Welcome to Axis ProRata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the conclusion of tech, business, and politics.

Brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank, Ideas Bank here.

I'm Dan Per Mac.

On today's show, San Francisco delays its so-called IPO tax, and the Air Force warns

against storming Area 51. But first, merging man and machine. Three years ago, Elon Musk launched

a company called Neurrelink with the goal of creating brain computer interfaces, or BCIs. Here's how

we described the company's goal in a recent interview with

Axios on HBO. The long-term aspiration with neurolinguers would be to achieve a symbiosis with

artificial intelligence and to achieve a sort of democratization of intelligence such that it is

not monopolistically held in a purely digital form by governments and large corporations.

This week, Musk seemed to take a giant step toward that mission in a Tuesday night live stream,

whereby he showed off some of the company's technology for the very first time,

including an innovation that's called threads, which theoretically would be less likely to damage the brain

than would prior BCI technologies. He also said that most of the companies work so far has been

in rats, but then let's slip during a Q&A that, quote, a monkey has been able to control a computer

with its brain, end quote. Yeah, he said that, and he meant that. So the initial goal of BCIs, including

at Neurilink, is medical, doing such things as helping to treat neurological conditions and brain

injuries, think Parkinson's disease or paralysis. But Musk, who has long been fearful of AI

supplanting humans as the world's dominant intelligence intelligence also believes that this is a way to get

ahead of that so-called singularity.

And, of course, make some money in the meantime.

In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper with Axios AI reporter Kavei Waddell.

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