The man behind Tesla has another bright idea for humanity, aside from his backed propositions like glitzy solar roof tiles to cartoonishly fast cars, colonizing other planets, and domestic energy infrastructure.
Making him a man of future tense and he strongly believe that Artificial Intelligence is the FUTURE.
As AI advances, humans will have to find a comfortable coexistence with machines that learn, or risk winding up as a “house cat” to intelligence beyond ours. Toward that goal, and with a happy side effect of therapeutic benefits for certain brain disorders, Elon Musk has been funding a company called Neuralink that wants to implant an AI interface in your brain.
Musk’s recent idea could make human to start crafting a clone of himself we all sometimes wish for, the one who runs around and does stuff on the to-do list, thereby doubling your power as a human.
Neuralink is currently working with a syringe-injectable, flexible, sub-micron-thickness substrates (note the regular grid in the ribbon pictured above) that can function as a component of implantable electronics.
It has to be stressed here that brain implants are not a casual undertaking. The people who resort to implanted electrodes and the like are people who have no other options.
These are people who suffer from degenerative brain diseases, people with intractable problems that they can’t solve by any other means than creating a hole in their braincase that incidentally gives the outside microbiome direct access to the brain.
Just what you wanted: a hole in your head that only the most intrepid bacteria can get through. Those brain-eating amoeba are going to think these implants are so cool.
As of July, Neuralink has been registered in California as a medical research company, although to date it’s had no public presence whatsoever. The injectable implants are their platform, and they’re working on therapeutic applications for people with brain diseases. But the implants aren’t just limited to treating problems.
In 2016 Vox Media Code Conference, Musk talked about his ideas for the company’s future in AI-enabled brain-computer interfaces.
The crucial things for Musk and critically important to him that machine intelligence remains under our control and aligned with our goals, and to assure that outcome, Musk wants to implant an AI “layer” in peoples’ brains.
“If we can create a high-bandwidth neural interface with your digital self, then you’re no longer a house cat,” he said.
Neuralink definitely will not start from scratch in this endeavor — it’ll start with established brain-computer interfaces (BCI).
Meanwhile, Musk told Vanity Fair that the world “are already cyborgs” and that he believes a meaningful brain interface is just 4-5 years away.
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