening
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
like it's not like i knew i wasn't getting back any mobility or um sensation or anything so i could have been running up against a brick wall for all i knew and with nerlink i get to see like all the signals happening real time and i get to see that you know what i'm doing can actually be mapped
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
you know, when we started doing like click calibrations and stuff, when I go to click my index finger for a left click, that it actually recognizes that. Like it changed how I think about what's possible with like retraining my body to move. And so yeah, I'll never give up now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it was very cool. I mean, it was cool, but I keep telling this to people. It made sense to me. It made sense that there are signals still happening in my brain. And that as long as you had something near it that could measure those, that could record those, then you should be able to visualize it in some way, see it happen. And so that was not very surprising to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I was just like, oh, cool. We found one. We found something that works. It was cool to see that their technology worked and that everything that they'd worked so hard for was going to pay off. But I hadn't moved a cursor or anything at that point. I hadn't interacted with a computer or anything at that point. So it just made sense. It was cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I didn't really know much about BCI at that point either. So I didn't know what sort of step this was actually making. I didn't know if this was a huge deal or if this was just like, okay, it's cool that we got this far, but we're actually... hoping for something like much better down the road. It's like, okay, I just thought that they knew that it turned on. So I was like, cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like this is, this is cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. Yeah. I knew all of that, but it's all like, it's all Greek to me. I was like, okay, threads, 64 threads, 16 electrodes, 1024 channels. Yeah. Okay, like that math checks out. Sounds right. Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I know it must have been within the first maybe week, a week or two weeks that I was able to like first move the cursor. And again, like it kind of made sense to me. Like it didn't seem like that big of a deal. Like it was like, okay, well, how do I explain this? When everyone around you starts clapping for something that you've done, it's easy to say, okay, I did something cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
That was impressive in some way. What exactly that meant, what it was, hadn't really... set in for me. So again, I knew that me trying to move a body part and then that being mapped in some sort of machine learning algorithm to be able to identify my brain signals and then take that and give me cursor control. That all kind of made sense to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but I was like, there are still signals in my brain firing. They just can't get through because there's a gap in my spinal cord. And so they can't get all the way down and back up, but they're still there. So when I moved the cursor for the first time, I was like, that's cool, but I expected that that should happen. Like it made sense to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
When I moved the cursor for the first time with just my mind without like physically trying to move. So I guess I can get into that just a little bit. Like the difference between attempted movement and imagined movement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like attempted movement is me physically trying... to attempt to move, say, my hand. I try to attempt to move my hand to the right, to the left, forward, and back. And that's all attempted. Attempt to lift my finger up and down. Attempt to kick or something. I'm physically trying to do all of those things, even if you can't see it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
This would be like me attempting to shrug my shoulders or something. That's all attempted movement. That's what I was doing for the first couple of weeks when they were going to give me cursor control. When I was doing body mapping, it was attempt to do this, attempt to do that. When Nir was telling me to imagine doing it, it kind of made sense to me, but it's not something that...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
people practice. If you started school as a child and they said, okay, write your name with this pencil. And so you do that. Like, okay, now imagine writing your name with that pencil. Kids would think, like, I guess, like that kind of makes sense. And they would do it. But that's not something we're taught. It's all like how to do things physically. We think about like
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
thought experiments and things, but that's not like a physical action of doing things. It's more like what you would do in certain situations. So imagine movement. It never really connected with me. I guess you could maybe describe it as a professional athlete swinging a baseball bat or swinging a golf club. Imagine what you're supposed to do, but then you go...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
right to that and physically do it. Then you get a bat in your hand and then you do what you've been imagining. And so I don't have that connection. So telling me to imagine something versus attempting it, there wasn't a lot that I could do there mentally. I just kind of had to accept what was going on and try. But the attempted moving thing, it all made sense to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
If I try to move, then there's a signal being sent in my brain. And as long as they can pick that up, then they should be able to map it to what I'm trying to do. And so when I first moved the cursor like that, it was just like, yes, this should happen. I'm not surprised by that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, just that in imagined movement, you're not attempting to move at all. So you're like visualizing yourself doing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
yeah it's something that i feel like naturally anyone would do if you try to tell someone to imagine doing something they might close their eyes and then start physically doing it um but it's just didn't click yeah it's it's hard it was very hard at the beginning but attempted worked attempted worked it worked just like it should work like work like a charm um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it blew my mind, like no pun intended, blew my mind when I first moved the cursor just with my thoughts and not attempting to move. It's something that I found over the couple of weeks building up to that, that as I get better cursor controls, like the model gets better, then it gets easier for me to... I don't have to attempt as much to move it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And part of that is something that I'd even talked with them about when I was watching the signals of my brain one day. I was watching when I attempted to move to the right and I watched the screen as I saw the spikes. I was seeing the spike, the signals being sent before I was actually attempting to move.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I imagine just because when you go to, say, move your hand or any body part, that signal gets sent before you're actually moving, has to make it all the way down and back up before you actually do any sort of movement. So there's a delay there. And I noticed that there was something going on in my brain before I was actually attempting to move.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
