- Musk presented the new device yesterday at an event in San Francisco
- Neuralink, the startup behind it, has raised more than $150 million from investors
- The startup aims to start tests with humans over the next year
The business world is used to the comparisons between Elon Musk‘s ventures and science fiction. But yesterday night, he sure got one step closer to make fiction reality (or would it be the opposite?). As reported by Bloomberg, the Tesla founder unveiled his brand new project at an event in the California Academy of Sciences: a device that can read your mind once implanted in the brain. What is it for? To control virtually any other device – using only your thoughts.
Under the Neuralink brand, a company that Musk quietly launched in 2017, the device appears simple, a small pod worn behind the ear, working with small threads that are surgically implanted through the user’s skull, linking it to the brain. These wires allow the user to transmit information to a computer by simply thinking. Matrix, Black Mirror – you name it.
“This is going to sound pretty weird, but ultimately, we will achieve symbiosis with artificial intelligence. This is not a mandatory thing. It is a thing you can choose to have if you want. This is something that I think will be really important on a civilization-level scale”, said Musk during the conference in San Francisco.
Neuralink has so far run tests on animals only – rats and monkeys – but the startup will seek approval to start clinical trials in humans as early as next year. At first, these tests have a medical goal and should be carried out on patients with paralysis, completely changing the lives of people whose movements are limited due to injuries. But Neuralink’s plan is to take this venture even further, for whoever wants to be cybernetically enhanced in the future.
