Would you allow it? Elon Musk tinker with your brain? That’s a question we all might face in the future as his brain-computer interface company works Neuralink succeeds. But anyone willing to put their hand up for brain surgery might want to hear what one of Neuralink’s co-founders said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal Podcast The future of everything I recently met with Dr. Benjamin Rapoport, a neurosurgeon who co-founded Neuralink with Musk and a team of scientists in 2016. Rapoport left Neuralink to start his own company called Precision Neuroscience, and one particular part of the interview really caught our eye. Particularly the part where Rapoport seemed to indicate that he was ignoring safety concerns.
“You founded Neuralink with Elon Musk and eventually left to start Precision. “Why did you decide to leave and start a new company?” asked The Wall Street Journal’s Danny Lewis in the May 3 episode.
“I have spent my entire professional life bringing neural interfaces from the world of science to the world of medicine. “But I felt that safety was paramount when entering the world of medicine and technology,” said Dr. Rapport.
“For a medical device, safety often means minimal invasiveness,” Rapaport continued. “And in the early days of brain-computer interfaces, there was the idea that in order to extract information-rich data from the brain, you had to penetrate the brain with tiny, needle-like electrodes.”
Dr. Rapaport further explained in the podcast that this method has a major disadvantage. It causes “some brain damage when introduced into the brain.” Of course, this is anything but ideal. And Rapaport believes it is possible to “extract information-rich data from the brain without damaging the brain.”
Dr. Rapaport continues that he founded Precision Neuroscience with this philosophy in mind. When making neural interfaces, it was crucial to focus on “minimal invasiveness, scalability and security.” And he believes this is what sets his company apart from Neuralink.
“The Neuralink system is based on penetrating microelectrodes. The Precision system is based on surface microelectrodes, tiny little electrodes that cover the surface of the brain without penetrating it,” Rapaport explained.
Brain-computer interfaces have made tremendous progress in the last decade, allowing people to literally control machines with their minds. Companies like Musk’s Neuralink typically grab the headlines, but there are a number of companies including Synchron, Paradromics and Precision Neuroscience. And they all have their own philosophy about what level of invasiveness is acceptable.
Neuralink has received a lot of criticism over the years MIT Technology Review In 2020 she called it “neuroscience theater,” and in 2022, shocking allegations of monkey torture were revealed. Fifteen monkeys reportedly died at a Neuralink facility between 2017 and 2020, according to a complaint filed with The New York Times US Department of Agriculture. But Musk rejected the idea that monkeys suffered gruesome deaths in Neuralink labs, claiming instead that they were in “Monkey paradise.”
None of this criticism has stopped people from getting excited about the possibilities of brain-computer interfaces, including work associated with Neuralink. The company recently released a video of a Neuralink patient playing Video games with his mind. And there are quite a few people on social media ready to let Musk equip them with experimental brain-computer interface technology.
Gizmodo tried on Sunday to contact Dr. Reached through the Precision Neuroscience website, Rapoport received no response. We will update this post if we receive a response. Neuralink also did not respond to an email on Monday.