Elon Musk is implanting brain chips into people

Elon Musk said that one of his companies has successfully implanted a computer chip into the human brain for the first time.

The technology entrepreneur said that the start-up company Neuralink implanted the brain chip into a subject on Sunday.

Musk wrote on his former Twitter account X: “The first person to receive an implant from Neuralink yesterday is in good shape.”

“Initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” he said, referring to cells that use electrical and chemical signals to send information around the brain and to the rest of the body.

Neuralink aims to give paralyzed people the ability to control their devices, including smartphones, using only their thoughts.

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It is currently being trialled to test the functionality of its interface and the surgical robot used to implant the chips.

Neuralink says that the teeth of the implant are too thin to be placed by human hands, so a specially designed and manufactured surgical robot performs the procedure.

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss Musk said that the name of the brain chip company’s first product is “Telepathy”.

He wrote: “It allows you to control your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking. The first users will be people who have lost the use of their limbs.

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“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or an auctioneer. That’s the goal.”

Neuralink was granted permission in the US last year for its first attempt to test its chips in humans.

This year, up to 11 people are planned to be brain chipped and thousands of volunteers have come forward.

A report by Ashlee Vance, one of Musk’s biographers, described the procedure in which a surgeon removed a piece of the skull before a robot inserted electrodes and super-thin wires into the brain.

There is a separate unit behind the ear where cables go directly to the user’s brain.

Musk reportedly urged the team to accelerate progress following last year’s breakthrough by rival Synchron, in which one of his patients sent messages to X using only his mind.

What happened in Neuralink’s first human trial?

The first trial focused on people with quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

In the trial, Neuralink hopes to give people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts.

How does Neuralink work and what can it treat?

Neuralink’s device has a chip that processes nerve signals from implants in the brain and transmits them to a unit behind the ear and from there to devices such as computers and phones.

The company hopes that a person could potentially control the mouse, keyboard, or other computer functions such as text messaging with their thoughts.

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Neuralink also believes its device will eventually be able to restore neural activity in the body and allow people with spinal cord injuries to move their limbs.

The San Francisco and Austin-based company also aims to treat neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Is Neuralink unique?

Far from it. Not only are there direct competitors like Synchron, but there are also other companies working on various types of implants.

Writing in The Conversation, David Tuffley, senior lecturer in applied ethics and cybersecurity at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, said: “Neural implants have been helping people since the early 1960s, when the first cochlear implant was placed in a hearing-impaired person . A lot of progress has been made in the 60 years since.”

Blackrock Neurotech (no relation to the asset management firm), a low-profile firm, has implanted brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in dozens of patients over the past 19 years.

Its chips have helped paralyzed patients create works of art that can play Pong in the laboratory, and the company hopes to create a version for use at home soon, with the goal of producing implants that can deal with deafness and blindness.

What did Elon Musk claim the technology could do?

In his typical style, Musk said Neuralink could lead to a future where man and machine merge and promised to build the technology himself.

He, who has made similar assertive statements in the past about the technology that he hopes can treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, said in 2019 that he would test it on humans in 2020.

Answering a question about X, Musk said that the technology could one day be used to stream music directly to users’ brains.

He added that the technology “will solve many brain/spine injuries and is ultimately necessary for AI symbiosis.”

Musk previously said: “I think over time we will probably see a closer convergence of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.

“It’s mostly about bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of you, especially throughput.”