that um my brain was like anticipating what i wanted to do and that all started sort of um i don't know like percolating in my brain like it just it was just sort of there like always in the back like that's so weird that it could do that it kind of makes sense but i wonder what that means um as far as like using the neural link and um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And then as I was playing around with the attempted movement and playing around with the cursor, and I saw that as the cursor control got better, that it was anticipating my movements and what I wanted it to do, like cursor movements, what I wanted to do a bit better and a bit better. And then one day I...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
just randomly as I was playing WebGrid, I looked at a target before I had started attempting to move. I was just trying to get over, train my eyes to start looking ahead, like, okay, This is the target I'm on. But if I look over here to this target, I know I can maybe be a bit quicker getting there. And I looked over and the cursor just shot over. It was wild. I had to take a step back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I was like, this should not be happening. All day, I was just smiling. I was so giddy. I was like, guys, do you know that this works? I can just think it and it happens. Which, like, they'd all been saying this entire time, like, I can't believe, like, you're doing all this with your mind. I'm like, yeah, but is it really with my mind?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like, I'm attempting to move, and it's just picking that up, so it doesn't feel like it's with my mind. But when I moved it for the first time like that, it was... Oh, man. It, like, it... made me think that this technology, that what I'm doing is actually way, way more impressive than I ever thought.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It was way cooler than I ever thought and it just opened up a whole new world of possibilities of like what could possibly happen with this technology and what I might be able to be capable of with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
That's what it felt like. I didn't feel like... I felt like I had discovered something, but for me, maybe not necessarily for the world at large or this field at large. It just felt like an aha moment for me. Like, oh, this works. Obviously it works. And so that's what I do all the time now. I kind of intermix the attempted movement and imagined movement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I do it all together because I've found that there is some interplay with it that maximizes efficiency with the cursor. So it's not all one or the other. It's not all just, I only use attempted or I only use imagined movements. It's more I use them in parallel and I can do one or the other. I can just completely think about whatever I'm doing. But I don't know. I like to play around with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I also like to just experiment with these things. Every now and again, I'll get this idea in my head like, hmm, I wonder if this works and I'll just start doing it. And then afterwards, I'll tell them, by the way, I wasn't doing that like you guys wanted me to. Yeah. I was, I thought of something and I wanted to try it. And so I did. It seems like it works.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So maybe we should like explore that a little bit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, so it's just an app that Neuralink created to help me interact with a computer. So on the Link app, there are a few different settings and different modes and things I can do on it. So there's the body mapping, which we kind of touched on. There's a calibration. Calibration is... how I actually get cursor control.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So calibrating what's going on in my brain to translate that into cursor control. So it will pop out models. What they use, I think, is like time. So it would be, you know, five minutes in calibration will give me so good of a model. And then if I'm in it for 10 minutes and 15 minutes, the models will progressively get better. So the longer I'm in it, generally, the better the models will get.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, yeah, so Snake is kind of like my litmus test for models. If I can control Snake decently well, then I know I have a pretty good model. So yeah, the Link app has all of those. It has WebGrid in it now. It's also how I connect to the computer just in general. So they've given me a lot of voice controls with it at this point. So I can say connect or implant disconnect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And as long as I have that charger handy, then I can connect to it. So the charger is also how I connect to the Link app to connect to the computer. I have to have the implant charger over my head when I want to connect to have it wake up because the implant's in hibernation mode, like always when I'm not using it. I think there's a setting to wake it up every so long.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So we could set it to half an hour or five hours or something if I just want it to wake up periodically. So yeah, I'll connect to the Link app and then go through all sorts of things, calibration for the day, maybe body mapping. I have like I made them give me a little homework tab because I am very forgetful and I forget to do things a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So I have a lot of data collection things that they want me to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it is. It's something that they want me to do daily, which I've been slacking on because I've been doing so much media and traveling and so much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, I've been a terrible first candidate for how much I've been slacking on my homework. But yeah, it's just something that they want me to do every day to track how well the Neuralink is performing over time and have something to give.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I imagine to give to the FDA to create all sorts of fancy charts and stuff and show like, hey, this is what the Neuralink, this is how it's performing day one versus day 90 versus day 180 and things like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It's a bubble game. So there will be like yellow bubbles that pop up on the screen. At first, it is open loop. So open loop, this is something that I still don't fully understand the open loop and closed loop thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
