Fast Facts
- Elon Musk, speaking at a keynote Monday, said that immortality through brain implants is "definitely possible."
- Musk referenced a device called a Neural Lace featured in a science fiction book series called "The Culture".
- Neuralink recently shared a video of its first human patient controlling a computer with his mind.
Last week, Elon Musk's brain chip startup Neuralink released a video of its first human patient playing chess with his mind. The 29-year-old quadriplegic — Noland Arbaugh — became the first human to receive a Neuralink implant in January.
Musk said that this early device is called "Telepathy."
But the Tesla (TSLA) CEO is not content to merely provide a pathway for paralyzed people to regain the ability to communicate on the internet. Over the years, Musk has — without providing timelines or evidence — said that Neuralink's devices will eventually be able to restore eyesight to the blind, cure neurological disorders and allow people to experience alternate realities.
Neuralink remains focused right now on addressing brain injuries, but the company's mission — to "create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow" — has bolder aspirations.
Related: Watch Elon Musk's first Neuralink patient play chess with his mind
He also seems to be chasing immortality, though he has said in the past that he's not interested in living forever.
In an interview with Peter Diamandis on Monday that served as a keynote address for Diamandis' Abundance Summit, Musk referenced a device featured in the science fiction book series "The Culture," written by the late Iain Banks: a "neural lace."
Elon delivers an awesome Abundance Summit Keynote over X-Video, using Starlink from his plane!
— Peter H. Diamandis, MD (@PeterDiamandis) March 25, 2024
Truly EXCEPTIONAL — Here’s our conversation (https://t.co/86mJAGDFj7) pic.twitter.com/GttonD2xeE
In the books, humans are implanted with the neural lace device when they are young; it is used to allow communication and interfacing with machines, and can also be used to store memory.
As Musk said during the interview, the neural lace is "so good that it retains all your memories and your brain state, so even if your physical body dies, you can kind of be reincorporated in another physical body and retain your original memories and brain state."
Though he said that Neuralink is a "long way from that," he did say that such a device is "definitely physically possible," though it would require far more electrodes than Neuralink's implants currently use.
"The human brain ... has a lot of constraints," Musk said. "Ultimately, you will have a whole brain interface that I guess is a sort of form of immortality in that if your brain state is stored, you're kind of backed up on a hard drive. You can always restore that brain state into a biological body or maybe a robot or something."
Musk said that the technology that would enable this kind of mind uploading is "many years in the future, but we're not breaking any laws of physics. This is probably something that will happen."
Related: Meet Neurosoft, the company that's achieving Elon Musk's dreams
The reality of mind-uploading
Psychologist and neuroscientist Michael Graziano said in a 2019 essay in the Wall Street Journal that such a digital afterlife will likely exist eventually, but it relies on the creation of technology that is not yet here.
The first challenge would be to build an artificial brain, something that Graziano said at the time was "all but solved." The second challenge involves the complete scanning of an individual's biological brain, including a measurement of how exactly that brain's neurons are connected.
This scan would then be copied into the artificial brain.
If that technology were to exist, it would raise a series of deeply philosophical questions about reality and consciousness that, according to Graziano, would at least take some getting used to.
"Imagine that my life is like the rising stalk of the letter Y. I was born at the base, and as I grew up, my mind was shaped and changed along a trajectory. One day, I have my mind uploaded. At that moment, the Y branches," Graziano wrote. "There are now two trajectories, each one convinced that it’s the real me. Let’s say the left branch is the sim-me and the right branch is the bio-me. The right-hand branch will inevitably die. The left-hand branch can live indefinitely, and in it, the stalk of the Y will also live on as memories and experiences."
He said that such a reality would necessarily change individual conceptions of "me" as they exist today.
Related: No, Elon Musk, AI self-awareness is not 'inevitable'
Even more hype
This talk of digital minds and a synthetic afterlife comes alongside an ongoing conversation regarding artificial intelligence and consciousness. Musk has often said that smarter-than-human AI is just a few years away, and is convinced that AI self-awareness is "inevitable."
Musk told Diamandis Monday that such technology will be here by 2029.
Talk is cheap. https://t.co/JZbzJvHRIP
— Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) March 26, 2024
The issue with that is there remains no unified understanding of human consciousness or cognition; the brain, it turns out, is not a computer, and the task of proving consciousness — as many philosophers have discovered over the years — might not ever be possible, as consciousness itself is necessarily subjective and rather intangible.
Hyping his own tech is not a new theme for Musk; in 2016, he said that it would only take a few years for a Tesla to drive itself better than a human, a feat that no self-driving car has yet to achieve.
He has been criticized in the past for baselessly hyping future potential iterations of Neuralink's devices.
Anna Wexler, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at Penn, said last year that "there’s still so little known about the brain that getting people’s hopes up about what’s possible in the near term may be misleading and may lead to skepticism around neurotech."
Neuralink has also been scrutinized for its allegedly unsafe practices, which the company has disputed. Little is known about the scope or scale of its current human trial.
Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment.
Contact Ian with tips via email, ian.krietzberg@thearenagroup.net, or Signal 732-804-1223.
