YouSaid · the spoken record

Ramses Alcaide

lines on the record: 39
first: 2023-08-31
most recent: 2023-08-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So there's going to be so many solutions that we don't even know people are going to start building with this once you have brain computer interfaces as part of your everyday life that I'm really excited to see what others create from what we're building.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, for me, the thing that there's two parts to that. One is like, what are some of the challenges and what are some of the excitements? So the challenges are essentially what we're doing right now is we're trying to validate as many of our assumptions as possible, trying to make values that are really sticky with customers that add a lot of value to them so that when the product comes out, it is going to be successful. This is kind of like when the iPhone first came out, we don't really know how much impact it has until it came out, right? Yeah. For example, Uber wouldn't have existed without the iPhone. We wouldn't have GPS in a person's pocket”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's going to be way easier to fly a jet the way you fly it now for the next like 100 years. So, like, let's not really worry about that right now. Let's just help that person with ALS. Let's help them at least reliably say yes, no, and, you know, that they love somebody and let's get through that breakthrough. You know, I mean, obviously in the far, far future, anything is possible, but I'm more of an optimist when it comes to where we're headed. I think we already have good enough ways to destroy one another. We don't need to do it in a more complicated and difficult way.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess I'm a little bit less worried about that. The main reason for that is just because when you're talking about non-invasive, so non-surgical measures, you know, it's one of these things where we're just so far away from that level of detail that I'm less worried about it. And at the end of the day, you can just take it off, right? You can just take off your headphones or your earbuds where that really becomes more scary is invasive. Like with invasive, we can get to that type of future. I agree. But at the same time, you know, and this, I was actually at a panel with the DOD where they were asking us questions about, hey, should we be worried about people leveraging brain computer interfaces, at least the invasive kind for, you know, all this kind of scary stuff, you know, like controlling jets or something? And like at the end of the day, it's like, one, is everyone's more focused on how do we help that person with ALS communicate?”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Yeah. And we work across the realm. Like a lot of people think that what we're doing is we're building headphones. But the reality of it is our technology can scale across any type of headworm device. And so we partner with different headwarned companies and we help empower their devices to be compatible with our platform. And then that enables them to get access to this portfolio of use cases that can help their employees, that can help students that can be used for medical applications, et cetera.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For individuals that are in high risk environments. And so imagine being able to at least step one, track their mental health, track their fatigue so that they don't, you know, to help prevent accidents that could happen. And then longer term enabling them to control their technology much more easily. And then even longer term being able to make sure that key health markers can be caught ahead of time so that they're able to get care earlier and we're able to accelerate a lot of research.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, definitely. At least for us, the number one step is how do we unlock all the potential brain computer interfaces to the world, right? And so the first step is we work with different companies, OEMs, some of the largest in the world are some of the ones that we're working with. And we help them release neuropowered products. The first one is going to be a pair of headphones. Eventually it's going to be earbuds, AR glasses, helmets. So we also work with a few groups that build helmets for, for example, pilots or for...”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Enables us to also free up some of our cognitive loads so we can continue to have these more engaged and connected conversations in the way that we traditionally do.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I wouldn't say 10 years from now, right? I think it's going to take longer, but what I would say is that within the next 10 years, people are going to be communicating to their technology silently. I think that communicating via voice is still going to be a more efficient method of communication with somebody, at least in the near term. But when it comes to, for example, let's say you're having a conversation with somebody and you get a notification, right? Being able to push it out of the way or to reply to it real quick in a way that doesn't break the conversation would be very valuable, right? Let's say, you know, for example, you are talking to somebody about a really great place that you went to go eat to, but you forgot the name, right? So helping it pull up that information in a way that doesn't disrupt, oh, hold on, let me pull out my phone. And just wait a second while I figure everything out. So I think that we're going to be communicating with our technology seamlessly and invisibly. And then that.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So think about, for example, you have an athlete and the athlete thinks about throwing a football Well, when they think about that, even though they're not throwing the football, that area of the brain that is associated with throwing a football is activating. And those muscles are activating. It's not happening at a visual level. Like you don't see the football player moving his arm. Just thinking about it activates those areas. And so whenever you think of a word like play, pause or next, the same thing happens in the brain. And so we're able to pick up those signatures even though you're doing it silently. you know, visually saying something out loud, audibly or visually, but we're able to pick up those signals and then use that essentially as a source for how we control devices.