Paolo Ardoino - Merger or Obsolescence - The Future for Humanity (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 3)

This is Daniel Fagelli, you're tuned in to The Trajectory, and this is the second episode in our series called Stewarding the Flame, where we discuss the living process, that process that creates and overcomes itself, and how through innovation and regulation, we might help to encourage its flourishing, potentially eventually as far beyond we as we are beyond the sea snails, and maybe even be part of that transformation. This episode is about exactly that. We've interviewed a couple folks of... Italian descent here on the show and maybe a handful of billionaires, but no Italian billionaires. Paolo Arduino is the CEO of Tether, the sort of stablecoin issuer there. And his firm has invested hundreds of millions into BlackRock Neuro, which does brain-computer interface. In this particular episode, we talk about the potential necessity of brain-computer interface as a part of the next waves of evolution of intelligence and why that may be necessary for humans, but also necessary if we want the living process to persist and not be sort of trampled by potentially some kind of unconscious AGI that is too much of a separation from the living process that we do understand, which at least at present So Paolo, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Dan. Absolutely. You know, years ago, this is called the AI in Business podcast. But years ago, some of our earliest episodes were in BCI. BrainGate is based in Brown University, which I grew up in Rhode Island. And it's been such a fun space to follow. But the progress generally hasn't been that exciting compared to AI. But recently, that's shifted. And obviously, you've gotten into this space. There's some exciting things going on. I want to open with your vision and perspective, now having skin in the game in this domain. When you look forward a year or two at what might be capable, BCI-wise, that really isn't today and hasn't been in the last few years, what are the most significant things from your vantage point?

I think that with the advent of AI, I think that in the BCI field, we can make important progress. So far, most of the attempts to BCI have been invasive, which I believe is still the most... prominent type of approach in terms of BCI is the most accurate one that provide more information and insights into the brain is, you know, there are great companies that are working on it and have been working on it in the last many years, like BlackRock Neurotech, and of course, you have Neuralink and many others. But so also, I think in the next few years, we're going to see the rise of the non-invasive BCIs. There are some attempts to try to capture, of course, in a high-level way, information coming out from the brain and use that information to govern some day-to-day tools, maybe the computer, maybe the stair, or maybe a few other things. But definitely, we are going to see much more development on the non-invasive BCIs. But I would say that for the next two, three years, I expect the development still to be on the service high level and not that fast. But I truly believe that the huge unlock will come five years from now, up to 10 years from now, when probably with the mass adoption of this