Tech billionaire Elon Musk has revealed that one of his startups has enabled a ‘happy monkey’ to play video games.
"We have a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull with tiny wires who can play video games with his mind. You can't see where the implant is and he's a happy monkey. We have the nicest monkey facilities in the world. We want them to play mind-Pong with each other," said the chief executive officer of electric-vehicle maker Tesla Inc. on Clubhouse, a private social app.
The industrial designer, founder and CEO of SpaceX has claimed employees of one of his startups, Neuralink Corp., have succeeded in getting wires going into the brain of a monkey.
The topic came up as Musk spoke on the platform to try to urge engineers to seek employment at Neuralink.
He was questioned about the developments at the San Francisco-based startup, launched in 2017, whose team of around 100 people is working on developing an implementable computer-brain interface.
Musk elaborated that the basic "idea with neural link is addressing brain and spinal injuries".
“There are primitive versions of this device with wires sticking out of your head, but it’s like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires that go into your brain,” he said.
Elon Musk, known for avidly backing numerous other futuristic projects, from artificial intelligence to underground highways, insisted that AI is only going to get ‘smarter’.
As he revealed plans to insert Neuralink chips into quadriplegics who have brain or spinal injuries, to enable them to “control a computer mouse, or their phone, or really any device just by thinking,” Musk added that the startup will “probably” be releasing some videos soon to demonstrate its achievements so far.
Musk unveiled the brain implant his company Neuralink had been working on for years last summer, demonstrating the devise that was roughly the size of a coin and requires a small bit of skull to be removed, as electrodes are extended down into the brain.
In August 2020 Neuralink conducted a live demo of its technology on three pigs.
In the near term, Musk wants to implant Neuralink chips into quadriplegics who have brain or spinal injuries so that they can “control a computer mouse, or their phone, or really any device just by thinking.”
The passionate innovator also hailed breakthroughs made at research labs such as OpenAI, which he co-founded, and London-based DeepMind, acquired by Google in 2014.
Wading into sci-fi territory, Elon Musk suggested that Neuralink could potentially enable cyborg-like humans to send concepts to one another using telepathy.