Musk to Gabe Newell — “Sorry for the delay in responding.”
Musk apologizes for a delayed reply, gives Gabe Newell his cell number, agrees to meet Hideo Kojima and have him visit the rocket factory, and says he can pass on his email. He names Max Hodak and Shivon Zilis as Neuralink contacts, describes confidential progress implanting ~6000 electrodes in a monkey brain with compact electronics, and says his OpenAI involvement is limited to financial support and periodic updates from Sam Altman, having lost confidence in OpenAI as a counterweight to Google/Deepmind and pursuing that via Tesla instead.
Sorry for the delay in responding. Sometimes i get a little backlogged on email. My cell is [REDACTED]
Sure, it would be great to meet Hideo Kojima and he's welcome to see the rocket factory. No problem to send him my email.
Best person to talk to at Neuralink is Max Hodak (max@neuralink.com), who is the de facto head of day to day operations. Shivon Zilis is also worth talking to (predictably at shivon@neuralink).
We've made some pretty insane technical progress. This is highly confidential, but we're now able to implant ~6000 electrodes in a monkey brain with decent signal/noise. Moreover, the electronics are compact enough to be flush with the skull and the only thing visible is the USB-C opening and slight surround. Very trippy. Just like Neuromancer.
Regarding OpenAI, my involvement is very limited at this point. I still provide some financial support and get verbal and email updates every few weeks from Sam Altman, but don't spend time there. I lost confidence that OpenAI could muster the resources to serve as an effective counterweight to Google/Deepmind and decided to attempt that through Tesla instead. We have cash flow on the order of billions of dollars per year to build hardware that hopefully has at least a dark horse chance to keep Google honest. Probably worth talking about at some point.
Elon