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Science Corp. uses solar panel-like technology implanted in a patient’s eye. Early results for people with macular degeneration are impressive.
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Claire Cameron
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Tag: Neuralink
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Ex-Neuralink Exec’s New Startup Is Tackling Blindness—and Winning
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If You Can Read This, You’re About to Get Scammed
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Did you find this article by typing in the name of a website associated with Elon Musk? Did it sound like you could invest in SpaceX, Neuralink, or one of Musk’s AI ventures like Grok and xAI? It’s fake. It’s 100%, without a doubt, completely fake.
I know you may not believe it, but please read on. Because this article could save you from losing a lot of money. Elon Musk is a very wealthy man. He’s worth $500 billion, according to Forbes, making him the wealthiest person on the planet. But Musk does not have a website dedicated to making other people rich.
You may have seen an ad on Facebook or maybe a video on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. It may have even looked like Elon Musk was talking about some amazing investment opportunity. Maybe it looked like Elon was raising money for a sick child. You may have even been asked to send money through gift cards or a bitcoin ATM. But it was fake. You need to believe us. Because it’s true.
Musk does not have a website selling cryptocurrencies. He doesn’t have a website for trading stocks. He doesn’t have a public website selling shares of his private companies like SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and X. The promotional video you saw is fake and probably used artificial intelligence tools to make it look like Elon Musk was saying something he never said.
People are losing millions
Did someone reach out to you on a social media site like Facebook or Instagram claiming to be Elon? Did they tell you to talk with them over Signal or Telegram or WhatsApp? That person is a scammer. Elon Musk does not reach out to people on websites and ask them for money. And if they haven’t already asked you to send money, that part is coming.
Again, you might be skeptical. A lot of people want to believe that Elon Musk is offering ways for the average person to become rich. But he’s not. Among other reasons, he doesn’t have time.
Here at Gizmodo, we’ve written about scammers impersonating Elon Musk for years.
- There was the woman in Washington who lost $63,000 because she thought she was talking to Elon.
- There was the man in North Carolina who drained his 401k of over half a million dollars.
- There was the person who lost over $18,000 watching a video livestream they thought was for Tesla.
- There was also the Florida principal who sent an Elon Musk scammer a check for $100,000.
People have literally been losing millions of dollars to scammers over the years because they thought they were investing in something approved by Elon Musk. But it was all fake.
Scam AI Videos
It’s incredible what can be accomplished with AI these days. You can make people appear to say things they never said. For example, here’s an ad we spotted below. Elon never said any of that.
Fake Elon Websites
All of the websites below are scams. And while Gizmodo is often reluctant to advertise the web domains of scammers, because it risks inadvertently driving more people to scammy websites, using the names of the scams is the only way to help get the word out that these specific websites will steal your money.
And this list only scratches the surface. These are some of the domains that have been reported to the FTC, but there are so many more out there.
- ceomusk.org [SCAM]
- elonbitcoin.fun [SCAM]
- elonchristmas.com [SCAM]
- fastmars.net [SCAM]
- investmuskspace.icu [SCAM]
- marshome.us [SCAM]
- marsway.net [SCAM]
- marsyox.com [SCAM]
- marsvalue.net [SCAM]
- myteslatoken.com [SCAM]
- official2xMusk.com [SCAM]
- shippingteslamail.com [SCAM]
- tesla-clubs.com [SCAM]
- tesla-prize-x.com [SCAM]
- teslaminingprogram.com [SCAM]
- teslaminingplatform.aphatrad.com [SCAM]
- teslaoption.com [SCAM]
- teslapresale.net [SCAM]
- tesla.token-presale.org [SCAM]
- teslatoken-presale.online [SCAM]
- telsaxmarketing.com [SCAM]
- tsla-marketspro.com [SCAM]
- teslgets.com [SCAM]
- tsl-xspace.pw [SCAM]
- x-coin-platform.io [SCAM]
Scam Names
There are also scams that you may know by various names that aren’t dedicated websites, but are being spread through social media platforms. Some of the common ones we’ve seen are below.
- Elon Musk Fan Page Membership Card
- Elon Musk x Donald Trump Crypto Giveaway
- Space Stock Mining
- Tesla Bitcoin
- Tesla Token
- Tesla Mining
- Neuralink Crypto Token
- SpaceX Token
Please believe us. It’s not real.
Maybe someone sent you this article. Maybe you found it through Google. Please know that visiting these websites and “investing” in them will only lead you to heartache and pain.
The people who’ve been scammed at these sites often feel foolish afterward. And we don’t want you to feel foolish. We want you to avoid just handing your money away for nothing.
If you’re interested in investing, there are plenty of reputable places to do that. You can even invest in Musk’s company, Tesla, if you want to buy stock in that company through a reputable stockbroker. All investing involves risks, but the websites we’ve featured here aren’t just risks where you might make some money or you might lose some money.
If you give any of these websites your money, you will only lose. We promise you.
Have you been scammed and want to tell your story? You can email the author of this article at [email protected].
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Matt Novak
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Where the ‘PayPal Mafia’ Is Today: Founders, Fortunes and Feuds
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Peter Thiel, PayPal’s first CEO, turned his fintech fortune into a far-reaching empire of influence spanning venture capital, politics and power. Marco Bello/Getty Images In 2007, Fortune magazine reimagined a classic mafia scene with a Silicon Valley twist: 13 male founders and early employees of PayPal, all long gone from the company, posed at a San Francisco café with slicked-back hair, poker chips and dozens of whiskey glasses. The crowd included some of the most recognizable names in today’s tech scene, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. The magazine dubbed them the “PayPal mafia,” not for their time at the fintech company, but for their outsized impact on Silicon Valley through the companies they launched afterward.
