Elon Musk isn’t only building an AI company in xAI that can build AI systems that mimic humans, but he also has another company that could help understand what being a human really is.
In a presentation about Neuralink, the brain interface company, Musk delved into one of the most profound and enduring mysteries of science and philosophy: the nature of consciousness. His reflections offer a glimpse into the grander ambitions behind Neuralink, suggesting its ultimate purpose may not just be to solve medical ailments, but to decode the very essence of human experience.
Musk lays out the fundamental enigma of our existence, starting from the dawn of time. “I’ve thought a lot about what consciousness is. Where does it arise?” he questions. “If you start at the beginning of the universe, assuming the standard model of physics is true, you have this Big Bang and matter condensing into stars.”
He continues this cosmic narrative, connecting the vastness of space to our own intimate biology. “Those stars exploded. A lot of the atoms that are in your body right now were once at the center of stars. Those stars exploded and re-condensed,” Musk explains. “Fast forward 13.8 billion years, and here we are. And somewhere along that very long journey, to us at least, consciousness arose, or the molecules started talking to each other.”
”It begs the question of what is consciousness is,” Musk says. “Is everything conscious? Maybe it’s hard to say where along that line that there’s no sort of discrete point where consciousness didn’t exist and then suddenly does exist. The real answer is we don’t know what consciousness is. But with Neuralink and the progress that the company’s making, we’ll begin to understand a lot more about consciousness. And what does it mean “to be”. And then ultimately I think this helps mitigate the civilizational risk of artificial intelligence,” he says.
The stark simplicity of Musk’s observation—”the molecules started talking to each other”—is a profound oversimplification that gets to the heart of the issue. The jump from inanimate matter to subjective awareness is a leap that science has yet to fully explain. For Musk, this is not just a philosophical pondering; it is a problem that he believes technology can help solve. This is where Neuralink enters the picture. The company’s brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, at its core, is a tool designed to listen to and stimulate the “talking molecules” of the brain with unprecedented precision.
And by creating a high-bandwidth interface between the human brain and a computer, Neuralink could provide an unparalleled window into neural activity. This could allow scientists to observe the intricate patterns of firing neurons that correlate with subjective experiences, thoughts, and emotions. While this may not immediately answer the question of what consciousness is, it could provide crucial clues as to where and how it arises. The recent milestone of the first human implant in a patient, who can now control a computer cursor with their thoughts, is a significant, albeit early, step in this direction. As the technology matures, the data gathered from such interfaces could fuel a revolution in our understanding of the brain, potentially moving the mystery of consciousness from the realm of philosophy into the domain of empirical science.