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little bit more nuanced than that, but essentially yes, and like I said, we already have working systems of that in lab. And so really everything on that video are things that are wholly within. What we're building, so you know, it's not like a vision video of 100 years from now, at least V1 is going to be available within the next two years.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that thinking to text perspective, at least the very first versions of it are the ones that I was discussing earlier where it's very simple, like play, pause, next track. And then as we collect more data and build out the system, it'll enable more of things similar to the video that you saw.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obviously, we're going to be able to further expand those capabilities, but the main goal is how do we essentially create more of a seamless interaction system between humans and their computers?”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, some of this research, it's called silent vocalization research, has been around. And the main issue is that when you collect this type of data, you usually need sensors around the mouth and the face. And they pick up primarily muscle activations that are completely invisible to the user. And so we're essentially doing a very similar methodology, but inside the wearable devices that are going to be compatible with our platform. And with that, we're going to be able to open up more capabilities for individuals to interact with their technology. And the best part is if you have any headphones or earbuds that are neurable compatible, you'll just be getting all of this through software updates essentially. But at first, we're going to introduce a system for very simple forms of control, just launching Spotify, Play, Pause, Next Track. And then as we collect more data with individuals' consent.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to be available essentially Q4 this year or Q1 next year. And then from there, we'll continue improving things and working with the customers that we have to help us further evolving the product and helping scientists unlock more capabilities. It's really going to be a community effort to build these types of devices.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably one of, if not the best funded company in the world. And so that's enabled us to continue staying ahead. And at first, it was because of our technology. We're at least five to ten years ahead of anybody else in the market, but now it's because of our business partnerships that we have that we continue to grow.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think a lot of those companies aren't really our competitors. That's why, you know, like Neuralink is not our competitor. We're non-invasive. We don't require surgery. Most of those companies that do invasive need a ton more money. It makes sense. The way I would think of Neuralink as kind of like a hip replacement, no one really wants a hip replacement until you actually need one. And even if they end up being 10 times better than your actual hips in the future, you're probably going to be able to keep your hips for as long as possible regardless. When it comes to the competitors more in our space, which is non-invasive, we're...”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's the same algorithm for focus and fatigue. Essentially, we notice that there's a sharp decrease in an individual's focus. And once we identify that, if it remains consistent, then we know that the person's not focused on the task that they were on previously. And so then we're able to just pause it or in the case of reading, for example, I have it output a small audible tone. And it just reminds me, hey, that's right. I should be reading right now. just got distracted by random cat that walked by and now i should get back to reading”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, there's ways to, for example, automatically pause things. And there's a whole bunch of other things that you can do with the technology too, but essentially it's that reliable.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the best parts about the technology is you can actually build things on top of it. So a few of the things that people are building, for example, the first one is with Audible, right? You can listen to an audiobook. And then when you get distracted, it'll actually automatically pause it, which is really great because this happens to me a lot when I read or when I'm doing audiobooks. I have ADHD. I'll start reading it or listening and then I'll just start zoning off into something else. And then I'll realize that I get to the end of the page of the book or the end of that paragraph in the audiobook. And I realize I haven't paid attention at all and I got to rewind it.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we did a large study with a professor from Harvard who's now a professor at Wooster Polytechnical Institute. And he had created this incredible method for identifying an individual's focus. And so what we were able to do, and we did close to a thousand individuals worth of data collection on this, is we track people just doing their work and then leveraging this algorithm that we co-worked with this individual at Harvard. What we saw is that there was very clear breaks in the data where we could see that if we were to recommend them a break at this time point, it enabled them to have three to four hours of higher productivity afterwards, feel more refreshed, reduce their errors in the amount of work that they do, instead of just burning themselves out and feeling really, you know. About their day, essentially.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you would take a break, and it can tell you how long you should be taking a break. And then when you come back, it's actually really surprising, especially in our user testing. Like people don't realize how much they needed it. And they come back and then they just crush their work. And they're like, wow, like I didn't think I needed this break, but I came back so energized and like focused. And it's having people have that feeling consistently and their day feeling really motivated about the work that they did so they don't feel guilty about, you know, taking some time off when they get home. That's essentially the feeling we're able to give people with the technology.