PayPal went public in early 2002 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion the same year. Most of its early employees left the company after the acquisition. They went on to found YouTube, SpaceX and LinkedIn, among other legendary names in Silicon Valley. However, like their cinematic namesake, the group hasn’t avoided controversy. These former colleagues have built billion-dollar businesses while also finding themselves in the crosshairs of public criticism.
For instance, Thiel has faced controversy over his political affiliations and, most notably, for funding Hulk Hogan’s 2012 lawsuit against Gawker Media with $10 million — a case that ultimately drove the online media company into bankruptcy. Musk has also faced criticism for his takeover of Twitter and his prior role in the Trump administration, where he led widespread federal employee firings.
Here’s what they are up to these days:
Peter Thiel: venture capitalist
Peter Thiel. Marco Bello/Getty Images Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Luke Nosek founded PayPal in 1998, originally as a software security company. After merging with Elon Musk’s X.com (unrelated to the social media platform he owns today), PayPal shifted its focus to digital payments.
Thiel served as CEO from 1998 until 2002, leaving after the company was sold to eBay. He then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a major U.S. government contractor providing data analytics services. The company now has a market capitalization of $439 billion.
Thiel is also known as a prolific angel investor. He co-founded Clarium Capital, Founders Fund, Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital. In 2004, Thiel became Facebook’s first outside investor after acquiring a 10.2 percent stake in the company for $500,000.
Thiel is among the many former PayPal employees who have entered political and high-profile public arenas. An active donor to the Republican Party, Thiel supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign but withheld donations during the 2024 election. He is also credited with helping JD Vance reach the Vice Presidential ticket.
Elon Musk: entrepreneur, the world’s richest person
Elon Musk. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Elon Musk briefly served as PayPal’s CEO before being ousted by the board in 2000. He went on to build one of the most influential portfolios in technology, spanning electric vehicles, space exploration, social media and A.I.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and has led Tesla since 2008. He also founded Neuralink and The Boring Company, expanding his reach into brain-computer interfaces and infrastructure. In 2022, Musk gained global attention for acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, later rebranding it as X.
His ties to A.I. run deep: Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left in 2018 over strategic disagreements. In 2023, he returned to the field by launching xAI, a research venture focused on building A.I. that is more understandable for humans.
Today, Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $400 billion. He is also perhaps the only PayPal alumnus to ascend into direct political influence. During the Trump administration, he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a name shared with his cryptocurrency venture—before stepping down in May after clashing publicly with the President.
Max Levchin: computer scientist
Max Levchin. John Lamparski/Getty Images - Position at PayPal: co-founder, chief technology officer from 1998 to 2002
- Companies later founded: Affirm
- Net worth: $1.8 billion
As PayPal’s chief technology officer, Max Levchin helped lead the company’s anti-fraud efforts by co-creating the Gausebeck-Levchin test—the foundation for the widely used CAPTCHA security tool. After leaving PayPal, he launched the media-sharing platform Slide in 2004, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Levchin briefly served as Google’s vice president of engineering until Slide was shut down the following year.
In 2012, he co-founded Affirm, a leading “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) company, where he continues to serve as CEO. Today, Affirm has a market capitalization of $27.5 billion, with 21.9 million consumers and more than 350,000 merchant partners on its platform.
Levchin has also held board positions at Yahoo and Yelp. In 2015, he became the first Silicon Valley executive appointed to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s advisory board, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between companies and regulators.
Reid Hoffman: entrepreneur, investor
Reid Hoffman. Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED - Position at PayPal: chief operating officer
- Companies later founded: LinkedIn, Greylock Partners
- Net worth: $2.5 billion
Before joining PayPal, Hoffman worked as a senior user experience architect at Apple, contributing to the company’s online social network eWorld. He later became director of product management at Fujitsu. After his online dating startup, SocialNet, folded, Hoffman joined PayPal in 2000 as chief operating officer.
In 2003, he co-founded the career networking site LinkedIn. Following Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2017, Hoffman joined Microsoft’s board, a move that greatly increased his wealth.
Over the years, Hoffman has served on the boards of Airbnb and OpenAI, where he was also an early investor. Through the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, he has backed dozens of A.I. startups. In 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman, who now serves as CEO. Earlier this year, he teamed up with cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee to launch Manas AI, a startup focused on drug discovery.
David Sacks: investor, White House A.I. and Crypto Czar
David Sacks currently serves as the White House A.I. and Crypto Czar. JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images - Position at PayPal: chief operating officer from 1999 to 2002
- Companies later founded: Craft Ventures
- Net worth: $200 million
Since leaving PayPal, David Sacks has built a career spanning film, tech, investing and politics. In 2005, he produced and financed a political satire that earned two Golden Globe nominations. The following year, he founded Geni.com, a genealogy-focused social network that later spun off Yammer, one of the earliest enterprise social networking platforms. He went on to co-found Craft Ventures, the startup Glue, and the podcast platform Callin.
Today, Sacks serves as the White House’s Special Advisor for A.I. and Crypto, a role created by the Trump administration to guide policy on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.
Jeremy Stoppelman: engineer, Yelp CEO
- Position at PayPal: vice president of engineering
- Companies later founded: Yelp
- Net worth: $100 million
Jeremy Stoppelman joined Musk’s X.com in 1999 and became vice president of engineering after its transition to PayPal. In 2004, he co-founded Yelp, where he has served as CEO ever since. Under his leadership, the company turned down a 2010 acquisition offer from Google and went public two years later. Stoppelman’s net worth is estimated at more than $100 million.
Ken Howery: investor, U.S. ambassador
- Position at PayPal: chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002
- Companies later founded: Founders Fund
- Net worth: estimated $1.5 billion
Ken Howery served as PayPal’s chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002. After PayPal’s sale to eBay, he became eBay’s director of corporate development until 2003. He later joined Peter Thiel at Clarium Capital as vice president of private equity and went on to co-found Founders Fund as a partner. Beyond investing, he is a member of the Explorers Club, a nonprofit dedicated to scientific exploration, and an advisor to Kiva, the micro-lending nonprofit founded by former PayPal colleague Premal Shah.
