Neuralink's First Human Trial: Noland Arbaugh

A Reason To Be Optimistic About The Future.

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I recently saw the Youtube recording of Neuralink’s first human patient, Noland Arbaugh (a quadriplegic from Arizona), who spoke at a hour long company all hands meeting of his experience with the implant.

The results were earth-shattering (to say the least) with Noland breaking previously held world records in BCI metrics within a day of implantation & even regaining the ability to do some of his favorite activities independently. I highly recommend watching his share.

Here are some of my thoughts. 

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Neuralink's First Human Trial: Noland Arbaugh

Born in the late 1990’s, I came of age right as social media was hitting the scene. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat; they were all the rage. And with them, emerged the tech titans, nay gods. FAANG(Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google). They could do no wrong. As the tech gods of the world, everyone aspired to work at these companies. Google especially, gained a reputation as the gold standard for a software engineer; high school Google internships & Google competitions were all the rave. I’d hear friends and family speak excitedly at hearing someone get a position there; every nerdy kid grew up wanting to work there. And some people, after hs and college, went to work at Google and similar such companies. 

But over time, these titans’ once great luster slowly faded. Facebook’s 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, Apple’s antitrust lawsuits by the federal government, Amazon’s warehouse working conditions, Netflix’s dip in market share to competitor streaming services such as Disney+, and even Google recently had an issue with over-indexing on diversity in their Gemini model. What were once unquestionable monoliths have shown that they too, are flawed. And that’s OK; this isn’t a piece bashing them.

But it is to say that what happened in the Neuralink all-hands is but a small showcasing of what is to come; a new age of titans. Unfortunately, most mainstream news fail to realize the monumental transition at play; a common part of the journey to the adoption of any new technology.

Despite knowing this, I was still dismayed how news pieces were completely at odds with what Noland Arbaugh had said. 

Numerous times throughout the presentation he mentioned time & time again: how incredible the technology was, how safe & fast the procedure was and how grateful he was to be able to have some measure of freedom again. To see his experience left out by news editors is a disregard to the work of Neuralink engineers, Noland Arbaugh’s efforts these past months and the collective hope of those suffering from traumatic brain injuries globally.

And I get it. We’ve gotten used to seeing Yuppies drop $50 for a bite, people staring at their phones & dissociating from reality, algorithmically-generated divisive feeds, highly personalized ads, and body dysmorphia & mental illness born of intense social media driven comparison. Tech does deserve some of the criticism coming it’s way.

But we often forget that the ultimate purpose of technology is not to just show you one more personalized ad, get you to buy 3 soap dispensers instead of 1 on Amazon or get sushi delivered faster. It’s ultimately to give people greater control over their lives. And that can partly mean seeing an eerily prescient ad or having sushi magically appear outside your door.

But it’s also a quadriplegic independently playing Civilization for hours on end with his BCI & not getting mouth sores from holding a touchstick.  It’s Noland playing against his dad on Mario Kart after 8 years of not being able to. It’s regaining a sense of yourself that you thought was gone forever. It’s right at the edge that we reground ourselves in the essence of technology; helping others take control of their lives to live better ones. The ability to pick up the phone and hear your loved ones voice on the other side instead of reading letters. Walking on the moon instead of looking up at. Insulin shots instead of a death certificate. 

Neuralink is well on its way to redefining how we as humans connect with technology, each other, and I suspect, the nature of humanity itself. And as far as I can see, the ones signing up are more than willing to and are immensely grateful to have an alternate option. So, perhaps it’s time that we pause and take note from those with the least control over their condition to really understand the value of tech. But until we do, well, let’s keep building.

-Kiran 

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Kiran’s Gems 💎

• “When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins.” - Grazie Christie’s case for why younger women should marry older men.

• Dwarkesh Patel’s clip on how Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken became leading AI researchers in 1 year.

• Valve Software’s (creators of Steam) Employee Handbook & how their flat hierarchy works.