◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek July 22, 201924
ROBOT: COURTESY NEURALINK. NERI: JACOB KEPLER/BLOOMBERGElonMuskhashada lottoshowoffoverthepast
25 years, including an early online bank, solar roof
tiles, a tunnel-digging machine, an electric car, a
reusable rocket, and even the occasional electric
car riding a rocket. He may have just topped them
all with the help of a tubby brown-and-white rat.
The rodent belongs to Neuralink Corp., a com-
pany Musk founded to develop a data transmission
system between people and computers. Neuralink
has been supersecretive about the nature of its
work since its founding in 2017, until now. During
its first demonstration in front of a reporter, the
startup showed it can record a rat’s brain activ-
ity via thousands of tiny electrodes surgicallyimplanted alongside the animal’s neurons and
synapses. To do this, Neuralink, based in San
Francisco, appears to have achieved a number of
breakthroughs that let it place high-speed comput-
ing systems inside a brain, while causing less dam-
age than existing techniques.
The company will seek U.S. Food and Drug
Administration approval to start clinical tri-
alsonhumansasearlyasnextyear,according
toPresidentMaxHodak.Thegoalis todrillfour
8-millimeter holes into paralyzed patients’ skulls
and insert implants that will give them the ability
tocontrolcomputersandsmartphonesusingtheir
thoughts.Yes,really.Neuralink,whichhasraised
morethan$150millionfrominvestors,including
atleast$100million from Chief Executive Officer
Musk, is betting that millions of people will eventu-
ally elect to become cybernetically enhanced. “This
is goingtosoundprettyweird,butultimatelywe
willachievesymbiosiswithartificialintelligence,”
Musksaidata pressconferenceonJuly16. “This is
somethingthatI thinkwillbereallyimportanton
a civilization-levelscale.”
Philosophers,sci-fienthusiasts,anddaydreamers
have long imagined what it might be like to turbo-
charge their brainpower or read someone else’sElon Musk Preps
For Brain Surgery
● Neuralink, his implant startup,
just unveiled its tools and
timetable for human trialsTHE BOTTOM LINE Instacart delivery workers say it’s tough to
get the preferable shift times they need—or to hear themselves
think—if they reject jobs that aren’t really worth the pay on offer.has been meeting with labor leaders and politicians
to lobby for a legislative compromise that would
let it avoid reclassifying its workers as employees.
The company says it’s working with lawmakers and
other relevant parties to modernize laws and main-
tain flexibility and choices for workers.
“The way these platforms have been allowed to
develop has allowed the creation of this fiction that
algorithms are distinct from management systems,”
says David Weil, former head of federal wage and
hour enforcement under President Obama. “The
system that Instacart has created bears little resem-
blance to one composed of independent contrac-
tors,” he says, and “in almost every respect looks
like employment.” �Josh Eidelsonsomeone else will.” Ryan Calo, a law professor at
the University of Washington, says such systems are
“designed to be manipulative and coercive.”
“Instacart seems to demand that workers behave
like employees, but they have none of the benefits
of employment,” says Kathleen Ann Griesbach,
a research fellow at Columbia University’s
Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and
Empirics and author of a forthcoming study of app-
based food delivery work.
Since last year, Instacart and its peers have
been lobbying officials for relief from a new threat
to their business model: a ruling by the Supreme
Court of California dictating that workers can’t be
considered contractors under the state’s wage law
unless the work they’re doing is outside of a com-
pany’s usual course of business. Like DoorDash,
Lyft, Postmates, and Uber Technologies, Instacart◀ Neuralink says its
robots can insert wires
one-quarter the width
of a human hair into a
patient’s skull