Max Hodak, CEO of Science and co-founder of Neuralink, describes the clinical trial outcomes of Science's retinal prosthesis designed to treat blindness from macular degeneration.
Assertion Supported
Hodak: AI internal representations empirically converge with brain representations
“When you look inside these AI models, you see These mathematical objects that look a lot like what you see in the brain in neuroscience. Like, the representations are converging, and this is an empirical finding.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Humanity could meaningfully merge consciousness with machines by 2035, Hodak predicts
“Probably not next year, but I think within the next decade. Wow. It's very possible that this stuff is going to get figured out in a meaningful way. I think like, 2035 will be a very, very different world than 2025.”
Assertion Partly supported
Hodak: Million-dollar blindness gene therapy only marginally slows vision loss for 3%
“There's a gene therapy that's on market that costs almost a million dollars a patient, and it doesn't, first of all, it's only applicable for, like, three percent of patients that have this type of blindness, and it also just doesn't really work. Like, it very…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hodak: Next-gen BCIs could empower stroke patients within five years
“When I think about the next generation BCI technologies that are on the horizon that are getting developed, I think it's very possible that in the next four or five years, there'll be some patients that maybe had a stroke, maybe had Some other injury, who, you…”
Opinion
Hodak: Current AI progress is still not priced in
“I think that the progress that's happening in AI is, is much better known than any of this, but it's still not priced in.”
Insight
Hodak: Neural engineering produces therapeutic effect sizes unseen in conventional medicine
“One of the reasons that I like the neural engineering approach is it produces these very large effect sizes. Like, cochlear implants, really, if you are deaf due to sensorineural hearing loss, they really work. Or if you've ever seen a video of a Parkinson's p…”