Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang says he will hold off on parenthood until children can be born into a world where brain-computer interfaces such as Elon Musk's Neuralink are routine.
What Happened: "When we get Neuralink and we get these other technologies, kids who are born with them are gonna learn how to use them in like crazy, crazy ways," Wang told The Shawn Ryan Show, calling the devices "superintelligence” for the next generation.
Wang argued that the first seven years of life offer unmatched "neuroplastic" potential and therefore the best window to fuse biology with silicon. "Your brain is more neuroplastic than at any other point in your life," he said, adding that early adopters will leverage interfaces in ways adults can't. Scientists at NIH define ‘neuroplasticity’ as the brain’s ability to adapt and change.
His stance comes as Neuralink's first three human patients, one of whom can edit video by thought alone, drew headlines and scrutiny alike. Musk's coin-size implant is still in U.S. clinical trials, but he recently touted 100 days of "full recovery" for the inaugural participant even while acknowledging a signal-drop malfunction.
Rivals Synchron, backed by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, and Motif Neurotech have logged similar breakthroughs, suggesting commercial options could arrive before the decade's end.
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Why It Matters: Wang's timeline dovetails with his professional leap. Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), last week, agreed to buy a 49% stake in Scale AI for $15 billion and tapped him to help lead a "superintelligence" lab aimed at closing the gap with OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google.
A report earlier today revealed that Google has begun shifting its data-labeling contracts to Scale AI's rivals after Meta bought a stake in the startup. The search giant had planned to pay Scale about $200 million for human-labeled training data this year, but it is now negotiating with alternative vendors. Microsoft and Elon Musk's xAI have also cooled their ties, leaving Scale's $870 million-a-year business vulnerable just as CEO Alexandr Wang heads to Meta.
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