Latest news with #braincomputerinterfaces
The Verge
2 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
I talked to Sam Altman about the GPT-5 launch fiasco
On Thursday, I had dinner with Sam Altman, a few other OpenAI executives, and a small group of reporters in San Francisco. Altman answered our questions for hours. No topic was off limits, and everything, with the exception of what was said over desert, was on the record. It's uncommon to have such an extended, wide-ranging interview with a major tech CEO over a meal. But there's nothing common about the situation Altman finds himself in. ChatGPT has quickly become one of the most widely used, influential products on earth. Now, Altman is plotting an aggressive expansion into consumer hardware, brain-computer interfaces, and social media. He's interested in buying Chrome if the US government forces Google to sell it. Oh, and he wants to raise trillions of dollars to build data centers. But first, he's focused on the response to last week's rollout of GPT-5. About an hour before the dinner started, OpenAI pushed an update to bring back the 'warmth' of 4o, its previous default model for ChatGPT. It was Altman who made the call to quickly bring back 4o as an option for paying subscribers after some protested its disappearance on Reddit and X. 'I think we totally screwed up some things on the rollout,' he said. 'On the other hand, our API traffic doubled in 48 hours and is growing. We're out of GPUs. ChatGPT has been hitting a new high of users every day. A lot of users really do love the model switcher. I think we've learned a lesson about what it means to upgrade a product for hundreds of millions of people in one day.' He pegged the percentage of ChatGPT users who have unhealthy relationships with the product at 'way under 1 percent,' but acknowledged that OpenAI employees are having 'a lot' of meetings about the topic. 'There are the people who actually felt like they had a relationship with ChatGPT, and those people we've been aware of and thinking about. And then there are hundreds of millions of other people who don't have a parasocial relationship with ChatGPT, but did get very used to the fact that it responded to them in a certain way, and would validate certain things, and would be supportive in certain ways.' 'You will definitely see some companies go make Japanese anime sex bots because they think that they've identified something here that works,' he said in a not-so-subtle dig at Grok. 'You will not see us do that. We will continue to work hard at making a useful app, and we will try to let users use it the way they want, but not so much that people who have really fragile mental states get exploited accidentally.' Altman wants ChatGPT to feel as personal as possible but not necessarily play to a specific ideology or political view. 'I don't think our products should be woke. I don't think they should be whatever the opposite of that is, either. I think our product should have a fairly center of the road, middle stance, and then you should be able to push it pretty far. If you're like, 'I want you to be super woke,' it should be super woke. And if you're like, 'I want you to be conservative,' it should reflect you.' ChatGPT has roughly quadrupled its user base in a year and is now reaching over 700 million people each week. 'Pretty soon, billions of people a day will be talking to ChatGPT,' Altman said. 'We're the fifth biggest website in the world right now. I think we're on the clear path to the third.' (That means beating Instagram and Facebook.) 'Then it gets harder. For ChatGPT to be bigger than Google, that's really hard.' For its operation to keep scaling, OpenAI needs a lot more GPUs. This is one of Altman's top priorities. 'You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on data center construction in the not very distant future,' he confidently told the room. 'We have to make these horrible trade-offs right now,' he said. 'We have better models, and we just can't offer them because we don't have the capacity. We have other kinds of new products and services we'd love to offer.' He also thinks we're in an AI bubble. 'When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,' he explained. 'If you look at most of the bubbles in history, like the tech bubble, there was a real thing. Tech was really important. The internet was a really big deal. People got overexcited. Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.' He confirmed recent reports that OpenAI is planning to fund a brain-computer interface startup to rival Elon Musk's Neuralink. 'I think neural interfaces are cool ideas to explore. I would like to be able to think something and have ChatGPT respond to it.' Does Fidji Simo joining OpenAI to run 'applications' imply there will be other standalone apps besides ChatGPT? 'Yes, you should expect that from us.' He hinted at his social media ambitions: 'I am interested in whether or not it is possible to build a much cooler kind of social experience with AI.' He also said, 'If Chrome is really going to sell, we should take a look at it.' While Altman has a lot of interests, it's not actually clear that running OpenAI over the long run is one of them. 'I'm not a naturally well-suited person to be a public company CEO,' he said at one point. 'Can you imagine me on an earnings call?' I then asked if he would be CEO in a few years. 'I mean, maybe an AI is in three years. That's a long time.' Here are some other things Altman said: Interesting career moves this week: More to click on: If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting. As always, I welcome your feedback. You can respond here or ping me securely on Signal. Thanks for subscribing. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Alex Heath Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Command Line Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All OpenAI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech
Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Times
Sam Altman and Elon Musk face off in race to link our brains with AI