Howery is also among the former PayPal executives who have moved into politics. He has donated at least $1 million to Donald Trump’s campaign through Elon Musk’s political action committee. During Trump’s first term, Howery was appointed U.S. ambassador to Sweden and today serves as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark.
Roeloth Botha: venture capitalist
Roelof Botha joined PayPal as director of corporate development shortly before graduating from Stanford University. He later became vice president of finance and went on to serve as chief financial officer until the company’s acquisition by eBay.
After leaving PayPal, Botha joined Sequoia Capital, where he oversaw investments in YouTube and Instagram. He currently sits on the boards of MongoDB, Evernote, Bird, Natera, Square, Unity and Xoom.
Russel Simmons: entrepreneur
- Position at PayPal: software architect from 1998 to 2003
- Companies later founded: Yelp, Learnirvana
Russel Simmons helped design PayPal’s payment system as a software architect. After leaving the company, he and fellow PayPal alum Jeremy Stoppelman set out to build a platform for restaurant reviews. With a $1 million investment from Max Levchin, they launched Yelp in July 2004. Simmons served as chief technology officer until his departure in 2010. At the time, Yelp said he would remain a “significant” shareholder, though the size of his stake—and whether he still holds it—remains unclear.
In 2014, Simmons co-founded Learnirvana, an online learning platform.
Andrew McCormack: entrepreneur
- Position at PayPal: assistant to Thiel from July 2001 to November 2002
- Companies later founded: Valar Ventures
Andrew McCormack began his career as an assistant to Peter Thiel at PayPal and followed him into subsequent ventures. From November 2002 to April 2003, he oversaw operations at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital.
In 2010, McCormack co-founded Valar Ventures with Thiel and James Fitzgerald, focusing on fintech investments. He remains a general partner at the firm.
Luke Nosek: investor
- Position at PayPal: co-founder and vice president of marketing and strategy from 1998 to 2002
- Companies later founded: Founders Fund, Gigafund
In 2005, Luke Nosek joined Peter Thiel and Ken Howery to launch Founders Fund, a San Francisco–based venture capital firm that has backed companies such as Airbnb, Lyft and SpaceX. While his exact net worth is unclear, Nosek has made substantial investments through his venture firms. At Founders Fund, he led one of the firm’s earliest major deals with a $20 million investment in SpaceX, later serving on its board.
In 2017, Nosek left to co-found Gigafund, which went on to invest $1 billion in SpaceX, according to the company. He also sits on the board of ResearchGate.
Premal Shah: entrepreneur
- Position at Paypal: product manager
- Companies later founded: Kiva
Three years after leaving PayPal, Premal Shah co-founded Kiva, a nonprofit that provides loans to entrepreneurs in underserved communities worldwide. He also serves on the boards of other nonprofits, including the Center for Humane Technology, the Change.org Foundation, Watsi and VolunteerMatch.
Keith Rabois: investor
- Position at PayPal: executive vice president of business development
After leaving his executive role at PayPal, Keith Rabois became an active investor, backing companies including Slide, YouTube and Palantir. He also invested in LinkedIn, where he served as vice president of business and corporate development, and Square, where he was chief operating officer.
Rabois joined venture capital firm Khosla Ventures from 2013 to 2019 and was a partner at Founders Fund from 2019 to 2024.
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Irza Waraich
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Elon Musk’s Neuralink plans a brain speech trial in October
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Neuralink plans to begin another US clinical trial in October, using the implant to translate thoughts into text. The study will be held through an FDA investigational device exemption. “If you’re imagining saying something, we would be able to pick that up,” Neuralink president DJ Seo said this week.
The idea is to help people with speech impairments communicate through thought. Neuralink is among the companies testing implants that help patients control a computer with their minds. That can include using virtual keyboards. Translating thought directly from the patient’s speech cortex could speed things up by cutting the middleman.
The company already has five other clinical trials underway. The first was in the US. It has since added studies in Canada, the UK and the United Arab Emirates.
Neuralink / Chey Institute for Advanced Studies / YouTubeNeuralink’s plans for people with severe impairments sound like utopian sci-fi. Regardless of anything else, success in this field could be beyond life-changing for them. Still, this is a commercial company in which Elon Musk owns a majority share. Neuralink’s long-term plans are where it’s hard not to worry a little.
“We’re currently envisioning a world where in about three to four years, there will be someone who’s otherwise healthy who’s going to get a Neuralink,” Seo said. The company president hinted at what that might look like. “We think that it’s actually possible to demonstrate abilities to speak to the latest AI model, or LLM models, at the speed of thought, even faster than how you’re speaking, and being able to potentially get that information back through your AirPods, effectively closing the loop,” he said.
Our world today has revealed where things can go wrong when we turn too much of our humanity over to technology. You can start with smartphone addiction and social media algorithms and quickly move on to (alleged) AI-enabled suicide. Consumer brain implants can conjure the darkest images painted by our great sci-fi works. Think Neuromancer, Star Trek’s Borg or Cyberpunk 2077‘s cyberware.
Add what we know about Musk’s ideas about politics, and it’s hard not to be at least a little cynical. Is it too much to hope that the technology will advance enough to help those in need, but not so much that it devours humanity?
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Will Shanklin
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Neuralink’s Bid to Trademark ‘Telepathy’ and ‘Telekinesis’ Faces Legal Issues
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The United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Neuralink’s attempt to trademark the product names Telepathy and Telekinesis, citing pending applications by another person for the same trademarks.