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just be an audible notification. You know, we recommend you to take a break, and you can ignore it if you want to. Sometimes you're in the middle of something, you need a few more minutes. That's fine.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You would wear the headphones whenever you're working. So, like, right now, I'm wearing headphones, so I just do a couple hours with the work wear the headphones. And then they would notify me when I should be taking a break in a way that's optimal for my mental health.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really depends on the audience. So for most individuals buying our tech, they're just going to be able to see their focus scores whenever they do work. And, you know, suggestions on how to improve their focus over time, reduce fatigue, create more balance in their life. But there is a whole bunch of raw data and filtered data that is more granular, that's going to be available to scientists or people who want to dig in deeper. And from that, that's where you can pick up a lot more detail as to sleep measures or epilepsy, et cetera.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess to answer that, we have to break it down. Those signals from headphones. Well, the brain is very conductive, right? So, for example, one of the brain signals we look at is called P300. So we don't really have to get into the details of it, but essentially that comes from an area of your brain called the parietal lobe. It's around the back of your head. And even though that signal comes from around the back of your head, the signal is such a strong response it can actually go all over your brain. The farther it goes from the signal source. the smaller that signal becomes. So it becomes harder to read. So we know that these signals go across the head, but you lose the ability to record them easily. And so that's where our AI comes in. It picks up these signals even though they don't come from the most perfect location. They come from the areas that headphones are at. And from there, we're able to boost those signals to a level that makes them usable for different applications.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cognitive decline or other types of biometrics. So essentially just like how the Apple Watch started out as a system for tracking your movement, now it can actually pick up heart arrhythmias. And so all of that medical landscape and biomarkers are also available through these brain computer interfaces.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so there's kind of like three areas where we use the technology in right now. On the first end is, for example, understanding an individual's focus over time when they're fatiguing, when they should be taking a break in order to maintain it. Your brain is kind of like your body is to dehydration. You should be, in the case of the body drinking water throughout the day, well, you should be taking breaks throughout the day too, even though you may not feel thirsty or you feel tired. You should be doing that in order to maintain a high level of hygiene for your own work and life balance. And so that's kind of the first area. The second one is in control. So we have the ability to, for example, use brain activity to do very minimal controls on the hardware as well too. So changing music tracks, play and pausing music. And then on the third end is there's so many incredible biomarkers that can be picked up using this type of technology. Like I said, tracking Alzheimer's or”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The brain. For example, traumatic brain injury information, tracking ALS, right? Seizure detection. There's so many other things that you can only do with the brain that not only are you taking care of your previous wearables, but now you're adding a whole plethora of medical use cases that have already been tested out in scientific literature but now are able to be used at scale.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, what's really interesting is that brain detecting devices are actually the ultimate wearable. A lot of the devices that you wear right now, for example, accelerometers for movement or for heart rate, they can either be picked up through brain data, or they originally come from the brain, and those are just secondary sources of signals, right? So for example, you can actually pick up Parkinson's responses using the Apple Watch. The issue is that By the time you pick it up at the hands or through walking metrics, your brain's already been dealing with it for the past 10 years. And so with the brain, you can actually pick up a lot of those things earlier. So there's two parts. One is that brain-based wearables are going to replace all the other wearables that you have. That's step one. And so all that data and all that value that we're seeing with existing wearables are going to be all consolidated into one device. But then two, there's certain things that you can only pick up for.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And the hypothesis there was if we just build a reliable brink computer interface system, which is what our core technology enabled us to do, it doesn't mean it's going to scale because it has to bring people value, right? And so that's why we ended up going toward focus and helping individuals essentially prevent burnout from occurring. And then on top of that, with some of our groups, we actually do it for safety. So preventing injuries due to fatigue. For example, the Air Force, really big problem, right? So you can say billions of dollars. And then that enables us to have a really strong concrete step one for us to build a business and enable large amounts of these systems to go out. And then from there, really open it up to others to help solve some of these other problems as well.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, and even just the stuff that we were doing in the laboratory, for example, no one has a EEG device at home, right? But what if instead you just put on your Apple AirPods to go take a call? And then every single time you do that, we're tracking your brain just a little bit more to be able to tell you, hey, actually, you know what? You're trending toward Alzheimer's. You know, now you're getting older. We're starting to see this cognitive decline. This is when you should go seek out a doctor, not 10 years into the disease before it's already too late. And so, how do we unlock all these incredible value propositions of brain computer interfaces to the masses? And so that's really what the main work that we do at Nurbal is.