More work in this area is great

[GoodTaste]

"More work in this area is great, and I think it’s fantastic that they’re giving this attention,” says Ken Shepard, a professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at Columbia University, who is part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative to develop a flexible, implantable wireless chip that uses electrodes on the surface of the brain to record up to a million neurons.
Source: Scientific American (July 26, 2019): Elon Musk's Secretive Brian Tech Company Debuts a Sophisticated Neuiral Implant

I don't quite understand the phrase "More work in this area is great". It seems to have two different meanings to me:
(1) It means "(the current work is great, but) more work in this area has to be done".
(2) It means "(the work in discussion is great, but) there are already other works about it that are great".

Which is correct （or none perhaps）？

 

[emsr2d2]

It means "The fact that more work in this area is being done is great". It doesn't mean either of your interpretations. It's a statement of opinion. Ken Shepard thinks it's great that more work (than before) is being done in that area.

 

[GoodTaste]

My understanding got improved, but it is still not completely clear to me. The problem might have arisen from the word "more", in which something elusive appears to be lurking somewhere and is hard to catch.

Does "more work" include both the current work under discussion and the work being done but not being discussed here or does it simply refer to the latter?

 

[tedmc]

I think it just means that the quantity of work being done in general has increased. It doesn't mention what type of work.

 

[jutfrank]

It's possible that more means 'further', and that it's referring only to the work being discussed. We can't tell without seeing more context.

 

[GoodTaste]

The system unveiled last night was a long way from Musk’s sci-fi vision. But it was nonetheless marked an impressive technical development. The team says it has now developed arrays with a very large number of “channels”—up to 3,072 flexible electrodes— which can be implanted in the brain’s outer layer, or cortex, using a surgical robot (a version of which was described as a “sewing machine” in a preprint paper posted on bioRxiv earlier this year). The electrodes are packaged in a small, implantable device containing custom- built integrated circuits, which connects to a USB port outside the brain (the team hopes to ultimately make the port wireless). Neuralink also intends to have the electrodes write signals back into the brain to provide sensory feedback in the form of touch or of visual stimulation of the retina in a blind person.* The company reported some initial results of its neural interface in rats in a white paper it made public, and it is currently doing experiments in monkeys at the University of California, Davis. None of this research has been peer- reviewed.
“More work in this area is great, and ...

 

[GoodTaste]

Walking around...

 

[Tarheel]

It seems that he really means to say:

More work in this area would be ....
.
I'm not sure I understand the point though. If they want t to do .more work in that area they need to go ahead and do it.