Neuralink, the brain implant company cofounded by Elon Musk, filed to trademark the names in March. But in letters sent to Neuralink in August, the trademark office is refusing to allow the applications to move forward. It says Wesley Berry, a computer scientist and a cofounder of the tech startup Prophetic, previously filed trademark applications for Telepathy in May 2023 and Telekinesis in August 2024. Prophetic is building a wearable headset to induce lucid dreaming, but only Berry is the author of the trademark applications, not Prophetic. (Berry declined to comment for this story.)
In response to Neuralink’s application for Telepathy, the trademark office also references the existing trademark for Telepathy Labs, a Tampa-based company that provides interactive voice and chatbot technology to businesses.
Musk’s Neuralink, meanwhile, is developing a brain-computer interface that involves a device, surgically implanted in the skull, that collects brain activity. The company has been using the name Telepathy to describe its first product, which is designed to allow paralyzed people the ability to operate their phones and computers with just their thoughts. Musk unveiled the Telepathy name in a January 2024 social media post, shortly after the company implanted its first volunteer with the technology. A total of nine people now have the Neuralink device, according to a July announcement. (Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment.)
Both Berry and Neuralink filed “intent-to-use” applications, which allow businesses and inventors to reserve trademark rights before using the mark in commerce. Berry’s application for Telepathy was accepted in December 2024 and for Telekinesis in August 2025 but the trademarks aren’t fully registered until he shows that he’s actually using them in commerce. Berry has three years to do that from acceptance, otherwise his applications would be considered abandoned and Neuralink’s application would take priority.
Berry has not marketed nor commercialized a product called Telepathy or Telekinesis, but in his trademark applications describes both as “software that analyzes EEG to decode internal dialogue to control computer or mobile devices.” EEG, or electroencephalogram, data refers to the electrical activity of the brain recorded through electrodes worn on the scalp.
The trademark office’s letters to Neuralink are not final decisions. Neuralink filed a response letter on August 28 addressing the existing Telepathy Labs trademark, saying that Neuralink’s Telepathy product is not likely to be confused with Telepathy Labs. Neuralink did not address Berry’s applications in its response.
“The standard for likelihood of confusion is, if a random consumer encountered both of these products, would they think that they’re coming from the same company?” says Heather Antoine, an intellectual property partner at Stoel Rives in Sacramento, California.
The trademark office will consider Neuralink’s response and decide if there is a likelihood of confusion. But there’s still the fact that Berry filed to register the Telepathy and Telekinesis marks first. If Berry succeeds in registering the marks, Neuralink would have a few options. It could attempt to buy the trademarks from Berry or negotiate a consent agreement, in which Berry could agree to allow Neuralink to also use the marks. These types of agreements are usually made when the trademarks are not likely to cause consumer confusion.
If Berry is successful in registering Telepathy, Neuralink could be sued if the company continues to use it.
Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney and founder of Gerben IP in Washington, DC, says it’s difficult to know how things will shake out because there’s a lot of nuance to a trademark claim. “Certainly at the moment, though, advantage goes to this other applicant,” he says, referring to Berry. “He could become a considerable thorn in the side of Neuralink in terms of these trademarks.”
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Emily Mullin
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Elon Musk Could Have US Citizenship Revoked If He Lied on Immigration Forms
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These questions, says immigration lawyer Ira Kurzban, are asked to see whether an applicant obtained their residence validly, a prerequisite for citizenship. US immigration authorities have, he says, become “very exacting” on this point over the past 10 years.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Service didn’t respond to an inquiry about whether forms used by its predecessor agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, asked exactly these questions at the time Musk would have been using them, but experts say he would have been asked substantively similar questions, as the relevant law hasn’t changed.
“Those grounds of deportability have been around for decades,” says Yale-Loehr, “and the forms back then probably had similar or identical questions.”
An immigrant who makes misrepresentations as part of the naturalization process can also face criminal exposure: Under US federal law, making a false statement to or concealing a material fact from the government carries a potential penalty of five years in prison.
Greg Siskind, a leading immigration attorney, doesn’t disagree that the law as written could expose someone who lied about working without authorization to loss of citizenship, but says that as a practical matter, it may not amount to a material fact.
“If he had disclosed it, would that have prevented him from getting later immigration benefits?” he asks. “The answer to that is probably no.”
Siskind nonetheless believes that there are serious questions here about, among other things, the nature of the professional relationship between the Musk brothers. And Musk’s past is highly relevant to the clearances he reportedly holds as a top government contractor with an extensive portfolio of holdings related to national security.
Even if Musk were found to have violated the law, he would not be summarily deported. “It’s generally quite difficult to revoke someone’s citizenship for relatively minor status violations which occurred decades earlier,” says Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, who adds that this is “a good thing given how easy it can be to violate arcane immigration rules.”
Under Trump, though, several experts pointed out, the government did far more to denaturalize citizens than it had previously. As Frost wrote in 2019, in the first year and a half of the Trump administration, USCIS opened an office dedicated to denaturalization, investigated thousands of citizens, and reported 95 to the Department of Justice with a recommendation for deportation. (From 1990 to 2017, there was an average of just 11 denaturalization cases per year.)
Even if USCIS had solid evidence that Musk had broken the law, it would, experts say, not handle the matter administratively, but rather could refer it to a US attorney’s office. Prosecutors, who have broad discretion to take up or decline cases, could then proceed, or not, as they saw fit.
Many of the open questions here could be cleared up by Musk authorizing the release of his immigration records under the Freedom of Information Act. His lawyer, Spiro, did not respond to a question asking whether he would do so.
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Tim Marchman
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Elon Musk’s Neuralink Has Implanted Its Brain Chip in a Second Human Patient
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Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company has implanted a brain device into a second patient. Fakurian Design/Unsplash Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface startup Neuralink implanted a brain chip, around the size of a quarter, into a human patient for the first time. The company has since completed a second human brain implant and plans to perform eight more such procedures on trial participants by the end of 2024, Musk said in a podcast interview with Lex Fridman that aired on Aug. 2.
