Elon Musk thinks he will be able to test Neuralink chips on humans within 6 months. The Connected Man could go a step further very soon.
It’s been six years since the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and recently TwitterElon Musk, co-founded the startup Neuralink, specializing in brain-controlled interfaces (BCIs). It has been three years since the company demonstrated its robot implantation, two years since the demonstration in the brain of pigs and only 19 months since the same operation in primates. After a month-long postponement in October, Neuralink was hosting its third event this Wednesday, with a big announcement from Elon Musk: “We’re probably at about 6 months from the first implantations of Neuralink in a human”.
Elon Musk thinks he will be able to test Neuralink chips on humans within 6 months
Neuralink is coming out of a rather complicated period. After its April 2021 event, co-founder Max Hodak was leaving the company. In August, Elon Musk had even, according to rumours, approached the main competitor of Neuralink, Synchron, to invest. In February, Neuralink confirmed that monkeys had died during testing of its BCI implants in Davis Primate Center from the University of California, but refuted the animal cruelty charges of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Elon Musk responded indirectly to these accusations on Wednesday: “Before we even think of implanting a device in an animal, we do everything possible with extremely rigorous tests. […] We take tremendous care and always want the device, every time we implant – whether in a sheep, a pig or a monkey – to be confirmatory and not exploratory.”
Neuralink is still awaiting FDA clearance for its implant, although the company has won the distinction of Breakthrough Device Designation from the same agency in July 2020. This program allows patients and healthcare professionals “timely access” to promising treatments and medical devices by accelerating their development and regulatory testing. In September of this year, the FDA granted this title to 728 medical devices.
In 2021, the FDA also updated its guide to good practices for clinical and non-clinical BCI tests. “The field of implanted BCI devices is rapidly advancing from basic neuroscience discoveries to translational applications and market access,” the agency said in May. “Implanted BCI devices have the potential to benefit people with severe disabilities by improving their ability to interact with their environment and, as a result, providing them with new independence in their daily lives.”
The Connected Man could take another step very soon
“In many ways, it’s like a Fitbit into your skull, with tiny wires,” Elon Musk said of Neuralink’s device during the 2021 event. to form connections with nearby neurons, providing a high-resolution view of electrical output from the brain and serving as a translator between analog electrical impulses and code computer science digital. In theory, at least. So far, Neuralink has managed to get a monkey to play Pong without a controller.
“We are all already cyborgs, in a sense,” Elon Musk explained during his talk, “your phone and your computer are extensions of yourself.” However, these devices have a number of limitations in our ability to communicate. “If you’re interacting with a phone, you’re limited by how fast you can move your fingers, or how fast you talk into your phone.” He also added that this method can only transmit “tens, maybe a hundred” bits of data per second, whereas “a computer can communicate at, you know, gigabits, terabits per second.”
“That’s the fundamental limitation that I think needs to be lifted to mitigate the risk of artificial intelligence over the long term,” he said.