me and blitz talked for a long time about the difference between the two from the on the technical side okay so it'd be great to hear your okay so your side of the story open loop is basically um i have no control over the cursor um the cursor will be moving on its own across the screen and i am following by intention
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
the cursor to different bubbles and then my the algorithm is training off of what like the signals it's getting are as i'm doing this there are a couple different ways that they've done it they call it center out target so there will be a bubble in the middle and then eight bubbles around that and the cursor will go from the middle to one side so say middle to left back to middle to up
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
to the middle, like upright, and they'll do that all the way around the circle, and I will follow that cursor the whole time, and then it will train off of my intentions what it is expecting my intentions to be throughout the whole process.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, so generally for calibration, I'm doing attempted movements because I think it works better. I think the better models as I progress through calibration make it easier to use imagined movements.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I've tried doing calibration with imagined movement and it just doesn't work as well for some reason. So that was the center out targets. There's also one where a random target will pop up on the screen and it's the same. I just move, I follow along wherever the cursor is to that target all across the screen. I've tried those with Imagine Movement and for some reason the models just don't
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
They don't give as high level as quality when we get into closed loop. I haven't played around with it a ton. So maybe like the different ways that we're doing calibration now might make it a bit better. But what I've found is there will be a point in calibration where I can use imagine movement. Before that point, it doesn't really work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So if I do calibration for 45 minutes, the first 15 minutes, I can't use Imagine Movement. It just like doesn't work for some reason. And after a certain point, I can just sort of feel it. I can tell it moves different. That's the best way I can describe it. It's almost as if it is anticipating what I am going to do again before I go to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so using attempted movement for 15 minutes, at some point, I can kind of tell when I move my eyes to the next target that the cursor is starting to pick up. It's starting to understand. It's learning what I'm going to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
No, no, it makes sense to me. We've done it with a cursor and without a cursor in open loop, so sometimes it's just, say for the center out, you'll start calibration with a bubble loop
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
lighting up and i push towards that bubble and then when that bubble you know when it's pushed towards that bubble for say three seconds a bubble will pop and then i come back to the middle um so i'm doing it all just by my intentions like that's what it's learning anyway so it makes sense that as long as i follow what they want me to do you know like follow the yellow brick road that it'll all work out
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like, yeah, they always feel so bad making me do calibration. Like, uh, we're about to do, you know, a 40 minute calibration. I'm like, all right, would you guys want to do two of them? Um, like I'm always asking to like whatever they need, I'm more than happy to do. And it's not, It's not bad. I get to lie there or sit in my chair and do these things with some great people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I get to have great conversations. I can give them feedback. I can talk about all sorts of things. I could throw something on on my TV in the background and split my attention between them. Like, it's not bad at all.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
No, I would love that. I would love, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, that's one thing that I really, really enjoy about WebGrid is because I'm so competitive. The higher the BPS, the higher the score, I know the better I'm doing. I think I've asked at one point one of the guys if he could give me some sort of numerical feedback for calibration. I'm like, I would like to know what they're looking at.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like, oh, you know, it is, we see like this number while you're doing calibration. And that means at least on our end that we think calibration is going well. And I would love that because I would like to know if what I'm doing is going well or not. But then they've also told me like, yeah, not necessarily like one-to-one. It doesn't actually mean that calibration is going well in some ways.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So it's not like a hundred percent and they don't want to like skew what I'm experiencing or want me to change things based on that. If that number isn't always accurate to like how the model will turn out or how like the end result, that's at least what I got from it. One thing I do, I have asked them in something that I really enjoy striving for is like,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Towards the end of calibration, there is a time between targets. And so I like to keep, at the end, that number as low as possible. So at the beginning, it can be four, five, six seconds between me popping bubbles. But towards the end, I like to keep it below 1.5. Or if I could, get it to one second between bubbles.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Because in my mind, that translates really nicely to something like WebGrid, where I know if I can hit a target... uh, one every second that I'm doing real, real well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, so closed loop is when I first get cursor control and how they've described it to me, someone who does not understand this stuff. I am the dumbest person in the room every time I'm with any of these guys. I love the humility, I appreciate it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
um is that i am closing the loop so i am actually now um the one that is like finishing the loop of whatever this loop is i don't even know what the loop is they've never told me they just say there is a loop and at one point it's open and i can't control and then i get control and it's closed so i'm finishing the loop so how long the calibration usually take you said like 10-15 minutes
