Neuralink reposted this
Imagine you're at dinner tonight and when you speak, your words start slurring. Only, you didn't have anything to drink. You're totally sober. This is what happened to Terry in 2024. He had just made partner at work. His words began slurring at business dinners, and his diagnosis was bulbar-onset ALS. The disease attacks the motor neurons that control speech and swallowing first. The slurring worsens until the voice is entirely gone. Terry is an extrovert who loves to talk, and his wife says that part of his identity is gone. It is a devastating, terminal disease with no cure. There is one glimmer of hope. Thousands of electrodes in Terry's cerebral cortex record neural signals. A machine learning model decodes the words he intends to say, and a voice model built from recordings of him before the illness speaks them aloud. Terry thinks "I love you" and his wife hears it in his voice. 20+ people now have a Link. Between them, they have logged tens of thousands of hours of independent use at home. The decoders are foundation models trained on neural spikes instead of text. Today, this means a voice for someone with ALS, or computer control for someone who can't move their hands. Speech tops out around ~40 bits per second, limited by what the mouth can produce. Intent decoded directly from the brain bypasses that ceiling and we haven't discovered the new limit (yet). Neuralink is hiring machine learning engineers to push the frontier of this technology. You won't find a project with more visceral user stories or life-changing impact than this. https://lnkd.in/gEx_M-9b If you know someone who trains models on neural data, please tag them.
Terry was diagnosed with bulbar-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2024. While he is still able to move his mouth and body, his speech has become impaired to the point where his loved ones have difficulty understanding him. Through the VOICE trial, Terry is using his Neuralink implant to help fine-tune a brain-to-voice interface for himself and others who can’t speak. He trained the algorithm first by miming speech as best he could, then by simply thinking the words and hearing them come out in his own natural voice. If you’re interested in helping shape the future of assistive technology, join us. Careers: https://lnkd.in/dmY7uciD Patient Registry: https://lnkd.in/gJYK-zCW Neuralink devices are investigational and have not been approved by the FDA or other regulatory authorities. This video features voluntary clinical trial participants sharing their personal experiences, which may not reflect all participants or future outcomes.