Not long ago, Elon Mush proudly shared the accomplishments of Neuralink – one of Musk’s companies that specifically looks after developing a brain-machine interface. At the time, Musk demonstrated the small chip with tiny wires that that could be implanted into the human brain to improve interaction with machines. If you assumed that it would take a while for the technology to work effortlessly, Musk now says that one of those chips just helped a monkey play a game with just the mind.
In a recent interview on the Clubhouse platform, Elon Musk declared that Neuralink was successful in testing the chip with a monkey. Using the chip’s wireless abilities, the test monkey was able to play a video game just by using its mind. “We’ve already got a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull, and the tiny wires, who can play video games using his mind,” says Musk in the Good Time Show on Clubhouse.
Neuralink allows monkey to play video games
“He’s not uncomfortable, and he doesn’t look weird. And you can’t even see where the neural implant went in,” says Musk. He added that video game playing monkey was able to control the electronic interface completely using its mind.
Neuralink chip
The wireless bit is quite important for the health of the monkey as it prevents any build-up of infection – something that could otherwise flare-up with wired connectivity in living beings. Once the technology is ready for humans in the future, it will be possible for us to completely control home appliances and other machines by just using our minds – something akin to Magneto from the X-Men.
Of course, the safety of such systems is yet to be determined and it remains to be seen as to how a chip implant in the brain affects health on the long term. Neuralink in its initial presentations pointed out new possibilities for paralysis patients as well as those with disabilities.
The N1 sensor chip can be controlled by a smartphone app and connects to the implant module inside the brain wirelessly via an external module. Neuralink is using robots to do the surgeries on animals and has so far successfully placed the chip as well as its threads successfully.
Given that Elon Musk is involved, the technology has to look cool, right? After all, his Tesla will sell an electric pickup truck, i.e. Cybertruck, with bulletproof capabilities later this year just for the sake of fun (Mushk mentioned that in an interview with Jay Leno). So, what’s his plan for Neuralink? “One of the things we’re trying to figure out is can we have the monkeys play mind ‘Pong’ with each other,” says Musk. “That would be pretty cool.”
Oh Elon!
from Neuralink chip lets monkey play video games from its mind, says Elon Musk
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