The rivalry between two of the world's most powerful technology billionaires is moving into a new arena — the race to link human minds directly with machines. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was once an ally of Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX boss. Now the former partners are preparing to face off in the fast-developing field of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). These systems typically use artificial intelligence to translate brain activity into commands a computer can follow. They have enabled people with paralysis to control devices using only their thoughts. Advocates believe BCIs will one day allow humans to merge with advanced AI. Musk's company, Neuralink, began testing its technology on patients in the US last year and recently gained approval for a trial in Britain, its first in Europe. Altman is now backing a rival, Merge Labs, which aims to harness recent advances in AI to make BCIs faster and more capable, according to the Financial Times. In 2015 the pair launched OpenAI together when Musk provided much of the capital to launch the venture. They fell out three years later when Musk quit the board after disputes over how it would operate. Since then, they have built competing AI empires while publicly trading barbs Musk attempted to block OpenAI's transformation from a non-profit entity to a profit-seeking business. BCIs are drawing interest from governments as well as tech moguls. In the UK, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), a government body, is exploring their potential as part of a broader mission to fund science that could change the world. In China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has unveiled its own BCI device, Neo, intended to restore hand movement in paralysed patients. Neuralink is widely seen as being at the forefront of the field. Its coin-sized implant is designed to sit inside a small opening in the skull, with flexible electrode 'threads' extending into the brain to monitor the electrical activity of cells. An AI system then decodes those signals into information that can be used to control external devices. The company is also developing a surgical robot to carry out the procedure. Last year it implanted a device in its first human volunteer, Noland Arbaugh, who was paralysed from the shoulders down in a diving accident. Using the implant, he was able to move a computer cursor and play video games, an experience he likened to 'using the force' in a nod to Star Wars. While striking, this was not the first demonstration of a mind-driven technology. In the early 2000s, American scientists showed that monkeys implanted with neural interfaces could control robotic limbs through their thoughts. Human trials since then have allowed paralysed people to send emails, make purchases online and operate robotic devices — all without physical movement. In some cases, BCIs have been used to send information back towards the brain — allowing, for instance, a paralysed person to regain a sense of touch through a robotic hand. Musk said he wanted to go much further, including restoring sight to the blind and enabling quadriplegics to regain 'full-body functionality' — goals many researchers say could be decades away, if they are achievable at all. His ultimate ambition is a mass-market 'general population device' linking human minds directly to powerful computers, allowing 'symbiosis with artificial intelligence'. One industry figure who has discussed the matter with Musk said he viewed this as necessary to prevent superhuman AI from running out of control. Altman seems to share a similar long-term vision. In a blog post this year he wrote that 'high-bandwidth brain–computer interfaces' were on the horizon. Neuralink, which was founded in 2016, recently raised $650 million in a deal that valued the company at $9 billion. Altman, who had previously invested in the company, now appears to be positioning Merge Labs to challenge it directly. According to the Financial Times, Merge Labs is seeking funding at a valuation of about $850 million, with OpenAI's ventures arm expected to provide a large portion of an initial $250 million round. Altman is expected to help launch the project alongside Alex Blania, who runs Worldcoin, an eyeball-scanning digital ID project also backed by the OpenAI chief Neuralink said last month that it had received regulatory and ethics approvals to begin its first clinical study in the UK. The GB-Prime trial will be run at University College London Hospitals and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It will test the company's BCI in people with severe paralysis. The trial will involve patients with conditions such as motor neurone disease, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders, assessing whether they can use the device to control computers and other digital systems by thought alone.
The Verge
4 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
Sam Altman's new startup wants to merge machines and humans
If you've enjoyed Elon Musk's ongoing beef with Sam Altman and OpenAI, get ready for a whole new chapter: soon they'll be rivals not just in AI, but in brain-computer interfaces too. The Financial Times reports that Altman and OpenAI are backing a new company called Merge Labs developing brain implants, making it a pretty direct rival to Musk's Neuralink. This has clearly been an interest of Altman's for a while though — he wrote about 'the merge' between humans and machines on his personal blog back in 2017, and connects it pretty directly to his work at OpenAI: The merge can take a lot of forms: We could plug electrodes into our brains, or we could all just become really close friends with a chatbot. But I think a merge is probably our best-case scenario. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Dominic Preston Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Elon Musk Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All OpenAI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech
South China Morning Post
07-08-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China plots pathway to tech supremacy through brain-computer interfaces
China has unveiled a road map to achieve critical technological advances by 2027, with brain-computer interfaces (BCI) playing a pivotal role in the nation's tech rivalry with the United States. Seven ministries, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, jointly released a policy blueprint on Thursday providing innovation and implementation guidelines for China's BCI industry. The document mandates that breakthroughs in key technologies – such as electrodes, chips and integrated products – reach advanced international standards by 2027. While global attention has centred on Elon Musk's Neuralink , China has been quietly advancing a state-backed neuroscience revolution. China aims to position itself among the top global BCI innovators by 2030 and cultivate two to three global industry leaders in the field. The policy frames BCI – a frontier technology merging life sciences and information science – as a critical battlefield in the US-China tech rivalry. Chinese research teams have already established various technical approaches across non-invasive, semi-invasive and invasive BCI categories.
