Musk Shows Off Progress Merging Brains And Machines

Futurist entrepreneur Elon Musk revealed late Friday the strides achieved by his Neuralink company in the brain meshing of machines, claiming that it is crucial to the future of mankind, reports AFP.

Musk has long proposed that a computational network combining brains with computers is crucial if people want to prevent being so outpaced by artificial intelligence that, under the best of conditions, humans will be like "house cats."

“It’s gonna be important from an existential threat standpoint,” Musk said of the project.

“That is what I think might be the most important thing that a device like this achieves.”

Team participants discussed a "wish list" that ranged from the potential of restoring movement to the disabled and visibility to the blind, allowing telepathy and the sharing of memories for further reference — or even being transferred to the replacements.

“Yes, I think in the future you will be able to save and replay memories,” Musk said.

“This is obviously sounding increasingly like a ‘Black Mirror’ episode, but I guess they are pretty good at predicting,” he quipped, referring to a Netflix series that puts disturbing twists on near-future technology.

For now, Neuralink is being tested in pigs with the team working on the potential for clinical trials.

The demonstration was witnessed by a trio of pigs in pens: one of them was reported to have been fitted with a Neuralink system wired to track surges in the nerve function in its snout. The pig was able to concentrate on food, largely avoiding Musk and those gathered for the gathering.

Musk stated that after the first iteration of Neuralink was unveiled a little more than a year ago, the system has been streamlined and condensed to around the size of the big coin and the thickness of the skull.

With the aid of a surgical robot, a fragment of the skull is covered by a Neuralink disk and the wires are carefully implanted into the brain, the demonstration revealed.

The disk detects nerve function, relaying knowledge to a computer such as a smartphone through a standard Bluetooth wireless signal, according to Musk.

“It actually fits quite nicely in your skull. It could be under your hair and you wouldn’t know.”

The goal of the event was to draw tech talent to the project, which, according to Musk, still has a lot of work to do on chips, applications, robotics and more.