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Well, yeah, they're trying to get that number down pretty low. That's what we've been working on a lot recently is getting that down as low as possible. So that way, you know, if this is something that people need to do on a daily basis or if some people need to do on a like – every other day basis or once a week. They don't want people to be sitting in calibration for long periods of time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I think they wanted to get it down seven minutes or below, at least where we're at right now. It'd be nice if you never had to do calibration. So we'll get there at some point, I'm sure, the more we learn about the brain. And I think that's the dream. I think right now, for me to get really, really good models... I'm in calibration 40 or 45 minutes. And I don't mind.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like I said, they always feel really bad. But if it's going to get me a model that can break these records on WebGrid, I'll stay in it for flipping two hours.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, you know, I'd like to thank everyone who's helped me get here, my coaches, my parents for driving me to practice every day at five in the morning. I'd like to thank God and just overall my dedication to my craft.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It's literally just a grid. They can make it as big or small as you can make a grid. A single box on that grid will light up and you go and click it. And it is a way for them to benchmark how good a BCI is. So it's, you know, pretty straightforward. You just click targets.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So I like playing on like bigger grids because the bigger the grid, the like more BPS, it's bits per second that you get every time you click one. So I'll say I'll play on like a 35 by 35 grid. grid and then one of those little squares cell call it target whatever will light up and you move the cursor there and you click it and then you do that forever
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, I'm at 8.5 right now. I would have beaten that literally the day before I came to Austin, but I had like a, I don't know, like a five second lag right at the end. And I just had to wait until the latency calmed down and then I kept clicking, but Um, I was at like 8.01 and then five seconds of lag. And then the next like three targets I clicked all stayed at 8.01.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So if I would have been able to click, um, during that time of lag, I probably would have hit, I don't know, I might've hit nine. So I'm there. I'm like, I'm really close. And then this whole Austin trip has really gotten in the way of my web grid playing ability. Yeah. So that's all you're thinking about right now. Yeah, I know. I just, I just want, I want to do better at nine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I want to do better. I want to hit nine. I think, well, I know nine is very, very achievable. I'm right there. I think 10, I could hit maybe in the next month. Like I could do it probably in the next few weeks if I really push.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it's just really fun.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it's addicting. I've joked about what they actually did when they went in and put this thing in my brain. They must have flipped a switch to make me more susceptible to these kinds of games, to make me addicted to WebGrid or something. Yeah. Do you know Bliss' high score?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. So I've been playing first off with the dwell cursor, which really hampers my web grid playing ability. Basically I have to wait 0.3 seconds for every click to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
0.3 seconds, which sucks. It really slows down how much I'm able to – like how high I'm able to get. I still hit like 50 – I think I hit like 50-something trials, net trials per minute in that, which was pretty good because I'm able to like – One of the settings is also like how slow you need to be moving in order to initiate a click, to start a click.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So I can tell sort of when I'm on that threshold to start initiating a click just a bit early. So I'm not fully stopped over the target when I go to click. I'm doing it like on my way to the targets a little to try to time it just right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, just a hair right before the targets.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Well, I can get down to 0.2 and 0.1. 0.1, yeah, and I've played with that a little bit too. I have to adjust a ton of different parameters in order to play with 0.1, and I don't have control over all that on my end yet. It also changes how the models are trained. If I train a model in WebGrid, like a bootstrap on a model, which basically is them training models as I'm playing WebGrid,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
um based off of like the web grid data that i'm so like if i play web grid for 10 minutes they can train off that data specifically um in order to get me a better model um if i do that with 0.3 versus 0.1 the models come out different the way that they interact. It's just much, much different. So I have to be really careful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I found that doing it with 0.3 is actually better in some ways, unless I can do it with 0.1 and change all of the different parameters, then that's more ideal because obviously 0.3 is faster than 0.1. So I could get there. I can get there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
For right now, it's the hover clicking with the dwell cursor. Before all the thread retraction stuff happened, we were calibrating clicks, left click, right click. That was my previous ceiling before I broke the record again with the dwell cursor was I think on a 35 by 35 grid with left and right click. And you get more BPS, more bits per second using multiple clicks because it's more difficult.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, blue targets for left click, orange targets for right click is what they had done. So my previous record of 7.5 was with the blue and the orange targets. Which I think if I went back to that now...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
um doing the click calibration i would be able to and being able to like initiate clicks on my own i think i would break that 10 ceiling like in a couple days max like yeah you start making bliss nervous about his 17 why do you think we haven't given him the yeah exactly uh so what would it feel like with the retractions that there is uh some of the threads retracted It sucked.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It was really, really hard. The day they told me was the day of my big Neuralink tour at their Fremont facility. They told me like right before we went over there, it was really hard to hear. My initial reaction was, all right, go in, fix it. Go in, take it out, and fix it. The first surgery was so easy. I went to sleep. A couple hours later, I woke up, and here we are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I didn't feel any pain, didn't take any pain pills or anything. I just knew that if they wanted to, they could go in and put in a new one next day if that's what it took. Because I just wanted it to be better, and I wanted not to lose the capability. I had so much fun playing with it for a few weeks, for a month. It had opened up so many doors for me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It had opened up so many more possibilities that I didn't want to lose it after a month. I thought it would have been a cruel twist of fate if I had gotten to see... the view from the top of this mountain and then have it all come crashing down after a month. And I knew, say the top of the mountain, but how I saw it was I was just now starting to climb the mountain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