“We’re hoping to do ten by the end of this year,” Musk told Fridman. “It’s obviously going to get better with each one,” he added. Neuralink’s primary products are its N1 brain-computer interface (BCI) and a robot surgeon designed to insert the chip. The implants offer independence to those with neurological damage by enabling them to control computer cursors with their thoughts and, therefore, connect to the digital world without moving. Each chip contains over 1,000 electrodes across 64 threads, transmitting neural signals once embedded into the brain’s motor cortex.
The first recipient of a Neuralink implant was Noland Arbaugh, a 30-year-old who was left paralyzed after suffering a spinal cord injury in 2016 and received the BCI in a procedure in January. The embedded chip has allowed Arbaugh, also interviewed by Fridman during the Aug. 2 episode, to play a host of video games by himself. “Just having the freedom to do things on my own, at any hour of the day or night, it means the world to me,” said Arbaugh.
Around a month after the procedure, however, Arbaugh began to lose some of the capabilities enabled by his Neuralink implant as many of its threads came loose from his brain. Neuralink subsequently restored the chip’s functionalities through software tweaks. Even with only 10 to 15 percent of his N1 electrodes working, Arbaugh has been able to beat his former world record for speed and accuracy in controlling a cursor with a BCI, said Musk.
Neuralink’s second patient, whose name and identity have not been made public, currently has around 400 electrodes functioning in their brain, Musk said. “I don’t want to jinx it, but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant. There’s a lot of signals, a lot of electrodes.” Neuralink received permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct this second procedure in May. But the company didn’t reveal when the procedure was performed.
As Neuralink continues its clinical trials, it expects N1 to showcase “gigantic” improvements over the years, according to Musk, who noted that electrode numbers will increase and signal processing will improve. “We feel pretty confident that within the next year or two, someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer because the reaction time will be faster,” he told Fridman.
Giving patients ‘superpowers’
Established by Musk in 2017, Neuralink’s primary goal for the time being is to aid paralyzed individuals. “The first order of business is solving fundamental neuron damage in the spinal cord, neck or in the brain itself,” said Musk. In addition to improving the communication of patients, the Neuralink founder said his startup might as well also alter their communication data rate to exceed that of the ordinary human. “While we’re in there, why not? Let’s give people superpowers,” he said.
The company’s ultimate long-term goal, however, is to “improve the A.I.-human symbiosis,” he told Fridman. Refining the bandwidth of communication for humans will be essential in a world dominated by A.I., where the technology “is simply going to get bored waiting for you to spit out a few words,” he said. But before Neuralink tackles those ambitious aspirations and embeds its chips for non-medical purposes, it needs to lessen N1’s current level of risk and see its brain chips used successfully by thousands of patients. “Perhaps at that point, you could consider saying, ‘Okay, let’s aim for augmentation,’” said Musk.
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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
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Neuralink successfully implants its chip into a second patient’s brain
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Neuralink’s brain chip has been implanted into a second patient as part of early human trials, Elon Musk told podcast host Lex Fridman on Saturday. The company hasn’t disclosed when the surgery took place or the name of the recipient, according to Reuters.
Musk said 400 of the electrodes on the second patient’s brain are working out of 1,024 implanted. “I don’t want to jinx it but it seems to have gone extremely well,” he said. “There’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It’s working very well.”
The device allows patients with spinal cord injuries to play video games, use the internet and control electronic devices using their thoughts alone. In May, the company announced that it was “accepting applications for the second participant” in trials following FDA approval.
The original Neuralink implant patient, Nolan Arbaugh, described the surgery as “super easy.” In a demo, the company showed how Arbaugh was able to move a cursor around the screen of a laptop, pause an on-screen music device and play chess and Civilization VI.
Arbaugh himself participated in the marathon podcast with Musk and Fridman. He said that the device allows him to make anything happen on a computer screen just by thinking it, helping reduce his reliance on caregivers.
However, problems cropped up shortly after his surgery when some of electrodes retracted from his brain. The issue was partly rectified later on by modifying the algorithm to make the implants more sensitive. Neuralink told the FDA that in a second procedure, it would place the implant’s threads deeper into the patient’s brain to prevent them from moving as much as they did in Arbaugh’s case.
Neuralink previously tested its implant in animals, including chimps, and some of those testing practices have been the subject of federal investigations.
Despite those issues, the company said it had over 1,000 volunteers for its second surgical trial. Musk said he expects Neuralink to implant its chips in up to eight more patients by the end of 2024.
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Steve Dent
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Elon Musk’s Neuralink Is Ready to Implant a Second Volunteer
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A second person will soon receive Neuralink’s experimental brain implant, according to Elon Musk, the company’s cofounder.
In a video update on Wednesday, Musk said the surgery is planned to take place in “the next week or so.” The company is making changes to the surgical procedure and placement of the device to avoid problems that arose with its first participant, whose implant partially detached from the brain a few weeks after surgery.
Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, which uses a person’s brain signals to control an external device. Its first product, dubbed Telepathy, aims to help paralyzed people operate a computer using just their thoughts. Musk has said Neuralink is working on a second product, called Blindsight, to provide artificial vision to people who are blind.
“A way to think about the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch with tiny wires or electrodes,” Musk said in the video, which was livestreamed on his social media platform, X. In the short term, the Neuralink device is meant to help people with disabilities, but Musk said his long-term goal is to use BCI technology “to mitigate the civilizational risk of AI by having a closer symbiosis between human intelligence and digital intelligence.”
For now, the company is running an early feasibility study to evaluate the safety and functionality of its device in people with paralysis. As part of the study, Noland Arbaugh became the first person to get Neuralink’s brain implant in January. Arbaugh is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a swimming accident that occurred in 2016.
Neuralink’s coin-sized implant sits in the skull and has 64 flexible wire threads thinner than a human hair that extend into the brain tissue. Each thread contains 16 electrodes that collect intended movement signals from neurons.
