The Limitless Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
technology is, but also its inevitability.

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

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

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

Josh:
even watch the video straight from your Spotify feed.

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

Josh:
the top of this episode description.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
my phone knows everything about me.

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

Josh:
But what if I made you a few promises?

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

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

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

Josh:
right back there for the very first time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
two more patients answered yes to that question.

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
and the results are pretty remarkable.

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

Josh:
exactly how this thing works and why it matters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
actually playing Call of Duty together using just their thoughts,

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

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

Josh:
Nuketown, it's pretty freaking cool.

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

Josh:
connect to an optimist humanoid robot.

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
The second reason Neuralink is important is for civilizational survival.

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

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

Josh:
If artificial general intelligence keeps compounding, human decision-making

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

Josh:
Elon frames the link as a defensive and democratizing upgrade,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
And the same is true about communication.

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

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

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

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

Josh:
believe my message means.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
of neural data, letting us collaborate with superintelligent systems instead

Josh:
of being outmaneuvered by them.

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

Josh:
project for the species, us.

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

Josh:
computational power that a frontier model AI enjoys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
becomes completely alien to humans, uncontrollable, irreversible.

Josh:
Resulting in unforeseen consequences for the human civilization.

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

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

Josh:
intellectual movement that kind of advocates for using technology to enhance

Josh:
human capabilities and improve the human condition as a whole.

Josh:
Remember earlier when I said neural link could cure blindness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
any external tools. But it gets even cooler.

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

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

Josh:
patterns, even radar to see through fog and walls.

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

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

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

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

Josh:
the initial versions well it still works.

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

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

Josh:
video game on Atari or early Nintendo.

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

Josh:
spotting large objects, basic outlines, movement.

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

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

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

Josh:
for when we can expect these things to work.

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
project they call Convoy.

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

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

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

Josh:
to reanimate your limbs.

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

Josh:
actually damaged your spinal cord.

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

Josh:
for memory search and language translation,

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

Josh:
whether you are excited to do that or not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh:
Because whether we're ready or

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

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

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

Music:
Music