All the Actually Important Stuff Neuralink Just Announced
While Elon Musk has been busy taking over Twitter, his brain-computer interface company Neuralink has been working on refining its technology, which is aimed at creating implants that allow a direct line of communication between the human brain and computers.
Called brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs for short, these systems use tiny electrodes placed in the brain to “read” signals from nearby neurons. Software then decodes these signals into commands or actions, such as moving a cursor or a robotic arm. In 2019, Musk claimed his company’s device would eventually allow people to achieve a “symbiosis with artificial intelligence.”
The company, founded in 2016, is still far from merging our brains with AI. In a livestreamed “show and tell” event Wednesday evening, the Neuralink team presented a grab bag of improvements to its technology. Musk did say that Neuralink has begun submitting paperwork for a human clinical trial to the Food and Drug Administration and hopes to implant a Neuralink device in a patient in six months. “We've been working hard to be ready for our first human, and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human,” Musk said.