At first, the device was functioning as it should. Arbaugh was able to use a cursor just by thinking about it, allowing him to play video games, email friends, and browse the Internet. But a few weeks after the surgery, the implant started to malfunction and Arbaugh lost control of the cursor.
In a May blog post on its website, Neuralink said a number of threads had retracted from Arbaugh’s brain, resulting in a net decrease in the number of effective electrodes. In response, Neuralink modified its neural recording algorithm to be more sensitive and improved how it translates neural signals into cursor movements.
Arbaugh is back to using a computer with his brain, although just 15 percent of the implant’s threads are still working, according to Neuralink executives. In an interview with WIRED, Arbaugh said the device has given him back a sense of independence.
Still, Neuralink is trying to avoid the same issues with its second study participant. “We really want to make sure that we make as much progress as possible between each Neuralink patient,” Musk said Wednesday.
During the video update, company executives acknowledged that air was trapped inside Arbaugh’s skull after surgery, which could have contributed to the threads coming out. Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s head of neurosurgery, said the company is taking steps to eliminate this air pocket in its second volunteer. It also plans to insert the threads deeper into the brain tissue and track the movement of those threads.
“You may think the most obvious mitigation for threads that pulled out of the brain is to insert them deeper. We think so too, and so we’re going to broaden the range of depths at which we insert threads,” MacDougall said.
In addition, the company’s surgeons plan to “sculpt the surface of the skull” to minimize the gap under the implant so that it sits flush with the normal contour of the skull. This, MacDougall said, should “minimize the gap under the implant” and “put it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the tension on the threads.”
Musk said he hopes to implant Neuralink’s device in the “high single digits” of study participants this year. (A listing by Neuralink on ClinicalTrials.gov says the company plans to enroll three participants in its current study.)
He added that Neuralink is working on a next-generation implant that has 128 threads, each with eight electrodes per thread, a change that he says will “potentially double the bandwidth if we are accurate with the placement of the threads.” Musk didn’t provide a timeline on when that device will be ready to test in people.
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Emily Mullin
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Neuralink: The Latest Invention from Elon Musk – 247 News Around The World
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Take a moment to think about concepts that would have been considered nothing more than fiction only a handful of decades ago. Many gadgets that we now take for granted will easily come to mind. Examples include smartphones, wireless Internet access, and artificial intelligence. It seems as if technology will soon take yet another step forward thanks to an upcoming system known as Neuralink. What exactly does Neuralink entail? What are its intended purposes? Why might this technology transform life as we know it? Let’s take a look.
What Exactly is Neuralink?
Neuralink is the “brainchild” of entrepreneur Elon Musk. Without becoming overly technical in nature, this system is referred to as a brain-computer interface. It consists of a device that can be transplanted directly into the brain. This unit can then interpret and augment electrical signals generated by neurons. The primary intention is to pair a Neuralink implant with devices that offer an increased range of mobility. Here are some medical conditions that could ultimately benefit from this approach in the near future:
- Quadriplegics
- Individuals who may have suffered from paralysis due to spinal trauma
- Children who happen to be born with genetic defects
Although Neuralink is still in its developmental stages, the advantages become immediately clear.
Additional Applications
There is little doubt that the entire medical community could be revolutionised by the presence of such technology. Still, practical implementation may be some years off. The good news is that Neuralink has already demonstrated itself from a proof-of-concept standpoint.
One individual who was implanted with a Neuralink chip has demonstrated that it is possible to control the basic commands found within common game technology. We are referring to a round of chess in this sense. Might it be possible to control MMORPG characters, to spin virtual roulette wheels, or to navigate through cyberspace with thoughts alone in the coming years? Only time will truly tell.
What Hurdles Still Need to be Overcome
It is easy to appreciate why Neuralink has received a great deal of attention in recent times. Not only has Elon Musk made it a point to promote this unique system, but many industries are likely examining the potential applications. There are nonetheless some pragmatic issues to take into account.
For example, the Neuralink system contains a series of extremely fine wires that will be connected to various portions of the brain. This has raised concerns with the FDA and similar organisations in terms of safety issues as well as the permanent nature of the wires themselves. There is also the very real question of human trials and the possible risks involved.
Regardless of the hurdles that Neuralink and similar systems may need to negotiate, it is clear that this cutting-edge technology is here to stay. We are now left to imagine what the next few decades might have in store. The future is indeed looking bright.
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247 News Around The World
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Elon Musk’s Neuralink Had a Brain Implant Setback. It May Come Down to Design
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Rather than building a device from the ground up, Synchron and Paradromics have taken inspiration from previous medical devices. Paradromics’ design, for instance, is based on the Utah array but makes some key improvements. It’s wireless, for one, and it has 421 electrodes on the end of tiny wires that sit in the brain tissue. Those wires are all much smaller than the shanks of the Utah array, Angle says.
Synchron’s device, meanwhile, is a hollow mesh tube that resembles a heart stent. Instead of going into the brain directly, it’s inserted into the jugular vein at the base of the neck and pushed up against the cortex. Synchron has implanted 10 participants with its device so far, with one surpassing three years with it. (Arbaugh’s implant is still working after 100 days). Banerjee says the company has not seen a decline in signal quality or performance yet.
Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh who builds brain-computer interfaces, also speculates that Neuralink’s design may have caused the implanted threads to push out of the brain.
The brain’s outermost layer of the brain, the dura, needs to be opened in order to place the device. “With multiple wires being inserted individually into the cortex, it may be difficult to suture the dura closed after implanting the wires,” he says. Leaving this opening could have caused scar tissue to form around the opening, leading the threads to withdraw. The Utah array, Schwartz says, is designed so that the dura can be sutured closed after implantation.