Forbes
15-07-2025
- Health
- Forbes
Rethinking Human-Tech Collaboration With Passive Brain Interfaces
Thorsten O. Zander is the Founder & Chief Scientist at Zander Labs, a deep tech company at the forefront of pBCI and neuroadaptive tech. Recent headlines predict a future of mind-reading machines, but the real breakthrough in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) isn't about decoding your deepest secrets. It's about building technology that understands, adapts to and evolves with you to enable a new era of human-centric innovation. The question is not what machines can take from us, but how they can learn from us to create technology that is fundamentally more responsive, supportive and empowering. The Cognitive Revolution Traditional BCIs require users to learn artificial machine languages, training their minds to issue specific, often awkward commands. In contrast, passive BCIs represent a paradigm shift. As I've written about previously, passive BCIs use sensors to record brain activity and translate these signals into digital data. This removes the need for surgery, and it also allows AI to evaluate real-time information about users' emotions. Rather than demanding that humans adapt to machines, we should build systems that adapt to us, silently interpreting patterns in brain activity like attention, workload or fatigue. This isn't science fiction—this is neuroadaptive technology, and it's happening now. It's a philosophical shift in human-machine collaboration. Rather than training humans to think in machine-readable patterns, we should build machines that learn from how humans naturally think. Precision Insights: A Transformative Opportunity Consider some of the practical applications of passive BCIs. With nuanced, real-time insights into attention, focus and emotional state, this technology could enable empathetic AI. Unlike what speculative mind-reading headlines suggest, these systems offer opportunities to enable practical, ethical advances across healthcare, education, workplace productivity and accessibility. Instead of developing AI models for predicting what you want, the goal could be to adapt to real needs, context and values, resulting in a fundamentally more personal and supportive experience. For example, the technology could tell when someone is overloaded and adapt to reduce stress. This could lead to learning platforms recognizing cognitive fatigue and offering support or communication tools that adjust for individuals with physical limitations. The Privacy Imperative As technology gains the ability to detect subtle cognitive states, privacy and user agency move to the forefront of innovation. The brain data collected today is already deeply personal, offering insights into not just what we're doing, but how our brains are functioning across a growing number of classifiers. Who owns your brain data? How can we ensure it's used ethically? What safeguards must be in place before these technologies become mainstream? These aren't abstract concerns for some distant future—they're immediate challenges requiring solutions now. That's why the future of neuroadaptive technology is systems that process data locally whenever possible, encrypt all signals and ensure users retain full control over their information. The goal is not surveillance but support that makes accurate insights possible while protecting what makes us human. Bridging The Gap One persistent challenge for brain-computer interfaces—especially passive BCIs—has been bridging the gap between impressive lab results and real-world, user-centered solutions. The field has been caught between academic explorations lacking real-world applicability and consumer gadgets lacking scientific rigor. Challenges with passive BCIs aren't just the tech. It's also about building something people actually want to use. Privacy matters enormously when you're dealing with brain data, but obsessing over perfect safeguards before we even have working systems misses the point. The technical hurdles are solvable. Signal noise and reliability issues just mean we need better real-world engineering. We should focus on applications where passive BCIs offer clear advantages: better safety monitoring, enhanced accessibility or cognitive support that traditional interfaces can't match. Success in these specific areas will build the trust and evidence base that broader adoption requires. The path forward requires technology that is scientifically valid and practically useful, delivering solutions that provide meaningful insights without the complexity of traditional research-grade equipment. Early adoption doesn't require perfect technology. It requires technology that solves specific problems better than existing alternatives. The first mainstream passive BCI and neuroadaptive tech successes will come from focusing on where these systems can uniquely improve safety, productivity or accessibility—setting the stage for wider transformation. Technology For The People As we pursue these advances, we must remember that the goal isn't technology for its own sake, but truly context-aware technology that understands and supports people more effectively. This means designing with empathy, testing with diverse populations and asking whether our innovations are making lives meaningfully better. As AI moves into an increasingly dominant position in our lives, BCI technology offers something unique: a direct connection to human intelligence. Rather than replacing human thinking, it amplifies our natural cognitive abilities and helps machines better understand human needs. The true measure of progress in brain-computer interfaces will be how well we translate neural signals into meaningful insights that enrich lives and expand human potential. Our task is to build technology that learns from and adapts to us, never the other way around. The future of BCI is about connecting human potential with technological possibility. This is not the age of mind-reading. It's the age of mind-understanding, where technology is guided by the remarkable complexity of the human mind. Let's ensure that the future is built on science, empathy and trust. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
