Welcome And Podcast Mission

Kevin 0:00

Welcome to our podcast when life gives you lemons.

palmi 0:05

I'm Kevin. And I'm Palmi. We consider ourselves disability advocates and intend to highlight some disability issues and things we find interesting that we frequently encounter when we're out and about. Also, some history on disability that we find interesting. This year we're going to include more of the interviews of the people that the disability affects. We hope you enjoy it. Well, hi everybody, and welcome back to our podcast, When Life Gives You Lemons. I'm Kevin.

Kevin 0:40

And I'm Palmy.

palmi 0:42

And today we're talking about the Neuralink pro program offered by Tesla.

Kevin 0:50

We're just doing an update on it. Uh there was an advancement that Kevin wanted to uh update everybody on, and we're just going to talk about it for a little bit. It's not only that, they're constantly updating their program. I want everybody to make aware though, they post videos on YouTube to update their progress. Where initially they only had two different categories. I think there are ALS patients in SCI patients that are looking for. Now there's a whole lot more. And they were specific um on this YouTube channel um well, they were on the uh year-end update because they that's what they announced who they had coming up for this year. Was his name Kenneth? Was that the name of the patient? That yeah, that guy was named Kenneth. And he had ALS. Yes. And so they were specifically um did an interview with him um where he was losing his ability to speak. Um, and you were curious why they would have chosen an ALS patient because it shortened he had a shortened lifespan. It was a death sentence, basically. You wondered why they even looked at someone.

palmi 2:23

Yeah, because neural link isn't necessarily about curing the problem. Uh I understand how it's about long-term value of life. Well, you thought they'd want long-term um use. Use yeah, see how long it lasts and that type of thing. But it's more they said it was more about the quality of life is what they're looking for for the individuals. Right. And they had a big thing about um I forget what their quote was, improving individuals' lives. Well, I think that's uh basically the uh saying for most of Elon Musk's companies.

Kevin 3:09

Yeah.

palmi 3:10

Yeah, with his like vision of uh colonizing Mars and such. It's not you know, he thinks big, but it's all in pursuit of bettering the quality of human life.

Kevin 3:27

But this is basically for an individual, quality of individual life.

palmi 3:31

Right.

Kevin 3:32

And then he also do he was talking about the uh in improving the the quality of family life based by on the vehicles, right?

palmi 3:40

Right.

Why Start With An ALS Patient

The Neurofiber Drift Problem

From Mouthing Words To Thoughts

Kevin 3:41

Yeah. So let's talk about Kenneth. Um he had ALS, and what was I found significant was that they over the course of time he was losing his ability to speak, but they started this early on and they learned to place the um sensors deeper in the brain to reach the speech center. Um, and so it the sensors they also increased the amount of sensors they put in because the uh the first year the yeah, they only did three people with the uh BCI implants, and they found out at the end of the first year that some of the uh neurofibers, as they call them, had withdrawn a bit from where they put them in. So they were no longer functional for what they had envisioned them for, and they didn't have a real good answer why. You know, it's one of those things that until you see it, you don't know it, and it was basically uh every night your brain this part they knew, but they didn't realize the impact it would have on their equipment. Uh your spinal cerebral fluid is flushed out of your brain, not your head. So the current, if you will, of the uh fluid was tugging on to those neurofibers, and that's what was causing them to uh move or detach. But what I found interesting was that they were learning um from because he could speak originally, so they were learning from his um so he basically was uh speaking from his mind. He didn't have to at when he first started, he would mouth the words that he was saying, and they they learned from his speech pattern, and then they eventually he all he had to do was think in what he wanted to say, and they automatically would know what he was saying. And the other part was it wasn't like the Steve Hawking's um voice, automated voice, it actually was they took um samplings of his voice prior to him losing his ability to speak, and he was actually produ they were actually producing his actual OG voice, and so like his wife said when he said I love you, it was actually from him, his voice from prior before he was um it wasn't that robotic uh voice that Stephen Hawking beats the famous Right, it was more it was an actual human tone voice. So um that was very interesting. That's what I found most interesting from this the clip that we watched.

palmi 6:56

One thing I've learned about uh not only uh link, but basically stuff that Elon Musk is involved in, Lightless Basics stuff and all that stuff, you know. He always goes beyond what you expect.

Kevin 7:17

Right.

palmi 7:18

Um I guess that's just the way he is.

