Ray Kurzweil Joins Nasal-Spray BCI Startup Subsense as Advisor
TL;DR
- Ray Kurzweil is joining Palo Alto brain-computer interface startup Subsense as product and vision advisor.
- Subsense has raised $27 million for a nonsurgical BCI that delivers charged nanoparticles intranasally and controls them with a magnetic-coil cap.
- The company is still in preclinical work running mouse experiments, contrasting with Neuralink's surgical electrode implants.
Ray Kurzweil has signed on as product and vision advisor to Subsense, a four-year-old Palo Alto startup building a nonsurgical brain-computer interface that delivers charged nanoparticles into the brain through the nose and controls them with a magnetic-coil cap, Fortune reported.
The company has raised $27 million and is in preclinical work, running experiments on mice. Fortune describes the prototype headpiece as a cross between a baseball cap and a bike helmet. Where Neuralink drills through the skull to implant electrodes, Subsense's route is intranasal, though the article calls it "still quite invasive."
"Ultimately, we want to merge [the smartphone] with the brain," Kurzweil told Fortune, invoking the singularity thesis he has argued for decades. CEO Tetiana Aleksandrova set the ambition higher: "I believe the brain-computer interface eventually may become one of the most intimate technologies that human beings ever created."
The stated roadmap runs from mouse experiments to medical use and then consumer products. Two researchers we follow posted the story the day it landed.
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Originally reported by fortune.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Ray Kurzweil Joins Nonsurgical BCI Startup Subsense as Product and Vision Advisor