Why Elon Musk Wants to Implant an Electrical Wire in Your Brain

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Elon Musk's Neuralink is planning on inserting electrodes in brains to help people who are paralyzed use robotic prosthetics.
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Elon Musk’s Neuralink presentation in July 2019 discussed what the company has been up to. Neuralink is developing a brain-machine interface, or BMI, that would be implanted into patients who are paralyzed to help them control their electronics and use robotic limbs. Musk and Neuralink even envision a future where people who are able-bodied also have BMIs that will allow them to communicate with artificial intelligence more efficiently.

But BMIs are nothing new, they’ve been around for more than a decade. In the past, BMIs have used an array of stiff needles with electrodes to detect neural activity, but Neuralink’s brain implant is a bit different.

Neuralink’s implants would use flexible threads—thin, cellophane-like filaments containing electrodes—which would measure between 4 to 6 micrometers in width and would allow a higher volume of data to be transferred. Neuralink’s implants will be more difficult to insert but could be less invasive and damaging.

But Neuralink’s goals don’t stop at these implants, Musk and the company also hope to replace the physical drill that is needed to pierce the skull to access the brain, with lasers.

Is Musk’s goal to make the human relationship with AI a symbiotic one possible? Or is he looking at such a big picture he’s painting off-canvas?

Learn more about what Neuralink and Musk have been up to on this episode of Elements.

#ElonMusk #Neuralink #AI #Seeker #Elements #Science

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Read More:

What’s new and what isn’t about Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/61...
"Musk and company showed off a miniature, dedicated computer chip whose job it is to turn the electrical noise from neurons into crisp digital signals."

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Wants ‘Sewing Machine-Like’ Robots to Wire Brains to the Internet
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/te...
"One of Neuralink’s distinguishing techniques is that it places flexible threads of electrodes in proximity to neurons, the tiny cells that are the basic building blocks of the brain."

Paralyzed man sips beer using robot arm he controls with his mind
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/21/86...
"Instead, his group targeted a different area in the brain, one he'd studied in animals, called the posterior parietal cortex. While the primary motor cortex focuses on specific muscle movements, the posterior parietal cortex is about planning movements."

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