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, imagine like you're an eight year old kid and we set you up with the system, and there's like gel running down your face, and you don't want to be there. But your future is being dependent on it, right? Or imagine we try to bring this to the real world. Like, no one's going to wear that, right? No one's going to want to wear a swimmer's cap with gel in their hair. And so how do we unlock all these incredible value propositions? And we created an IP at the University of Michigan that helped us increase the signal to noise of those brainwaves so that we could actually bring it to everyday devices instead of having them be trapped in a laboratory setting. Even if we could just unlock what we already have in the lab, it'd be a major step and it would accelerate so many fields. And so it was that's what the company was focused on, essentially how do we create an everyday brain computer interface? How do we unlock the brain to billions of people?”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's a lot that you can take from brain data. So, for example, just using EEG, you can identify a person's focus. You can identify, you know, for example, measures of stress, whether, you know, for example, they're going through a stroke epilepsy, sleep responses like REM sleep. So there's a lot that you can do because your brain is a central hub for everything. But the main issue is in order to tap into those types of applications, you usually need to have a giant gel cap system with lots of setup to really be able to tap into them.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the reason the setup takes so long is because getting brain data is incredibly difficult. There's a lot of noise in the environment. Even you're blinking, talking, the electromagnetic noise, even the lights impact, the ability to collect this data because the sensors are so sensitive and brain signals are so small. And so we essentially developed an artificial intelligence that was able to use brain data that we previously collected and then also brain data that was coming in. And essentially increase the signal to noise in order to essentially be able to do classifications of what a person intended to do in this case the child was selecting a multiple choice question at a greater fidelity. And when you can do that at greater fidelity, you don't need to repeat the question numerous times. And through less repetition, it gave people a better user experience. And so being able to make that brain computer interface work in a seamless way.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, definitely. So essentially the work that I did as my graduate student work is I was working with children who had severe cerebral palsy. And the issue there is that We were not able to essentially give them these tests that they needed to be allowed to get physical rehabilitation. And the reason for that is because they couldn't communicate, at least not in the traditional means like talking or pointing. And so we use brain computer interfaces to solve that problem. And the blocker there was that you have this eight-year-old kid. He just got 20 minutes worth of setup with goop and gel in his hair to make the technology work. There would be about 10 minutes worth of like calibrating the system and then it would take sometimes between one to five minutes to like even get a response from them. And so the work that I did was essentially in machine learning classification so that we could interpret their brain activity at a much higher level of accuracy. And what that enabled us to do is reduce the response time from one to five minutes to anywhere between 30 seconds to a minute, which is enormous for an eight-year-old kid because having them sit there for five minutes to say yes or no question is.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, definitely. So when I was studying electrical engineering, I worked with the prosthetics teams at the University of Washington And then I was like, I really wanted to create the brain into these prosthetic limbs. So I went to grad school and I started working with brain computer interfaces more. And that's when I worked with people with ALS and children's cereal palsy. And I was like, wow, this is just a whole nother level. I mean, as terrible as it is, for example, my uncle having to go through this experience and having prosthetics that don't work with him naturally. What if you can't even move your eyes, right? Like that's just a whole different level of need. And so that's really what pivoted me from something that I thought I was going to dedicate my life to robotics, to something much broader.”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, really, the idea of durable and kind of the concept of what I've dedicated my life to started when I was about eight years old. My uncle got into a trucking accident in Mexico. And he lost both his legs. And it was really intense time for the family. We brought him from Mexico to the United States to get his prosthetics made. And my uncle's kind of a genius. He's been an adventure all his life. always been a hard worker and seen him through that struggle and seen how unnatural the prosthetic systems he started using were that's what really motivated me into how do i leverage this curiosity that i have with electronics and computers to try to make something more natural for him”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From Mexico, I was born to Mexico, and I came to the United States when I was five. And I remember that I was so into computers. My parents bought me one that was basically a computer that was a throwaway computer by some large company. And I remember taking it apart and being just so fascinated by it that I wanted to fix other people's computers. And so I would post up signs in my neighborhood where I would basically do like computer repair for people for like $20 an hour. And that was great money back when I was a kid. Especially when you're like anywhere between six, seven, like eight years old, right? And I remember I'd show up and they'd open the door and they're like, oh, it's so cute. You brought your son with you. And my dad's like, no, I don't know anything about computers. Like he's going to fix whatever your problem is”
2023-08-31 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · When your headphones listen to you with Ramses Alcaide of Neurable · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT