Altman engages a prominent scientist for his brain-computer interface venture, hints at a far less intrusive method compared to Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
Altman engages a prominent scientist for his brain-computer interface venture, hints at a far less intrusive method compared to Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex Heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech landscape, syndicated solely for The Verge subscribers weekly.
Sam Altman has brought Mikhail Shapiro, a renowned biomolecular engineer, onto the Merge Labs brain-computer interface venture he plans to announce shortly with co-founder Alex Blania.
Although Shapiro’s specific title remains uncertain, sources indicate he will be an integral member of Merge’s founding team and is being positioned as a significant leader in discussions with investors. Those discussions are in progress, but Merge anticipates raising hundreds of millions from OpenAI and other sources, as The Financial Times previously reported.
Shapiro’s recruitment points to the technical direction Altman is pursuing with Merge. His engineering laboratory at Caltech has broken new ground in biomolecular technology, particularly emphasizing noninvasive methods for neural imaging and manipulation. He has especially concentrated on leveraging ultrasound to engage with the human brain without necessitating the type of open-skull surgery employed by Neuralink.
He has also conducted considerable research with gene therapy to render cells detectable by ultrasound, which supports a previous Bloomberg article suggesting that Merge is considering this method for its initial offering. Neither Shapiro nor representatives for Altman and Blania were available for comment.
During a recent presentation, Shapiro discussed the potential for sound waves and magnetic fields to facilitate a brain-computer interface. Instead of implanting electrodes into brain tissue, he mentioned that it’s “simpler to introduce genes into cells” that adjust them to respond to ultrasound. He asserted he has dedicated “my efforts to finding ways to connect with neurons in the brain and cells throughout the body that are less invasive.”
Altman has also recently expressed his disapproval of Neuralink’s invasive methodology. At a press dinner I attended in August, he conveyed he “would certainly not insert anything into my brain” that would destroy neurons in the way Neuralink’s device does. “I would prefer to think a thought and have ChatGPT reply,” he remarked. “Perhaps I’d want just a read-only function. That sounds reasonable.”
When Merge Labs is unveiled in the forthcoming weeks, I anticipate Altman will serve as chairman but will not be involved in daily operations, similar to his involvement with co-founder Blania at their other venture, the eyeball-scanning orb initiative known as Tools for Humanity. “A widely discussed subject in Silicon Valley is predicting when humans and machines will merge (or what year humans will either be overtaken by rapidly advancing AI or a genetically enhanced species),” Altman wrote in 2017. “Most predictions range between 2025 and 2075.”
