Thanks to a team at the University of California, Davis, there's a new brain-computer interface (BCI) system that's opening up real-time, natural conversation for people who can't speak. Noninvasive brain tech is transforming how people interact with robotic devices. Instead of relying on muscle movement, this technology allows a person to control a robotic hand by simply thinking about moving his fingers. Instead, a set of sensors is placed on the scalp to detect brain signals. These signals are then sent to a computer.

Everyone wants to kill the app. There's a wave of companies building so-called app-less phones and gadgets, leveraging artificial intelligence advancements to create smarter virtual assistants that can handle all kinds of tasks through one portal, bypassing the need for specific apps for a particular function. We might be witnessing the early stages of the first major smartphone evolution since the introduction of the iPhone--or an AI-hype-fueled gimmick. There's the Humane Ai Pin, a wearable that can identify objects, take photos, and project information into the palm of your hand. It's powered by a digital assistant that uses multiple large language models, such as ChatGPT, and it's designed to reduce reliance on the smartphone.

Brain is an early-stage startup with an ambitious vision: reinvent human-computer interaction, connecting people more naturally with services and products. We have an incredible team, with investments led by Laurene Powell Jobs and Goodwater Capital. As an NLP intern at Brain, you'll be working with the NLP team to apply state-of-the-art NLP techniques to our iOS application. Ideally, this would involve not only developing and/or training algorithms for NLP using our knowledge and/or application data, but also putting these algorithms into our production Python web services. How you'll contribute to the vision: • Develop and/or train NLP algorithms for Brain's deployed application • Analyze field data from deployed application and fix errors by updating algorithms, testing, moving to production, and assessing field performance.

Last week, we learned that Elon Musk will start a mind-computer interface company called Neuralink. The name added a brainy new entry to Musk's growing scroll of big ideas--Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX, the Hyperloop. But as the news of Musk's nascent venture to merge man and machine spread across social media, an electrical engineer in Ohio named Pedram Mohseni must have been slapping his forehead. That's because in January he'd agreed to sell the name Neuralink to Musk without realizing it. Mohseni, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, and his scientific partner, Randolph Nudo of Kansas University Medical Center, had owned the trademark on "NeuraLink" since 2015 after creating their own startup company.

Imagine infusing thousands of wireless devices into your brain, and using them to both monitor its activity and directly influence its actions. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, and for the moment it still is – but possibly not for long. Brain research is on a roll at the moment. And as it converges with advances in science and technology more broadly, it's transforming what we are likely to be able to achieve in the near future. Spurring the field on is the promise of more effective treatments for debilitating neurological and psychological disorders such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and depression.