Elon Musk promises smart brain implants within six months

Between Tesla, SpaceX and now Twitter, Elon Musk has been leading another professional adventure since 2016: Neuralink. This company intends to connect the brain to a computer thanks to a chip implanted in the skull.

Wednesday, November 30, Elon Musk estimated that within six months Neuralink would be able to implant its first connected device in the brain of a human in order to communicate with computers directly by thought.

The goal of the American entrepreneur is to restore speech and mobility to paralyzed people, and sight to blind people. Beyond the potential to treat neurological diseases, Elon Musk assures that his ultimate goal is to ensure that man is not intellectually overwhelmed by artificial intelligence systems.

Implants in the brain, spinal cord or eyes

So far, Neuralink prototypes, the size of a coin, have been implanted in the skulls of animals. Several monkeys have thus been able to play video games or type words on a screen simply by following the movement of the cursor on the screen with their eyes, as shown in a video of a monkey playing ping-pong published in April 2021.

Neuralink has created its own R1 robot capable of inserting the electrodes into the brain without damaging blood vessels. It is developing other implants, which this time will be installed in the spinal cord or the eyes, in order to restore mobility or vision to paralyzed people by allowing them to interact with their environment or easily manipulate mechanical arms.

The company, based in San Francisco, employs a hundred people. In July 2021, it announced that it had completed a fundraising of 195 million euros. It had already secured €152 billion in funding from one of the company’s former co-founders.

Animal welfare controversy

The project, which raises serious ethical and political questions, remains controversial. Specialists in the medical profession are concerned about an invasive process and the fact that going back will no longer be possible once the chip is implanted in the brain.

A controversy has also swelled over animal welfare. An animal rights association filed a complaint in February for cases of sometimes fatal abuse of monkeys. According to the American press, Neuralink carried out experiments on at least 23 monkeys between 2017 and 2020. Only seven of them survived.

Elon Musk’s project is now in the hands of the FDA, the agency responsible for public health in the United States.