Facebook Launches "Moon Shot" Effort to Decode Speech Direct from the Brain - Scientific American

Final paragraphs

"Chevillet’s team hopes to have a good idea of the technology needed to create their new optical prosthetic within two years, although it is unclear when they might build a working prototype. To meet these ambitious goals Building 8 has, over the past six months, recruited at least 60 scientists and engineers from the University of California, San Francisco; U.C. Berkeley; Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory; Johns Hopkins Medicine; and Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis who specialize in machine-learning methods for decoding speech and language, optical neuroimaging systems and advanced neural prosthetics, Dugan says.
Regardless of whether Building 8 succeeds in delivering its BCI prosthetic, Facebook’s investment in the project is a big win for science, says Adam Gazzaley, founder and executive director of U.C. San Francisco’s Neuroscape translational neuroscience center. “We have increasing struggles to squeeze money out of the National Institutes of Health, especially to do high-risk, high-reward projects like what Facebook is describing,” says Gazzaley, who is not involved in the Building 8 research. “It’s a great sign and should be encouraged and applauded if large companies in the consumer space are taking such serious efforts to be innovative in neuroscience.”"

Facebook Launches "Moon Shot" Effort to Decode Speech Direct from the Brain - Scientific American