Kevin 7:24

Imagine is much more than what you could imagine.

palmi 7:27

Yeah, he puts a lot of thought into things, whereas like uh one of the my great complaints is that uh wheelchairs are not made by wheelchair users that are designed by people who have no need to sit in them all day or move around them and you know, so some of these things so they're not uh wheelchair engineers are not engineers are not wheelchair users. No, no, no, well somewhere there might be uh a company that has wheelchair users and not the ones you're using. No, not the ones that V buys because they're not comfortable, nope, and they're not user-friendly. No, well, uh for example, it's little things like uh the these nifty little bars that stridily help you uh get up off the ground, but if you leave them on, it's gonna you're gonna really seriously mess up your knees. Because I mean they're solid, solidly attached, they're not forgiving. So yeah, your ligaments are gonna give way before they do. So yeah. Well, it was good thought, it was in practical use. Yeah, I don't use them. Yeah, I think I put them somewhere I don't even recall where, and I haven't messed with them since I found out.

Kevin 9:09

Then they're the neck thing, you take that off.

palmi 9:12

The headdress, yeah, I take that off. Because I I don't use it and uh I tend to like knock things over more with it. How else would you describe it?

Kevin 9:27

Well, it just gets in your way.

palmi 9:28

Yeah. It's just kind of like makes uh makes things behind me more the way I describe it is long. A little bit more long, but and uh for example on this wheelchair. The one I had before, all I had to do is throw up a lever and move my seat forward or back. This one I cannot do on my own. Uh yeah, the back has to be uh disassembled, and there's a lever behind a bunch of wires you have to grab. Basically, somebody else has to do it, so it's like you have to wait for them to disassemble everything, find the lever, pull the lever, and then you can push your seat back forward and say, Okay, this is where I want it. And hope it stays that way while they uh put everything back together again.

Kevin 10:36

Yeah. And then also your camera, the snifty little camera that you have, it works only like a third of the time.

unknown 10:44

Yeah.

Kevin 10:44

We have no idea why.

palmi 10:48

Nor does the uh guy that works on it. He just draws up a sentence, we're the electrons, I guess.

Kevin 10:59

Yeah, we've replaced it several times too.

palmi 11:01

But they do a less talk less about my little chair and talk more about Neuralink.

Kevin 11:07

Yep.

Fast Training After Implant Surgery

palmi 11:08

Okay, the um there are two main competitors right now to Neuralink One Hoop, and they both use brain computer interfaces. They go about them differently than Neuralink does. Neuralink built a uh robotic surgeon that does the operation because they thought, well, you know, let's remove the human element from this and you know decrease that risk factor. So it, you know, for example, they every time before they do this with the DU patient, they re do a 3D bottle of his skull and uh do the operation with the uh on the robot and make sure that it everything is going as they implied it's going. After that point it's calibrany they only just screw it again. I thought that was interesting. I always kind of wondered how they did it for each individual. They've also expanded from the UCF one place in uh when Elon was incorporated in California before he moved to Texas to Lake it was a startup in California, and that's where they had had the one and only clinic. Now he has clinics all over the darn place. Yes, oh several in the US. I don't recall where all of them are. He has one in Dubai, he has one in London, he has one in uh Shanghai, I believe it is. He's trying to obviously make it more of a global system because uh he's gone from like three patients that they did this on initially. He has ten patients lined up for this year to get through the uh bet through the uh cycle, through the operation and into uh you know, training them how to use the ring computer interface and all that stuff. And that was another thing about the video we just watched uh about the uh They're going into um for the eyes, the for the blind. Yeah, no, that wasn't part that surprised me. He was in the hospital for a day and a half after he got the chip implanted in his head. He went home, went to sleep, and the next day is when they started to train him how to use his brain interface. It was a grand total of two days. Because the first one is taught worthy, one didn't end, but he had to go through get to that point before he could make the jump to the next point where he just controlled everything because it was uh it was basically going easy to hard in your brain. Um at first the you know he had to mouth what he would normally say.

Kevin 14:57

Kind of you mean yeah, okay.

palmi 15:00

He didn't have to vocalize it, but he would have to move his mouth to form the words he wanted. So that the computer could learn his the Yeah, that makes his brain move what he's trying to do, and that way they were learning from drawing from his brain what was going on.

Kevin 15:22

His muscles and all that how it was.

palmi 15:24

And so yeah, they came up with a group of synonyms where you know if he you know he could basically map out the alphabet with the synonyms, and uh they went from there and the very next day they went to where they wanted it to be, which is quit mouthing and just think about using the words, and it came off flawlessly.

Kevin 15:53

What were the words he said? I forgot.

palmi 15:55

Uh thinking I'm thinking with my mind.

Kevin 15:58

Yeah. That's I'm thinking with my mind. Five words, yeah.

palmi 16:02

Yeah. And before that he was saying uh uh something like I can talk now, or no, you're saying uh what what does it you usually type uh the rain and speech falls mainly on the plane or something like that? Yeah, just whatever that thing is is what he was saying.