There was so much more that I knew was possible. And so to have all of that be taken away was really, really hard. But then on the drive over to the facility, I don't know, like five minute drive, whatever it is, I talked with my parents about it. I prayed about it. I was just like, you know, I'm not going to let this ruin my day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I'm not going to let this ruin this amazing tour that they have set up for me. I want to go show everyone how much I appreciate all the work they're doing. I want to go meet all of the people who have made this possible. And I want to go have one of the best days of my life. And I did. And it was amazing. And it absolutely was one of the best days I've ever been privileged to experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And then for a few days, I was pretty down in the dumps. But for like the first few days afterwards, I was just like, I didn't know if it was ever going to work again. And then I just, I made the decision that it, Even if I lost the ability to use the Neuralink, even if I lost out on everything to come, if I could keep giving them data in any way, then I would do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
If I needed to just do some of the data collection every day or body mapping every day for a year, then I would do it. Because I know that everything I'm doing helps everyone to come after me. And that's all I wanted. I guess the whole reason that I did this was to help people. And I knew that anything I could do to help, I would continue to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Even if I never got to use the cursor again, then I was just happy to be a part of it. and everything that I had done was just a perk. It was something that I got to experience, and I know how amazing it's gonna be for everyone to come after me, so might as well just keep truckin' along, you know?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it was within a couple weeks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I like to thank my parents. The road back was long and hard, fraught with many difficulties. There were dark days. Um, uh, it was, it was a couple of weeks, uh, I think. And then there was just a turning point. I think they had switched how, um, they were measuring, um, the neuron spikes in my brain, like the bliss helped me out. Uh,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, okay. So when they did that, it was kind of like a light over the head, like light bulb moment, like, oh, this works. And this seems like we can run with this. And I saw the... uptick in performance immediately. I could feel it when they switched over. I was like, this is better. This is good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Everything up till this point for the last few weeks, last whatever, three or four weeks, because it was before they even told me, everything before this sucked. Let's keep doing what we're doing now. And at that point, it was not like, oh, I know I'm still only at... say in web grid terms like four or five bps compared to my 7.5 before but i know that if we keep doing this then
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I can get back there. And then they gave me the dwell cursor and the dwell cursor sucked at first. It's obviously not what I want, but it gave me a path forward to be able to continue using it and hopefully to continue to help out. And so I just ran with it, never looked back. Like I said, I'm just the kind of person I roll with the punches anyway. Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I have to continuously keep it moving, basically. So like I said, there's a threshold where it will initiate a click. So if I ever drop below that, it'll start and I have 0.3 seconds to move it before it clicks anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And if I don't want it to ever get there, I just keep it moving at a certain speed and just constantly doing circles on screen, moving it back and forth to keep it from clicking stuff. Um, I actually noticed, uh, a couple of weeks back that I was, when I was not using the implant, I was just moving my hand back and forth or in circles.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Like I was trying to keep the cursor from clicking and I was just doing it like while I was trying to go to sleep and I was like, okay, this is a problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it happens in chess. I've lost a number of games because I'll accidentally click something.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It's a lot of me just using it day in and day out and saying, hey, can you guys do this for me? Give me this. I want to be able to do that. I need this. I think... A lot of it just doesn't occur to them maybe until someone is actually using the app, using the implant. It's just something that they just never would have thought of. Or it's very specific to even like me, maybe what I want.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It's something I'm a little worried about with the next people that come is maybe they will want things much different than how I've set it up or what the advice I've given the team. And they're going to look at some of the things they've added for me. I'm like, that's a dumb idea. Why would he ask for that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so I'm really looking forward to get the next people on because I guarantee that they're going to think of things that I've never thought of. They're going to think of improvements. I'm like, wow, that's a really good idea. Like, I wish I would have thought of that. And then they're also going to give me some pushback about like, yeah, what you are asking them to do here. That's a bad idea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Let's do it this way. And I'm more than happy to have that happen, but it's just a lot of like, you know, different interactions with, different games or applications, the internet, just with the computer in general. There's tons of bugs that end up popping up left, right, center.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So it's just me trying to use it as much as possible and showing them what works and what doesn't work and what I would like to be better. And then they take that feedback and They usually create amazing things for me. They solve these problems in ways I would have never imagined. They're so good at everything they do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And so I'm just really thankful that I'm able to give them feedback and they can make something of it. Because a lot of my feedback is... like really dumb. It's just like, I want this, please do something about it. And we'll come back super well thought out. And it's way better than anything I could have ever thought of or implemented myself. So they're just great. They're really, really cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