Despite Neuralink’s setback, the company still managed to live stream a demonstration of its device on March 20, showing Arbaugh using the implant to play chess just by thinking about it. Arbaugh has also used the device to play the video game Mario Kart. “I just can’t even describe how cool it is to be able to do this,” he said in the video.
In the blog post, Neuralink says it compensated for the lost threads by modifying the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural signals. It also says it improved how it translated those signals into cursor movements and enhanced its user interface, and that these changes were able to boost the performance of the device.
For moving a cursor, Angle says having more electrodes doesn’t matter all that much. But for more complex tasks, such as turning text to speech, a higher data rate will be important.
Prior to getting the implant, Arbaugh used a mouth-held stylus, known as a mouth stick, to operate a tablet that had to be put in place by a caregiver. A mouth stick can only be used in an upright position, and it prevents normal speech. When it’s used for long periods of time, it can cause discomfort, muscle fatigue, and pressure sores.
For Arbaugh, Neuralink’s device is “luxury overload,” according to the company’s blog post. He’s still using the implant, which has allowed him to “reconnect with the world” and do things on his own again without needing his family at all hours of the day and night.
“It’s good that the patient can still use the device and he’s still happy with it. At the end of the day, that’s a win,” Angle says. “But from our perspective, companies that are building brain computer interfaces need to be building devices that will be robust and reliable over a multi-year timeframe.”
There are likely to be setbacks on the road toward commercializing brain-computer interfaces, and with Neuralink taking a unique approach with its device, the company could be in for more bumps along the way.
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Emily Mullin
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Elon Musk Believes ‘Super Intelligence’ Is Inevitable and Could End Humanity
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Elon Musk urges A.I. leaders to “steer in the most positive direction possible.” STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images Elon Musk believes that, at the current pace of advancement, A.I. will likely surpass human intelligence by 2030 and there’s a real chance of the technology ending humanity. But that doesn’t mean the future is all bleak. Speaking at a Silicon Valley event last week (March 19), the Tesla and SpaceX CEO warned that A.I. is “happening fast” and that “we want to try to steer [A.I.] in the most positive direction possible to increase the probability of a great future.”
Musk spoke during a fireside chat with Peter Diamandis at the Abundance 360 Summit, hosted by Singularity University, a Silicon Valley institution that counsels business leaders on bleeding-edge technologies. Diamandis is the founder of both Singularity University and XPRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit hosting science competitions, some of which are sponsored by Musk.
“It’s called singularity for a reason,” Musk said in reference to the host of the event. “When you have the advent of super intelligence, it’s very difficult to predict what will happen next—there’s some chance it will end humanity.” Musk added that he agreed with “A.I. godfather” Geoffrey Hinton in that there’s a 10 to 20 percent probability of such an event taking place.
While acknowledging the risks of A.I. surpassing human intelligence, Musk also highlighted the potential for a positive outcome outweighing the negative, pointing to the title of Diamandis’ 2014 book, “Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think,“ as a desirable result. The book portrays a future where A.I. and robotics will drastically drive down the cost of goods and services, thus benefiting human society. Musk also brought up the Culture series by Scottish sci-fi author Iain M. Banks as the best possible scenario of a semi-utopian A.I. future.
Musk used an analogy of raising a child as a means for developing A.I. and artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.) to create a positive impact on humankind going forward. He stressed the importance of fostering a truthful and ethical approach to A.I. development, drawing parallels to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“I think that’s incredibly important for A.I. safety is to have a maximum sort of truth-seeking and curious A.I.,” Musk said, adding that he believed achieving ultimate A.I. safety hinged on never forcing A.I. to lie even when confronted by an unpleasant truth.
A main plot point in 2001: A Space Odyssey was the A.I. being forced to lie, causing it to kill the crew of the spaceship. “So the lesson there is don’t force an A.I. to lie or do things that are axiomatically incompatible, but to do two things that are actually mutually possible,” the SpaceX CEO explained.
However, Musk pointed to various constraints that could slow the expansion of A.I., including the tight supply of A.I. chips seen last year and the growing demand for voltage step down transformers, needed to convert high-voltage power to a lower voltage required for devices in homes and businesses. “That is literally the issue this year,” he said.
The discussion at one point touched on the concept of merging the neocortex of the human mind with the cloud. While Musk described the goal of uploading a person’s consciousness and memories to the cloud as a ways off, he touted his brain-computer interface startup Neuralink and its first human patient. A live demo with the patient, who is quadriplegic, was recently carried out in an FDA-approved trial. After receiving a brain implant, the patient was able to control the screen, play video games, download software or do anything else that’s possible when using a mouse just by thinking about it.” It’s going quite well. The first patient is actually able to control their computer just by thinking,” Musk said.
Musk said the expansion of A.I. may remove the restraints for creating a “whole brain interface,” but Neuralink is working toward that goal in the meantime.
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Refugio Garcia
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Elon Musk Says Neuralink’s First Patient Can Move a Computer Mouse With Their Thoughts
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The first human implanted with a Neuralink brain chip can control a computer mouse with their thoughts, Elon Musk claimed in an X Spaces event Monday. The anonymous patient has recovered fully, according to Musk, after having a Neuralink chip implanted into their brain just a few weeks ago.
“Progress is good, patient seems to have made a full recovery … and is able to control the mouse, move the mouse around the screen just by thinking,” said Musk in a conversation on X Monday night.
Neuralink is working with the patient to get as many “button presses” as possible, purely by thinking, according to Musk. These include the patient moving a mouse around, clicking, and dragging a cursor solely with their brain. There is no evidence for these claims besides what Musk is announcing in brief snippets on X, so these claims should be taken with a grain of salt. However, if true, Neuralink’s advancements would be a major step forward for technology.
In late January, Musk announced that the first human patient had received a Nueralink implant via a tweet on X. The experimental surgery installs a microchip into the top layer of a person’s skull. Musk revealed little else about the identity of the initial patient.
