Investor Saturin Pugnet outlines plan to link brains with AI in Phase Lock essay

Entrepreneur and investor Saturin Pugnet published an essay titled Phase Lock on linking the brain with artificial intelligence, which the Financial Times introduced, along with its feasibility, in a column on October 16.

In the essay, Pugnet argues that devices measuring brain signals and the AI that interprets them are advancing together. His core claim is that AI will expand brain-computer interfaces and that those interfaces will in turn expand AI.

He proposes using brain responses captured at moments of error detection, hesitation and preference as training feedback for AI systems, according to the Financial Times column.

The title refers to a phenomenon in which different oscillations stay synchronized in a fixed relationship. Pugnet argues that the way brains and AI are connected should be decided before AI becomes powerful enough to exceed human oversight.

Earlier work on brain signals

The essay arrives after several research milestones. A study published in Nature Medicine in June reported that a man with ALS used a brain implant to communicate more than 180,000 sentences over about two years at an average of 56 words per minute. On October 1, Neuralink, the brain-computer interface company founded by Elon Musk, published research on a model pretrained on 50,000 hours of brain signals, and six participants using it beat their previous best control records. In 2023, Meta published research reconstructing images from brain activity, and UC Berkeley researchers reconstructed parts of a Pink Floyd song from electrode signals recorded on the brain surface of 29 epilepsy patients.