A former researcher at OpenAI has left to co-found Conduit, a startup aiming to build "telepathy" through thought-to-text models trained on non-invasive neural data. The researcher predicts that within a few years, direct thought communication with AIs will become commonplace, evolving from simple text commands to a seamless extension of human consciousness.

By 2027, the vision includes using a neural band to interact with AI like Codex, where thoughts translate into actions like code review and task delegation in near real-time. By 2030, AI companies are expected to directly interface with Conduit's neural representations, enabling communication of complex thoughts like mental images. The technology aims to enhance human capabilities, making AI feel like a "sixth sense" or "another limb."

The development relies on the "bitter lesson" of AI: scaling compute and data. Conduit is collecting vast amounts of non-invasive neural data to train models that predict text semantically similar to user thoughts. This approach prioritizes empowering humans rather than replacing them, fostering a "human-in-the-loop" future.