Neuralink's DJ Seo: Inside the Race to Connect Brains and AI

Okay, guys, this one needs really no introduction. 好，各位，这位真的不需要介绍了。 We've got our brilliant partner Shawn Maguire, president of Neuralink DJ. 我们有才华横溢的合伙人 Shaun Maguire，以及 Neuralink 总裁 DJ。 Come on up, guys. 请上来，两位。 Thank you for coming. 感谢你们的到来。 Welcome, Neuralink. 欢迎，Neuralink。 [applause] [掌声] We're actually going to stay on the side cuz we're going to play a 2-minute video just showing how badass DJ and his team are. 我们先站一边，因为接下来要播一段两分钟的视频，展示 DJ 和他的团队有多厉害。 We're starting off with reducing human suffering. 我们从减轻人类痛苦开始。 Our first product is called Telepathy and that enables someone [music] who lost the ability to command their body to be able to communicate with a computer. 我们的第一款产品叫 Telepathy，让失去支配身体能力的人 [音乐] 能够与电脑沟通。 I'm thinking [music] and a cursor is moving on a screen. 我在想 [音乐]，光标就在屏幕上动了。 It blew my mind. 把我惊到了。 It's not a matter of if I can do something, but like [music] how. 现在不是我能不能做到的问题，而是 [音乐] 怎么做的问题。 It's been nothing short of miraculous. 简直不啻于奇迹。 Before the implant, I was locked in, non-verbal, quadriplegic. 植入前，我完全锁闭，无法开口，四肢瘫痪。 Now I control my computer just by thinking and the rewards have been immense for me. 现在我只靠思考就能控制电脑，这给我带来的回报是巨大的。 ALS hit you like a pound of bricks. ALS 打得你措手不及。 I am not able to do things that other dads can, but now he thinks it's so [music] cool that I can do things that other dads cannot. 别的爸爸能做的事我做不了，但现在他觉得我能做别的爸爸做不到的事，[音乐] 实在太酷了。 It's great to control a computer. 能控制电脑就已经很了不起了。 That's a huge step. 这是巨大的一步。 The convoy team [music] is the team at Neuralink that's working on assistive robotic devices controlled by the brain implant, physical independence in the real world. Convoy 团队 [音乐] 是 Neuralink 负责辅助机器人设备的团队，由大脑植入设备控制，目标是在现实世界中实现行动自主。 I was moving the different directions, the different axes [music] with I don't know, it's pretty incredible just to think about. 我在不同方向、不同轴向上移动它 [音乐]，我也不知道，就靠意念，真的太不可思议了。 Really good feeling seeing what those things capable of. 看到那些东西能做到的事，感觉真的太好了。 It was incredible [music] to be able to just gesture with an arm again. 能再次用手臂做出动作，[音乐] 真的太不可思议了。 Gaining functionality [music] that I thought was gone forever was so incredibly life-changing. 以为永远失去的功能重新回来了，[音乐] 真的太改变人生了。 Like most ALS patients, Kenneth was losing his ability to speak. 和大多数 ALS 患者一样，Kenneth 正在逐渐失去说话的能力。 The real value of the brain-computer interface is that it would give Kenneth [music] his voice back. 脑机接口的真正价值，就是能把 Kenneth [音乐] 的声音还给他。 Hello. 你好。 There we go. 来了。 I'm talking to you with my mind. 我在用意念跟你说话。 Everyone gets his own color. 每个人有自己的颜色。 Will be blue. 会是蓝色。 You're going to do that? 你要这样做吗？ Yes, please. 好的，请。 I'm done with my turn. 我的回合结束了。 Our next product is Blindsight, which will enable those who have total loss of vision including they've lost their eyes or the optic nerve to be able to see again. 我们的下一款产品是 Blindsight，将让完全失去视力的人，包括失去双眼或视神经的人，重新看见。 The future of this technology feels almost unlimited. 这项技术的未来几乎没有上限。 We are going to continue advancing the quality of the sensors, the number [music] of the sensors. 我们会持续提升传感器的质量和 [音乐] 数量。 Surgery will advance. 手术会不断进步。 Robotics is going to advance. 机器人技术也会不断进步。 And we are finding ways to apply it across all regions of the brain as we find new ways to refine and enhance its capabilities. 随着我们找到提炼和增强能力的新方法，我们正在探索把它应用到大脑各个区域。 It really feels like the sky's the limit for what we can do to help. 真的感觉，在帮助方面我们能做的事情没有上限。 How does it feel, Audrey? 感觉怎么样，Audrey？ Life-changing. 改变人生。 [music] [音乐] Life-changing. 改变人生。 I could not ask for more. 我没有更多要求了。 [music] [音乐] All with my mind. 全靠我的意念。 Mhm. 嗯。 All with my mind. 全靠我的意念。 We were cracking a lot of jokes before that video, but I mean, honestly, that brought tears to my eyes. 视频开始前我们还在开玩笑，但说真的，那段视频让我红了眼眶。 It's 这真的 This is one of the most inspiring projects in the world. 这是世界上最鼓舞人心的项目之一。 It's incredibly difficult what they're doing and I mean, they're like they're truly saving people. 他们做的事极其艰难，真的，他们在真真切切地拯救生命。 They're they're changing their lives. 他们在改变这些人的人生。 They're opening up possibilities that had been lost to them. 他们打开了那些已经失去的可能性。 It really is remarkable, DJ. 确实太了不起了，DJ。 So, DJ co-founded Neuralink with Elon Musk and a few other people back in 2016. DJ 和 Elon Musk 以及另外几个人在 2016 年联合创立了 Neuralink。 It's a different era in so many ways. 那个年代在很多方面都截然不同。 Um a lot has happened in AI since then. AI 那以后发生了太多的事。 Can you just tell us more, DJ? 能跟我们多说说吗，DJ？ What made you drop everything in 2016 to build BCIs? 是什么让你在 2016 年放下一切去做脑机接口的？ And, you know, how were you guys thinking about AI back then? 你们当时是怎么看待 AI 的？ Uh first of all, thanks for having me. 首先，感谢邀请我来。 Um it's a pleasure to be here. 能在这里很荣幸。 Um I I would say AI has really been central to the origin story of Neuralink. AI 确实是 Neuralink 创业故事的核心。 Um you know, really the key insight back then was um sort of the the IO bottleneck between the human output and AI capabilities. 当时最核心的洞见，就是人类输出端与 AI 能力之间的 IO 瓶颈。 And, you know, even now talking about sort of bridging that gap seems a little crazy and wild. 即便是现在谈论弥合这个差距，听起来还是有点疯狂。 Um although I guess like with every passing week, it seems more real and real. 虽然随着每一周过去，感觉越来越像真的了。 Um but certainly back in 2016, 10 years ago, it sounded insane. 但在 2016 年，也就是十年前，听起来简直是疯话。 Um and, you know, as far as I guess my personal involvement in in this um in this journey, I guess even as a kid, I was super fascinated by the brain. 说到我个人投身这段旅程，说来从小我就对大脑极度着迷。 I mean, how can you not? 怎么可能不着迷呢？ It's the most uh interesting compute that we all carry. 大脑是我们每个人随身携带的最有趣的计算装置。 It does incredible things. 它能做出不可思议的事情。 It's the only form of general intelligence that we know to date. 它是迄今为止我们所知的唯一一种通用智能。 And um you know, as an engineer, I always wanted to just understand, you know, what makes us us and uh really try to explore the inner cosmos, uh so to speak. 作为一名工程师，我一直想弄明白是什么让我们成为我们，真正去探索内在的宇宙。 And you know, academically, I got introduced to brain-computer interface or brain-machine interface um you know, in the late 2000s. 在学术层面，我是在 2000 年代末接触到脑机接口的。 Uh this is a couple years after um first human uh got implanted with the Utah array, which is this rigid silicon shank with sort of the through the uh skin port. 那是第一个人类植入犹他阵列之后几年的事，犹他阵列是一种硬质硅探针，通过皮肤上的端口连接出来。 [snorts] [哼笑] And um you know, just doing something incredible. 做的事情简直令人叹为观止。 Uh someone who was quadriplegic and be able to uh regain some of that autonomy. 一个四肢瘫痪的人能重新找回一些自主能力。 And that was that was very inspirational and you know, at the time I was um studying at Caltech. 那给了我很大的启发，当时我在加州理工读书。 Go Beavers. 加州理工加油！ Go Beavers, yeah. 加州理工加油，没错。 He was more hardcore though. 他当时更拼命。 The undergrads are way smarter than the grad students. 本科生比研究生聪明多了。 [laughter] [笑声] I I'd beg to differ, but um and um you know, I I was focused around, you know, building miniaturized low-power electronics. 我不同意，不过，我当时专注于研究微型低功耗电子技术。 And uh went to Berkeley to um pursue PhD in in that program. 后来去伯克利读了那个方向的博士。 Uh really with the eye towards can you sort of build a lot of the principles from semiconductor to miniaturize these systems. 着眼点是：能不能把半导体领域的很多原理用来把这些系统微型化。 Um you know, take it out of the lab setting, which was kind of where where things were into the real world. 把它从实验室环境带到现实世界。 And um you know, I think when I met Elon and the team, uh you know, towards the end of my tail end of my PhD program, I mean, just the sheer ambitiousness and the scale of this project was something that I could not say no to. 在博士快结束的时候遇到 Elon 和团队，那个项目的宏大抱负和规模是我无法拒绝的，老实说，当我和 Elon 见面之后，这已经远超我的想象了，我心里想：这会是什么样的旅程，这份挑战是我能否做到任何事情中的终极挑战，而且这不是一件小事。 to me when I talk something that's actually surprising me, a lot of people when I ask them about Neuralink, a lot of people have never even heard of the company. 当我提到这让我真正感到惊讶的事情，很多人当我问他们关于 Neuralink 的时候，很多人甚至从来没有听说过这家公司。 Even really smart people often times they're not aware of how far along you guys are. 即使是非常聪明的人，也经常不知道你们已经走到这一步了。 Just I mean, we just saw video, you have 20-plus patients where you've changed their lives. 我的意思是，我们刚刚看了视频，你们有 20 多名患者，改变了他们的人生。 What are some of the things you think smart people most misunderstand or underappreciate about the company? 你认为聪明人对这家公司最大的误解或低估是什么？ Yeah, I think often times uh for those that have heard about Neuralink, they do kind of see these um patient stories on X and also it's kind of natural to think about the implanted device that's recording neural intent and then some sort of algorithm uh neural decoding to convert those neural intent to something useful for the patients. 我觉得，对于那些听说过 Neuralink 的人，他们确实会在 X 上看到患者故事，也很自然地会想到植入设备记录神经意图，然后通过某种神经解码算法把这些意图转化成对患者有用的东西。 Um so, I think that part is fairly fairly um well known. 我觉得这部分大家都相当了解了。 I think the part that's underappreciated and I think this is really where Elon magic kind of sprinkles in is um you know, at even at the the founding and day one of the company, we we had scale in mind. 我认为被低估的部分，也是 Elon 的魔法真正发挥作用的地方，是从公司创立第一天起，我们就把规模化放在心里了。 We had not just the device, but all of the infrastructure around it to be able to do the surgery, do the deployment, build, you know, really, really hard factories for building these devices. 不只是设备本身，还有围绕它的全套基础设施：做手术、做部署、建造生产这些设备的真正有难度的工厂。