No, no, I hope. Compete. I hope day one they wipe the floor with me. I hope they beat it and they crush it, double it if they can. just because on one hand, it's only going to push me to be better because I'm super competitive. I want other people to push me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I think that is important for anyone trying to achieve greatness is they need other people around them who are going to push them to be better. I even made a joke about it on X once. Once the next people get chosen, cue buddy cop music. I'm just excited to have other people to do this with and to like share experiences with. I'm more than happy to interact with them as much as they want.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
More than happy to give them advice. I don't know what kind of advice I could give them, but if they have questions, I'm more than happy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
That they should have fun with this because it is a lot of fun and that I hope they work really, really hard because it's not just for us. It's for everyone that comes after us. And come to me if they need anything and to go to Neuralink if they need anything because Man, Neuralink moves mountains. They do absolutely anything for me that they can. And it's an amazing support system to have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It puts my mind at ease for so many things that I've had questions about, so many things I want to do. And they're always there. And that's really, really nice. And so I would tell them not to be afraid to go to Neuralink with any questions that they have, any concerns, anything that they're looking to do with this and any help that Neuralink is capable of providing. I know they will.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And I don't know. I don't know. Just work your ass off because it's really important that we try to give our all to this. So have fun and work hard. Yeah, yeah, there we go. Maybe that's what I'll just start saying to people. Have fun, work hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, it's what all, I don't know, people in my position want. They just want more independence. The more load that I can take away from people around me, the better. If I'm able to interact with the world without using my family, without going through any of my friends, needing them to help me with things, the better.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
If I'm able to sit up on my computer all night and not need someone to sit me up on my iPad in a position where I can use it and then have to have them wait up for me all night until I'm ready to be done using it, Um, like that, it takes a load off of all of us and it's, it's really like all I can ask for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Um, it's something that, you know, I could never thank Neuralink enough for, and I know my family feels the same way. Um, you know, just being able to have the freedom to do things on my own, uh, at any hour of the day or night, it means the world to me. And, um, I don't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. Generally, it is me playing music of some sort. I have a massive playlist, and so I'm just rocking out to music. And then it's also just a race against time because I'm constantly looking at how much battery percentage I've left.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
on my implant like all right i have 30 which equates to you know x amount of time which means i have to break this record in the next you know hour and a half or else it's not happening tonight um and so it's it's a little stressful when that happens when it's like when it's above 50 i'm like okay like i got time and start getting down to 30 and then 20 it's like all right uh
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
10% a little pop-up is going to pop up right here and it's going to really screw my WebGrid flow. It's going to tell me that there's a low battery pop-up comes up and it's really going to screw me over. So if I'm going to break this record, I have to do it in the next 30 seconds or else that pop-up is going to get in the way, cover my WebGrid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Um, and then it, after that I go click on it, go back into web grid and I'm like, all right, that means I have, you know, 10 minutes left before this thing's dead. That's what's going on in my head. Generally that in whatever song is playing. Um, and I just, I just want, I want to break those records so bad. Um, Like it's all I want when I'm playing WebGrid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It has become less of like, oh, this is just a leisurely activity. Like I just enjoy doing this because it just feels so nice and it puts me at ease. It is no. Once I'm in WebGrid, you better break this record or you're going to waste like five hours of your life right now. And I don't know. It's just fun. It's fun, man.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It covers the whole screen with a grid. And I don't know. What?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
so like you know oh yeah i had them i had them put in a giant bps in the background so now it's like the opposite of zen mode it's like it's like super hard mode like just metal mode if it's just like a giant number in the back count we should name that metal mode isn't much better
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
So the great part about Korea is they focus on science tech victories, which was not planned. I've been playing Korea for years, and then all of the Neuralink stuff happened. So it kind of aligns. But what I've noticed with tech victories is if you can just rush tech, rush science, then you can do anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
At one point in the game, you will be so far ahead of everyone technologically that you will have musket men, infantrymen, planes sometimes, and people will still be fighting with bows and arrows. And so if you want to win a domination victory, you just get to a certain point with the science and then go and wipe out the rest of the world. Or you can just take science all the way and win that way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And you're going to be so far ahead of everyone because you're producing so much science that it's not even close. I've accidentally won in different ways just by focusing on science.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
accidentally won by focusing on science i was yeah i like i i was playing only science obviously like just science all the way just tech and i was trying to get like every tech in the tech tree and stuff and then i accidentally won uh through a diplomatic victory and i was so mad i was so mad uh it because it just like ends the game one turn it was like oh you won you're so diplomatic i'm like i don't want to do this i should have declared war on more people or something
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
