At a San Francisco event, the genius himself- Elon Musk- announced that this chip would be attaining a sort of symbiosis with artificial intelligence, while also enhancing one’s own brain.
Elon Musk is renowned for his ventures into economics (PayPal), automobile industries (Tesla), and space exploration (SpaceX). But, this could possibly be his most ambitious project ever.
But why? Well, Musk announced that this project was solely developed to counter the supposed ‘existential threat’ that AI would put before humans. In order to fully procure and provide equality between man and machine, this was indeed a necessary step. In fact, this could also be used to treat brain diseases, amongst other things. In what has been perceived as a slip, Musk also revealed that it has already been tested on a monkey, in his lab.
Elon Musk’s greatest fear could possibly be waking up one day and realizing that humanity has fallen so far behind machines, that they can be simply seen as pets. This could very well be a reason why he decided to venture into biotechnology. He believes that there is a near urgent need for an ‘ultra high bandwidth’ that would connect humans to computers, and give them the necessary push required in order to compete with such vastly mechanized, well, machines.
In his usual sarcasm, he mentioned at a conference in the year 2016 that he didn’t quite see himself as a house pet. The best thing to do would probably be bringing in technology that would serve as a buffer between the information gap.
Even if it does seem straight out of a science fiction novel, with all the transhumanism and information sharing, Neuralink believes that it can begin clinical procedures as early as next year. Currently, there would be a robot implanting the thread into a human brain. The threads would be attached to a chip inside the brain, and the thread would be near invisible to the human eye.
Neuralink hopes that someday it would be as seamless as a laser eye treatment.
It is the very size of the Neuralink system that makes it exceedingly effective. Previous attempts have all been bogged by a pretty big system that could contain only 256 electrodes. The white paper that reported on the Neuralink system states that it has an array of tiny and flexible threads which can contain up to 3072 electrodes, over 96 threads.
But the first thing they would be used for, is help paraplegics access the computer. Although, that would take some time. Max Hodak, the president of Neuralink has mentioned in a statement that it will take some time for the patients to understand what they have to do, for they would have to start learning how to use their electronic ‘arms’ just like an infant.
But hopefully, it would be a boon to them.