The Brain-Computer Interface Is A Really Near Thing

In a recent newsletter Peter Diamandis, of the X Prize and Singularity University describes what is quickly becoming a reality: brain-computer interfaces. Futurist, Ray Kurzweil has always predicted this was going to happen. He called this fusion of minds with computers, The Singularity, leading to the next stage in human-machine evolution. Peter didn’t count himself a believer, but in what follows, he describes a change of tune.

Enjoy the read and send me your comments. 

Connecting my brain to the cloud using BCI, a brain-computer interface, is something I’m looking forward to. Just imagine your ability to “think and Google,” see through the eyes of a robot and increase your intelligence through 24×7 access to AIs like Gemini 3.0 and GPT-5.

One of Ray Kurzweil’s famous predictions was that “by the early 2030s, we’ll achieve a high-bandwidth connection between the human neocortex and the Cloud,” to enhance our intelligence.

I used to think that Ray got this prediction wrong. His predictive record to date has been ~86%, but I didn’t see this happening that soon, that is until I met Max Hodak and learned about his pioneering breakthroughs at Science Corporation.

Our brains will never grow bigger. They are landlocked by the skull, which in turn is limited in size by a woman’s birth canal. The only way, therefore, to increase our intelligence by a factor of ten or more is by connecting it using high bandwidth to an external knowledge source. Enter the field of BCI.

BCI is a rapidly advancing field with more than 250 companies (as of 2024) involved that have attracted approximately $2.3 billion in cumulative venture funding. Companies like Neuralink, Paradromics, OpenWater, Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, and Blackrock Neurotech are the leaders and they are making significant strides in BCI human trials and in getting FDA approvals.

But despite progress and some flashy demos, current BCI technology is still somewhat barbaric and faces serious limitations. Traditional electro-mechanical implants are invasive, often damaging brain tissue during insertion, while non-invasive approaches like EEGs provide only very coarse neural readings. This makes testing BCI implants hard to justify for all but the most serious conditions.

Enter Science Corporation, led by CEO Max Hodak, former President of Neuralink, with a revolutionary approach that could change everything: a biohybrid neural interface that uses living neurons to grow non-destructively into brain tissue, connecting external circuitry with the internal wiring in the brain.

“Placing anything into the brain inevitably destroys some amount of brain tissue,” explains Hodak. “Destroying 10,000 cells to record from 1,000 might be perfectly justified if you have a serious injury and those thousand neurons create a lot of value—but it really hurts as a scaling characteristic.”

What is Science Corporation’s solution? A remarkable silicon honeycomb-like structure with 100,000 “microwells,” tiny cylindrical holes roughly 15 micrometres deep, where individual living neurons cultured from neural stem cells can grow from the microwell circuitry directly into a subject’s brain tissue.

When placed onto the brain’s surface, the neural stem cells grow axons and dendrites down into the host’s brain tissue. As these biological “roots” grow into brain tissue they naturally integrate, forming synaptic connections, creating a biological bridge between mind and machine, and they do this without physically destroying the brain tissue around them.

Max Hodak’s technology promises the potential to increase the bandwidth of BCI technology on the order of 100 to 10,000 times greater than what we’ve seen with Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

The implications are staggering. In recent experiments published on bioRxiv, the team demonstrated that mice with these implants could detect and respond to light signals through the device, suggesting successful integration between the implanted neurons and the animals’ native brain cells.

Alan Mardinly, Director of Biology at Science Corporation, explains:

“The principal advantages of a biohybrid implant are that it can dramatically change the scaling laws of how many neurons you can interface with versus how much damage you do to the brain.”

The near-term implications are profound for helping patients with ALS communicate, enabling paralyzed individuals to control computer cursors, and facilitating rehabilitation for stroke victims.

The long-term potential is mind-boggling:

• Could we eventually “think and Google,” accessing the Internet directly with our thoughts?
• Might we enhance human memory and information processing beyond current limits?
• Could millions of interconnected minds create a new form of collective intelligence?
• How might human-AI symbiosis transform problem-solving and innovation?
• How about human-robot symbiosis where you can see and act through an Optimus robot?
• Can we increase our IQs from 120 to 1,000 using BCIs?
• What breakthroughs might emerge when we can augment human cognition?

As we progress toward Kurzweil’s vision of seamless brain-cloud connectivity, Science Corporation’s biohybrid approach may be the breakthrough for which we have been waiting to meld human and machine minds.