Elon Musk says his brainchip patients will soon 'outperform a pro gamer', then takes a big old puff and says 'let’s give people superpowers'

Billionaire Elon Musk has said that humans with his company's Neuralink brain chip installed will be nailing 360 noscopes better than the pros within two years. Speaking on an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast (full transcript), Musk went on to make some even wilder claims about the tech: including the idea that Neuralink is going to have to speed up human brains so that AI doesn't get «bored».

Musk says that his idea about the «data rate» of humans came about while he was thinking about AI safety and the possible barriers to a positive human-AI convergence. «The low data rate of humans, especially our slow output rate, would diminish the link between humans and computers,» says Musk, before adding a rather unbelievable coda: «Let’s say you look at this plant or whatever, and hey, I’d really like to make that plant happy, but it’s not saying a lot.»

The human brain is the pinnacle of evolution and a computer that no Silicon Valley firm is even close to outperforming. We barely understand its complexity and capabilities. Comparing it to a plant… not for me. 

Nevertheless Musk insists a major goal is to somehow increase the «output rate» of humans, i.e. how fast our brain is sending signals to the chip, and reckons there's the potential to go «three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude.» Just in case you feel like Musk is pulling these numbers out of thin air, he goes on to agree with Fridman's suggestion that «hundreds of millions» will have Neuralinks within «the next couple of decades».

Some of the stuff Musk is saying sounds to me like psychological torture. «Let's say you can upload your memories, so you wouldn't lose memories,» muses Musk, a scenario that sounds like it would drive you insane. Asked whether this is going to change the human experience, Musk says «yeah we would be something different. Some sort of futuristic cyborg… it's not super far away, but 10-15 years, that kind of thing.»

It's while talking about efficiency that Musk moves onto