During an event organized this Wednesday, November 30, Elon Musk assured that one of his companies, Neuralink, would be ready to test its technology on a human brain in almost six months. This is not the first time that the billionaire has announced imminent human trials.
In addition to leading SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, Elon Musk also co-founded Neuralink. The goal of this company is to connect the human brain to a computer using an implant that slips under the skin of the skull.
A smartwatch in the brain
Neuralink’s event mostly focused on the robotic system that will be used to implant the device. The latter is made up of more than 1000 tiny threads that are connected to the gray matter of the brain to establish connections with the surrounding neurons. ” It’s like replacing a piece of your skull with a smartwatch, for lack of a better analogy “, explains Elon Musk. For ” to sew 64 threads to the brain, the robot takes about 15 minutes.
In this video that summarizes the conference, we can see the robot implanting the device in a fake brain:
The purpose of Neuralink implants is multiple. If the businessman explains that they could allow us, in the long term, not to be surpassed by artificial intelligence, their main objective is medical: to improve or restore vision in visually impaired people, to restore movement in paralyzed people, etc.
Neuralink’s greatest achievement so far is the demonstration of a monkey able to play Pong using its brain. For the scientific community, however, this remains minimal. ” These are incremental advances. The material is impressive but does not represent a dramatic advance in restoring or improving brain function says Daniel Yoshor, a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Moreover, the company Synchron, great rival of Neuralink, has already done better than the latter. In July, she successfully installed an implant in a person suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Charcot’s disease, which causes progressive loss of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Thanks to the device that translates his thoughts into computer commands, the patient should be able to surf the Internet and send text messages.
In six months… Really?
Neuralink seems determined to catch up, and fast. ” We believe that within six months we should be able to install a Neuralink on a human “, announced Elon Musk. The billionaire also claimed that it would be very likely that he himself would be fitted with an implant in the future, and that his company had taken the necessary steps to have its technology approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ) for future commercialization.
However, this date should be taken with a grain of salt. In 2019, Musk said human trials were imminent. Rebelote in 2021, where he promised that would be the case in 2022. If he is right this time, then the trials would be for mid-2023, but there are still chances that they will be pushed back.
Neuralink has experienced several setbacks since its creation. While 15 of the 23 monkeys used as guinea pigs died, the company’s co-founder, Max Hodak, decided to leave without any explanation.
Sources: The Verge, Engadget, The New York Times
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