It was terrible. But you don't need giant civilizations with tech, especially with Korea. You can keep it pretty small. So I generally just get to a certain military unit and put them all around my border to keep everyone out. And then I will just build up. So very isolationist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I would like to, like I said, get back to the click-on-demand, like the regular clicks. That would be great. I would like to be able to connect to more devices. Right now, it's just the computer. I'd like to be able to use it on my phone or use it on different consoles, different platforms. I'd like to be able to control as much stuff as possible, honestly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
like an optimus robot would be pretty cool that would be sick if i could control an optimus robot uh the link app itself um it seems like we are getting pretty um dialed in to what um it might look like down the road seems like we've gotten through a lot of What I want from it, at least.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
The only other thing I would say is more control over all the parameters that I can tweak with my cursor and stuff. There's a lot of things that go into how the cursor moves in certain ways. And I have, I don't know, like three or four of those parameters.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Gain, friction, yeah. And there's maybe double the amount of those with just like velocity and then with the actual dwell cursor. So I would like all of it. I want as much control over my environment as possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, yeah. That's, that's, that's what I want. I want as much control over this as possible. So yeah, that's, that's really all I can ask for. Just give me, give me everything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
yeah you mean like while i'm using it while you're using it like speech to text oh yeah or do you type or like because there's also a keyboard yeah yeah so there's a virtual keyboard that's another thing i would like to work more on is finding some way to um type or text in a different way right now it is um like a dictation basically and a virtual keyboard that i can use with the cursor
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
But we've played around with sign language fingerspelling, and that seems really promising. So I have this thought in my head that it's going to be a very similar learning curve that I had with the cursor, where I went from attempted movement to imagined movement at one point. I have a feeling, this is just my intuition, that at some point I'm going to be doing fingerspelling
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And I won't need to actually attempt to fingerspell anymore that I'll just be able to think the like letter that I want and it'll pop up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And then like going from letters to words is another step. Like you would go from, you know, right now it's fingerspelling of like just the sign language alphabet, but if it's able to pick that up, then it should be able to pick up like the whole sign language thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
like language um and so then if i could do something along those lines or just the sign language um spelled word if i can you know spell it at a reasonable speed and it can pick that up then i would just be able to think that through and it would do the same thing i don't see why not after what i saw with the um with the cursor control i don't see why it wouldn't work but we'd have to play around with it more
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Well, it was a couple weeks before it just happened upon me. But now that I know that that was possible, I think I could make it happen with other things. I think it would be much, much simpler.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Sure. Absolutely. Whenever they'll let me. Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
so you don't have any concerns for you with the surgery experience all of it was um like no regrets no so everything's been good so far yep you just keep getting upgrades yeah i mean why not i've seen how much it's impacted my life already and i know that everything from here on out is going to get better and better so um i would love to i would love to get the upgrade
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, there's a lot that's very, very cool about this. I mean, we're talking about the brain, so there's... Like, this is just motor cortex stuff. There's so much more that can be done. The vision one is fascinating to me. I think that is going to be very, very cool. To give someone the ability to see for the first time in their life would just be... I mean, it...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
it might be more amazing than even helping someone like me. That just sounds incredible. The speech thing is really interesting, being able to have some sort of real-time translation and cut away that language barrier would be really cool. Any sort of actual impairments that it could solve with speech would be very, very cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And then also there are a lot of different disabilities that all originate in the brain. And you would hopefully be able to solve a lot of those. I know there's already stuff to help people with seizures that can be implanted in the brain. This would do, I imagine, the same thing. And so you could do something like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I know that even someone like Joe Rogan has talked about the possibilities with being able to stimulate the brain in different ways. I'm not sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
i'm not sure what you know like how ethical a lot of that would be that's beyond me honestly but i know that there's a lot that can be done when we're talking about the brain and being able to go in and physically make changes to help people or to improve their lives so i'm really looking forward to everything that comes from this and i don't think it's all that far off um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I think a lot of this can be implemented within my lifetime, assuming that I live a long life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Flip a switch like that, make someone happy. I think Joe has talked about it more in terms of you want to experience what a drug trip feels like. You want to experience what it'd be like to be on mushrooms or something like that. DMT, you can just... Flip that switch in the brain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
My buddy Bane has talked about being able to like wipe parts of your memory and re-experience things that like for the first time, like your favorite movie or your favorite book, like just wipe that out real quick and then re-fall in love with Harry Potter or something. I told him, I was like, I don't know how I feel about like people being able to just wipe parts of your memory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
