Elon Musk is a visionary who aspires to change the course of humanity’s future. Besides aiming to transform us into a spacefaring civilization through his SpaceX aerospace company, connect the rest of the world to the internet via Starlink, and reduce Earth’s carbon emissions through Tesla, Musk also aspires to solve human health conditions through his neurotech company, Neuralink, that is developing a brain-machine interface to solve a wide variety of brain-related issues.
Neuralink will host a presentation today at 3:00 p.m. PDT [6:00 p.m. EDT] that will offer insight into the intriguing technology that Musk says – “It could, in principle, fix anything that's wrong with the brain.” During the presentation, the company will demonstrate a “working Neuralink device” and showcase “neurons firing in real-time on August 28th. The matrix in the matrix,” he said.
The broadcast will go live in the video linked below. Neuralink will have a Live Question & Answer session during the broadcast, use the hashtag #AskNeuralink via Twitter with your questions.
WATCH IT LIVE
The Neuralink brain implant, called ‘N1’, is a tiny computer chip, featuring around a thousand electrodes that will be stitched into the brain by a “sewing-machine-like” robot; where they can stimulate neurons that the brain will translate into motor controls. “We would basically take out a chunk of your skull and put the Neuralink device in there... You insert the electrode threads very carefully in the brain and then you stitch it,” Musk said earlier this year, “It would interface anywhere in the brain and it could restore your eyesight and limb functionalities.” The company plans to implant the chip into the brain of someone with quadriplegia to enable them to control prosthetic limbs, or computerized devices like a cell phone or computer – using their thoughts.
Musk claims the Neuralink device will have the potential to restore eyesight “even if you lost your optic nerve,” and return hearing sense to deaf individuals. “If you have severe epilepsy, it could detect it in real-time and stop it from occurring. […] There is a whole list of injuries, for example, if a person has a stroke, that could also be fixed if you lose muscle control.” Adding that if you have Alzheimer, Neuralink will be able to help you with restoring memory.
Last year, Musk shared the chip has been successfully implanted and tested on a monkey and mice. The work with monkeys was done in conjunction with the University of California, "The results have been very positive." In 2019, he explained the brain has two systems: The first layer is the limbic system which drives impulses. The second layer is the cortex system that tries to control the limbic system by acting as an intelligence layer. The third layer can be Neuralink, sitting on top of those two layers to work together. "Perhaps there can be a tertiary layer where digital superintelligence lies. That will be vastly more intelligent than the cortex but still co-exist peacefully and in a benign manner with the cortex and limbic system,” he stated.
Musk says Neuralink’s ultimate goal is to “achieve symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” He believes Artificial Intelligence (AI) may one day advance so much to the point it can overpower the human species, “If you can’t beat em, join em. Neuralink mission statement,” he wrote via Twitter, in reference to AI. He believes AI will outsmart the human species and that the only way to ‘beat them’ is if humans achieve a brain-computer connection to have the same level of intelligence. This afternoon’s presentation is expected to offer more up-to-date details about this intriguing technology, and reveal when the first human trials will initiate – Or if they have already initiated.
Neuralink product demo in 3 hours. Webcast at https://t.co/Y9wREd78oj.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2020
About the Author
Evelyn Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
