The website for Musk’s biotechnology company Neuralink announced Tuesday it was recruiting patients to participate in its first clinical human trial.
“Our brain-computer interface is fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go,” promises the site for Neuralink, a device Musk says will restore capability to people with paralysis.
Musk has been working on the technology for a number of years but as of yet has only tested the chip on animals. His company generated negative headlines last year when efforts to enable a monkey to play Pong resulted in the death of the animal. Some employees worry the company is rushing the technology to market and violating animal welfare laws in the process.
If the promise of enabling Jedis in training to use ‘The Force’ weren’t appealing enough, Musk says the technology will evolve over time to restore various capabilities to the disabled. “In the future, we hope to restore capabilities such as vision, motor function, and speech, and eventually expand how we experience the world,” reads the Neuralink site.
However, the outspoken billionaire is known for sometimes making grand promises without following through. People who tested underground tunnels Musk proclaimed would solve traffic congestion were unimpressed.
The tech magnate has teased his so-called ‘hyperloop technology’ for over a decade, although it has yet to materialize. Critics have theorized Musk, an automobile manufacturer, proposed the speculative technology in order to sap support among the US public for high-speed rail.