That seems a little sketchy to me. He's like, they're already doing it. Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. I saw an episode of Black Mirror about that once. I don't think I want it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Oh yeah, for sure. For sure, absolutely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, oh, 100%. This... I know another thing with being able to give people the ability to feel sensation and stuff too by going in with the brain and having the neural link maybe do that, that could be something that could be transferred through the optimus as well. There's all sorts of really cool interplay between that. And then also, like you said, just physically interacting. I mean,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
99% of the things that I can't do myself, obviously I need a caretaker for, someone to physically do things for me. If an optimist robot could do that, I could live an incredibly independent life and not be such a burden on those around me. And it would change the way people like me live, at least until whatever this is gets cured.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
But being able to interact with the world physically like that would just be amazing. And not just for having to be a caretaker or something, but something like I talked about, just being able to read a book. I imagine an optimist robot just being able to hold a book open in front of me, get that smell again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I might not be able to feel it at that point, or maybe I could, again, with the sensation and stuff. But there's something different about reading a physical book than staring at a screen or listening to an audiobook. I actually don't like audiobooks. I've listened to a ton of them at this point, but I don't really like them. I would much rather read a physical copy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. Oh, man. The touch, the smell. I mean, it's just something about the words on the page. They've replicated that page color on the Kindle and stuff. Yeah, it's just not the same. Yeah. So just something as simple as that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah. A lot of things that I interact with in the world, like clothes or literally any physical thing that I interact with in the world, a lot of times what people around me will do is they'll just come like rub it on my face. They'll like lay something on me so I can feel the weight. They will rub a shirt on me so I can feel fabric.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
There's something very profound about touch, and it's something that I miss a lot and something I would love to do again. We'll see.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Yeah, I know. It's one thing that I've asked God for basically every day since my accident was just being able to one day move, even if it was only my hand, so that way I could squeeze my mom's hand or something just to show her how much I care and how much I love her and everything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
um something along those lines um being able to just interact with the people around me handshake give someone a hug um i don't know anything like that being able to help me eat like i'd probably get really fat um which would be a terrible terrible thing also beat bliss and chess on a physical chessboard yeah yeah i mean there are just so many upsides you know
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
any way to find some way to feel like I'm bringing bliss down to my level because he's just such an amazing guy and everything about him is just so above and beyond that anything I can do to take him down a notch I'm really happy yeah humble him a bit he needs it yeah okay as he's sitting next to me did you ever make sense of why God puts good people through such hardship Oh, man.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I think it's all about... understanding how much we need God. And I don't think that there's any light without the dark. I think that if all of us were happy all the time, there would be no reason to turn to God ever. I feel like there would be no concept of good or bad. And I think that as much of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
like the darkness and the evil that's in the world it makes us all appreciate the good and the things we have so much more and i think you know like when i had my accident the first one of the first things i said to one of my best friends was and this was within like the first month or two after my accident i said you know everything about this accident has just made me
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
understand and believe that like god is real and that there really is a god basically in that um like my interactions with him have all been you know real and worthwhile and he said if anything seeing me go through this accident he believes that there isn't a God.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
And it's a very different reaction, but I believe that it is a way for God to test us, to build our character, to send us through trials and tribulations, to make sure that we understand how precious you know, he is and the things that he's given us and the time that he's given us and then hopefully grow from all of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I think that's a huge part of being here is to not just, you know, have an easy life and do everything that's easy, but to step out of our comfort zones and really challenge ourselves because I think that's how we grow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
Oh man. I think people are my biggest inspiration. Even just being at Neuralink for a few months, looking people in the eyes and hearing their motivations for why they're doing this. It's so inspiring, and I know that they could be other places, at cushier jobs, working somewhere else, doing X, Y, or Z that doesn't really mean that much. But instead, they're here, and they want to be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
better humanity and they want to better just the people around them the people that they've interacted with in their life they want to make better lives for their own family members who might have disabilities or they look at someone like me and they say you know i can do something about that so i'm going to It's always been what I've connected with most in the world are people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
I've always been a people person and I love learning about people and I love learning how people developed and where they came from and to see how much people are willing to do for someone like me when they don't have to and they're going out of their way to make my life better. It gives me a lot of hope for just humanity in general.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
how much we care and how much we're capable of when we all kind of get together and try to make a difference. And I know there's a lot of bad out there in the world, but there always has been and there always will be. And I think that it shows human resiliency and it shows what we're able to endure and how much
Lex Fridman Podcast
#438 – Elon Musk: Neuralink and the Future of Humanity
how much we just want to be there and help each other and how much satisfaction we get from that. Because I think that's one of the reasons that we're here is just to help each other. And I don't know, that always gives me hope is just realizing that there are people out there who still care and who want to help.