Neuralink’s first product is called “Telepathy,” according to Musk, and it’s specifically designed for people who have lost the use of their limbs. The cursor movement described by Musk appears to be the very first progress on Neuralink’s Telepathy.
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer,” said Musk in a tweet. “That is the goal.”
Musk was criticized last week by The Hastings Center for his limited “two-sentence report” on a human test subject. Researchers noted that novel human research should not occur behind closed doors, and suggested Neuralink has failed to meet basic ethical standards.
“Opening up the brain of a living human being to insert a device, particularly someone with serious medical problems, deserves more than a two-sentence report on what is, in effect, a proprietary social media platform not distinguished for its reliability where facts are concerned,” the Center said.
The Hastings Center noted that Neuralink has not publicly shared what it plans to do if things go wrong, nor has the company shared the findings of its animal research that justified this experiment in the first place.
Despite the novelty of this human experiment from Musk and Neuralink, we still don’t know much. The company continues to only share bits of information through Musk’s X account, which is highly unusual for the scientific community but is par for the course from Musk.
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Maxwell Zeff
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Everything We Know About Elon Musk’s Drug Use
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Elon Musk has once again found himself in hot water after The Wall Street Journal confirmed that the CEO often uses illegal drugs, including cocaine, LSD, magic mushrooms, ecstasy, and ketamine. Here is everything The Onion currently knows about the controversial billionaire’s recreational drug use.
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Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Elon Musk?
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What is Elon Musk’s net worth?
It’s gotta be north of $100 by now.
How did Musk make his fortune?
Technological innovation, savvy investing, and apartheid.
How many children does he have?
That depends on the outcome of several lawsuits.
Why did Elon Musk start Neuralink?
To revolutionize the way we kill monkeys.
What inventor did Elon Musk name his car company after?
Nikola Buick.
What is Elon Musk’s vision for the future?
Musk is well known for his radical idea of a future where everything is about the same and he’s a little richer.
How many times has he had sex?
Twelve and a half.
How tall is Elon Musk?
$254 billion.
What properties does Elon Musk own?
Musk is best known for his ownership of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, and Grimes.
Why did he and Grimes split up?
Incompatible operating systems.
What was Elon Musk’s father’s occupation?
Gem collector and racism entrepreneur.
At what age did he make his first million?
Negative four.
What is his political orientation?
Socially Rogan, fiscally Romney.
What is his ultimate goal as an inventor?
To save the planet from anyone who disobeys him.
What are some of his pet peeves?
Being Black or Jewish.
How will Elon Musk die?
Operating a flamethrower backwards.
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Reflections on Web Summit: Out of the frying pan, and out of the fire? | TechCrunch
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“What controversy?” said the journalist from a global mainstream television outlet to me at the Web Summit Media Dinner, earlier this month in Lisbon. For all the heat and light, the gnashing of teeth, the tearing of clothes and the clutching of pearls, the big technology conference had seemingly managed to pull itself out of […]
© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Mike Butcher
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What startup founders need to know about AI heading into 2024 | TechCrunch
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Now that the OpenAI leadership saga has died down, startup founders building with AI can get back to work building the future. If that’s you, TechCrunch+ has a pile of notes, opinion pieces and forward-looking stories with your name on them.
Sure, TechCrunch+ is a lot more than AI-related coverage, but we are also going as deep as possible on artificial intelligence because everyone is building with, or on, it. And some cases — as we’ll see shortly — that can be part of the problem.
Here’s a short list of posts for AI founders looking ahead to 2024:
It’s busy out there! Stay up-to-date with us.
You can also keep up with TechCrunch+ on Twitter, and check out all our recent coverage here.
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Alex Wilhelm
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Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, quietly raises an additional $43M | TechCrunch
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Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded company developing implantable chips that can read brain waves, has raised an additional $43 million in venture capital, according to a filing with the SEC.
The filing published this week shows the company increased its previous tranche, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, from $280 million to $323 million in early August. Thirty-two investors participated, according to the filing.
Neuralink hasn’t disclosed its valuation recently. But in June, Reuters reported that the company was valued at about $5 billion after privately-executed stock trades.
Founded in 2016, Neuralink has devised a sewing machine-like device capable of implanting ultra-thin threads inside the brain. The threads attach to a custom-designed chip containing electrodes that can read information from groups of neurons.
Brain-signal-reading implants are a decades-old technology. But Neuralink’s ostensible innovation lies in making the implants wireless and increasing the number of implanted electrodes.
In May, Neuralink received FDA approval for human clinical trials after having its application previously rejected, and opened up its first human trials for recruitment under an investigational device exemption by the FDA.
But Neuralink is under increasing scrutiny for what critics allege are a toxic workplace culture — and unethical research practices.
In a January 2022 article in Fortune, anonymous former employees described a “culture of blame and fear” — one in which Musk would frequently undermine management by encouraging junior employees “to email issues and complaints to him directly.” By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, the result of what a Stat News piece described as “internal conflict in which rushed timelines … clashed with the slow and incremental pace of science.”
In 2022, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) alleged that Neuralink and UC Davis, once its research partner, had mistreated several monkeys involved with testing Neuralink hardware — subjecting them to psychological distress and chronic infections due to surgeries. Reports from both Reuters and Wired suggested testing was being rushed due to Musk’s demands for fast results, which led to complications with the installation of electrodes — including partial paralysis and brain swelling.
For nearly a year, Neuralink was under federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding animal welfare violations. The USDA eventually concluded that there was “no evidence” of animal welfare breaches in the startup’s trials other than a previous, self-reported incident from 2019 — but the PCRM disputed the results of the investigation.
in November 2023, U.S. Lawmakers ask to SEC to investigated Neuralink for omitting details about the deaths of at least a dozen animals who were surgically fitted with its implants.
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Kyle Wiggers
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