Bradford Smith has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and lost his voice in 2020. But with the help of Neuralink and artificial intelligence, he now has a voice again.
He's the third person to receive a Neuralink implant and the first of the recipients who could not speak on his own.
How does it work?
The technology is a coin-sized implanted brain-computer interface made by a company Elon Musk founded with a team of scientists and engineers, Lois Collins reported.
It has 1,024 electrodes and can read neural activity, sending signals to a computer. Artificial intelligence decodes what Brad wants to type, which he’s able to tell it telepathically.
It can even read out his responses in his own voice, cloned by AI from recordings.
Shortly after his diagnosis, he started recording stories for his children like how he met his wife, what he was like in school, etc. Those recordings helped train AI to speak for him in the voice he had.
Now he can joke again and has his voice back in some capacity.
His advice to others? “As you go through life, be friendly with everyone and work hard on everything! You never know when you will need a friend to help you out!”