Elon Musk says his company Neuralink, which specializes in brain-computer interfaces (ICC, or BCI for brain computer interface), is almost ready to launch human trials, perhaps mid-2023.
At an event that appeared to be a new recruiting drive for Neuralink, Musk — head of Tesla, Space X and owner of Twitter — said the human-computer interface startup could place one of its devices in the head of a person within six months, that is to say at some point in 2023.
Musk previously hoped to achieve this by 2020. Since 2017, the firm has been working on an interface to connect computers to brains, and in the meantime, the startup has been testing its prototype hardware implant on monkeys.
Have an Apple Watch or Fitbit instead of a piece of skull
Neuralink isn’t the only company exploring human-computer computing, an emerging field made possible by medical technologies that use EEG (Electroencephalography) and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to reveal the physical functioning of the brain. in action. But it has shed light on the possibility of directly connecting a human brain to computers. Scientists explored the potential of CHF for people with serious muscle control diseases like ALS (Lou Gerig’s disease or motor neurone disease) by turning thoughts into text. That’s one of Nueralink’s goals, but Musk also said BCI can help humans keep pace with artificial intelligence.
Musk showed a video of one of Neuralink’s lab monkeys, Pager, fitted with a brain implant and playing “mind Pong”. Neuralink has tested the device on six monkeys so far, and it says it has “really improved Pager.”
“What’s interesting is that you can’t even see the implant. We’ve miniaturized the implant to the point where it’s kind of like having an Apple Watch or Fitbit instead of a piece of skull , for lack of a better analogy.”
“The idea of going to the Moon – easy. Going to the Moon – very difficult”
Musk said he could have had a Neuralink device implanted and viewers wouldn’t know he was being assisted by the device. “He looks pretty normal…Hypothetically, I could be one of those demos,” he said, as Pager played Pong with a controller. Pager plays “telepathic video games,” he said.
Musk pointed out that it was much more difficult to go from a prototype to a medical device that was safe and approved by health authorities. He compared placing an implant in a human brain to sending a human to the Moon – NASA’s current ambition on the Artemis I mission, which Space X is not involved in for the moment. instant. “The idea of going to the moon – easy. Going to the moon – very difficult,” he said.
Musk said Neuralink had submitted “most of the paperwork to the FDA” and thinks in about six months she should be able to put her first Neuralink device on it. a human skull.
It then showed a monkey moving a cursor with its mind. “But what’s cool is that the monkey moves the cursor using only his mind to the highlighted key and spelling out what we want him to spell…So that’s something that could be used for someone who is quadriplegic or quadriplegic.”
Musk said he’s confident that someone without any interface to the outside world will be able to control their smartphone “better than someone with working hands.”
To go further on Neuralink
Source: “ZDNet.com”