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SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk teases major Neuralink update “in a few months”
In a several-hour live interview on September 6-7, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk managed to slip in a few words about Neuralink, a side-project company formed by Musk for the purpose of bridging the gap between potential superhuman AI and the human brain itself.
Although the eccentric CEO/CTO wouldn’t say much more, he did tease a potentially revolutionary update from the fully-stealthed startup “in a few months”.
The purpose of neuralink is to "merge" with AI tech. Musk says they have an announcement on that front coming in a few months.
— Robin Seemangal (@nova_road) September 7, 2018
Currently composed of at least several dozen employees, Neuralink has been working in absolute silence since its July 2016 formation, effectively acting as a privately-funded research laboratory for the vast majority of those ~25 months. More recently, however, the theme of job listings has gradually shifted from experimental science, engineering, and fabrication to something more explicitly focused on one or a few particularly promising solutions to the problems at hand.
Those challenges are quite significant: to even begin to build “ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers”, Neuralink will need to push miles ahead of all competitors, both academic and otherwise. Somehow, the company will need to find ways to build brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that are extraordinarily noninvasive (i.e. no surgery, no anesthetic, no open holes in the skull), feature bandwidth hundreds or thousands of times greater than the current state-of-the-art offerings, and can be uniformly distributed throughout the brain while still being able to cluster at critical centers of activity (memory, speech, vision, etc).
Still, Musk apparently believes that some significant progress is being made, and demonstrated no hesitation at all before stating that,
“I think [Neuralink will] have something interesting to announce in a few months that’s at least an order of magnitude better than anything else, probably better than anyone thinks is possible.”
This is an extraordinarily good sign for the highly speculative neural interface company, as almost any progress at all will demand leaps forward that – as Musk notes – very few people would believe possible. The “order of magnitude” improvement he mentions is also thoroughly interesting, requiring one to ask what particular aspect(s) of a BCI might mesh well with that sort of language.
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- While we have no clue what Neuralink’s stealthed work has produced, it’s perhaps the most long-term venture Musk has started. The path to market for medical devices is very long and even more expensive.
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- A traditional, state-of-the-art 100 electrode array. This is implanted directly into the brain by way of open-brain surgery. (Matthew McKee, Brown University)
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- An alternative non-invasive electrode, in the form of an injectable mesh. (Lieber Research Group)
There are a couple of possibilities for that order of magnitude step forward. While some of these comparisons may actually be anachronistic depending on just how cutting-edge of an approach Neuralink is pursuing, the most obvious source of a tenfold or greater improvement would be the density of electrodes fit onto a given array, currently capped at around a few hundred per each several square millimeter array. However, that form of neural interface electrode is quite simply very invasive, requiring a literal hole in the subject’s skull to directly embed the electrodes into the brain itself. As such, it may actually be more likely that Musk is referring to an “order of magnitude” improvement more generally referencing a multitude of various advancements, ranging from bandwidth to ease of installation to the number of neurons able to be both surveilled and stimulated, or perhaps even the granularity of the surveillance/stimulation available.
As Musk notes, “If we can solve the bandwidth problem, humans can probably indefinitely continue to live in symbiosis with machines.” Fingers crossed that Neuralink is having some success in that direction. Read more here about the challenges ahead of Neuralink, the brilliant individuals involved, and the many potential routes the company might take in pursuit of symbiotically merging human brains and AI.
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Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
