Issue No. 34Week ending Sunday, August 23, 2026620 episodes · 2733 articles
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From Restoring Sight to Reimagining the Brain, with Max Hodak

With Sarah Guo, Max Hodak · Sunday, August 23, 2026

Max Hodak, co-founder and CEO of Science Corporation, joins Sarah Guo to discuss PRIMA, Science's retinal implant that restores functional form vision to blind patients and recently gained CE mark approval in Europe. Hodak outlines his philosophy of treating the brain as a computational system rather than relying solely on traditional pharmaceutical drug discovery. He also explores the Platonic representation hypothesis in AI, the importance of phenomenal continuity in brain emulation, and Science's long-term vision of substrate independence and reducing biological fragility.

Key takeaways

  • Venture investors often make the mistake of treating brain-computer interfaces as a single category, whereas neurotech divides into completely different technical architectures. Read more →
  • Small-molecule drug discovery spends ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars before finding out if a biological target works. Read more →
  • Hodak rejects digital snapshot uploads: a software replica matching your behavior fails if it lacks continuous subjective experience. Read more →
  • Science Corporation secured European marketing approval in July for PRIMA, its subretinal microchip, scheduling its first commercial sales for the coming weeks. Read more →
  • Science Corporation co-founder Max Hodak treats the brain as the only organ that cannot even in principle be transplanted, viewing the rest of the body as replaceable support hardware. Read more →
  • Max Hodak observed that the internal mathematical geometry inside large artificial intelligence models directly mirrors neural recordings from animal brains. Read more →

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