Blindsight And Restoring Vision Goals

Kevin 16:24

To get his brain to pick up what he was saying, yeah. What I found interesting was that now they said that they're gonna start with the they've got a new adaptation for the for the eyes to work with the blind.

palmi 16:37

Yeah, operation plain sight.

Kevin 16:39

Yeah, blind sight, yeah.

palmi 16:41

And uh I heard about this last year in their annual left a I think what it was was they had such success, if you will, working with the uh the first two. I mean they they solved the uh Elon Musk solved the uh bring computer interface problem, and after that it was just you know them waiting for patience and the troubleshooting, you know, and stuff that comes up and teaching them how to use it and stuff.

Kevin 17:21

They said it won't be um like crystal clear or anything, but it'd be more like um gameplay, like what was that game in the 80s? Um doom.

palmi 17:33

Yeah, more pixel first person shooter games.

Kevin 17:37

Yeah, like a more pixelated um view uh visual than crystal clear, but eventually they'll work out all the issues and it'll you know get clearer and clearer the more they work it through.

palmi 17:49

Well, see, the good thing about it is with them uh being able to work the brain computer interface, they could just download updates or AI, use AI to improve the as long as the as long as the hardware doesn't need to be replaced, you know, they're just also updates, yeah.

Kevin 18:11

Improvements as it goes.

palmi 18:13

Yeah, on they can alter things as they go along. Like I'm sure they uh uh found uh a way to synthesize Glenn's voice, actual voice, Ken, yeah, instead of you know that Jair robot voice. Um I'm sure that was something they had to do. Yeah. Instead of what we saw, two guys working on Ken. If you'll I'll bet there was the third guy that was going through Jeeps trying to find samples of his voice.

Kevin 18:56

Oh, I'm sure there's more than that, but yeah, yeah. They said they would take they took uh recordings from pr um like in the tw 10 years before, went before he had any symptoms whatsoever. And so they got an unaltered voice.

palmi 19:11

Oh, school.

Trials Insurance And Who Pays

Kevin 19:12

Yeah. Well, it sure looks like there's a lot of advancements in that area.

palmi 19:17

Well, again, I encourage because it's still in trial. Uh, your insurance, American insurance anyway, it's not gonna pay for it as far as volunteers at this point, so it may not be. As far as other countries, I'm not sure how their insurance even works or what is covered and what is not. What is usually customary in uh in the US when something is under trials uh you don't pay for it at all. Whoever is developing it pays for it.

Kevin 20:01

All right, well, that all sounds great.

Website Fan Mail And Next Tease

palmi 20:05

Well uh okay. We have a little bit of housekeeping to go into this week.

Kevin 20:12

Okay.

palmi 20:13

Um I want to encourage people to visit our website www.when life gives you lovens, owenword.net, and uh like and or subscribe to our podcast. No, it doesn't cost you anything, so but it does help us get our name out there, it helps us both become recognized by our podcast host, and maybe who knows, maybe we'll find a couple sponsors along the way. We'll have to see.

Kevin 20:58

Anything else?

palmi 21:00

Uh there's also an option on there where you can send us fan mail. That's like e text that goes directly to us. We have an app on our phone so it notifies us when we get fan mail. We can read it that way. It's kind of how we're doing kind of like an inter, you know, in stint messaging sort of thing. We get it real time, but if you live outside the US, it may cost you something. I don't know what that charge would be, but it would imagine be it would be similar to what a tax to the US would cost you. If you want to uh avoid any cost at all, just send us an email. That's always free.

Kevin 21:55

Sounds good.

palmi 21:56

And uh if anything we're talking about. Uh sometimes we talk about like an end-of-year contest or etc. and we only accept submissions by fan mail. If you fall in that category of people that can't use fan mail for free, just see your email that you would have used fan mail, but it was gonna cost you.

Kevin 22:24

Well, I've got uh little tease for people to to contact us about on our fan mail. Uh our next um podcast is about something called the Capital Crawl. So if you know anything about that, get on our fan mail and put uh send in an answer. Don't look it up, don't cheat. If you know what that what we're talking about, stay away from Google. If you know about that or have details or you know about that issue, um tell us about it in our fan mail. If not, then stay tuned to our next podcast. We'll talk about the Capitol Crawl.

palmi 23:03

Who knows? Maybe we'll get somebody who's actually at the Capitol Crawl. Ooh. And they also reenact this every March. So we make it like a serial reenactor or something like that.

Kevin 23:19

Uh huh. I look forward to that. Now you're giving them too many hints.

unknown 23:22

Yeah.

Sign Off And Closing Line

Kevin 23:23

All right. We'll say bye for now.

palmi 23:25

I'll shut up.

Kevin 23:27

When life gives you lemons, what do you do, Kev?

palmi 23:29

Make lemonade. Now shut up.

Kevin 23:32

Bye.

unknown 23:32

Bye.