The always controversial Elon Muskwho lately cannot cope with so much controversy, stated during an event broadcast online that his brain chip Neuralinkwhich promises to connect the brain directly to computers, will start the human trials in six months. It is not the first time that the tycoon, also the owner of Tesla, SpaceX and recently Twitter, announced these trials with hype and cymbal: just a year ago he gave the same news for 2022, without specifying a specific date. A term that, obviously, has not been fulfilled (like most of his predictions).
Neuralink is a penny-sized brain chip implanted in the brain that, Musk himself explained, could allow disabled patients to move and communicate again, or to restore vision “even people who never have been able to see before,” he said. In fact, these will be, as he himself explained, the first objectives of Neuralink. The idea is that people with amputated limbs, brain injuries or spinal damage can control a computer, mobile phone or any connected device with just their thoughts.
The company has been carrying out tests with monkeys since 2017. In fact, the video of a primate with one of its electrodes implanted playing a video game with its eyes went viral. However, months later, a report from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine accused the company of subjecting its test animals to “extreme suffering” for which 15 of the 23 test monkeys died or had to be euthanized. The company denied such accusations.
Still, the company has gone through all the paperwork to get approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start clinical trials in people. “We want to be extremely careful and make sure that it will work well before we put a device in a human,” Musk said. “At first, progress, particularly as it relates to humans, will perhaps seem agonizingly slow, but we are doing everything we can to scale it in parallel,” he added. So, in theory, progress should be exponential.” The FDA has yet to rule on the matter..
Other overly optimistic predictions from Musk
Elon Musk is very given to bombastic announcements: he has said since he will send manned missions to Mars this decade (NASA has proposed the next one, surely at the end, and many experts doubt that the deadline will be met) and colonize the Red Planet to save humanity. In fact, his illusion is to die in our neighboring world, as he has recounted on several occasions.
Still, Neuralink has repeatedly missed his internal deadlines, much more so than his boss’s predictions. In fact, Musk reached out to his competitor, Synchronousearlier this year to sound out a possible investment after expressing frustration to Neuralink employees over their slow progress, Reuters reported.
Synchron leapfrogged Neuralink by implanting its device into a US patient last July. So far, she received permission in the US for human trials last year and has already completed studies with four people in Australia.