For the last few days, Neuralink is selling like hotcakes. Before you look too stupid in front of your kids, here is a quick jab (60 Secs or time-back ;-) at brain’s magical future and decide for yourself what it means for you, your drinking buddy or your great-grandchildren or your business (it never hurts ;-))
[1] Neuralink Corporation is an American neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk and others, developing implantable brain-machine interfaces. On 16th July 2019, Neuralink held a live-streamed presentation at the California Academy of Sciences where he spoke about human testing for brain-computer interface.
[2] This next-generation brain-computer interface aims to connect human brains and machines with more precision. The aim is to understand and treat Alzheimer's or neurological conditions like movement disorders, spinal cord injury and even blindness.
[3] The process is initiated when tiny threads ( about a tenth of the cross-sectional area of a human hair) are inserted by robots into the human brain via a very small 2mm incision (dilated to 8mm) bypassing any blood vessel.
[4] These wisp with 1,024 wires is attached to a small chip that connects wirelessly to a detachable pod behind the ear which, in turn, communicates with a smartphone. The behavior recorded from “neural spikes” are fed back to the smartphone.
[5] This previously was tested on monkeys and helped them control a computer with their brain. Neuralink aims to start testing the technology in humans before the end of next year.
[6] The bigger picture here is this brain-computer interaction aims to mitigate the existential threat of AI in the long run. That can be possible by allowing brains to link with computers to augment the intelligence and, in turn, allow them to compete with artificial intelligence.
See I told you 60 Secs, No? ;-)
