New Elon Musk's Brain Chip Technology

Elon Musk's Bio:

Elon Musk is well-known for founding well-known businesses like Tesla and SpaceX, but the tycoon also has a number of strange businesses. He claims he started one of them in an effort to create a "symbiosis" between artificial intelligence and the human brain.

A Founder:

Musk founded the brain interface technology business Neuralink. It is creating a gadget that would be inserted into a person's brain, where it could record and maybe stimulate brain activity. The technology is like a "FitBit in your cranium," according to Musk.

According to Insider, Musk and top Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis also had twins.

Musk frequently touts the technology's potential for use in futuristic medicine, but there are some potential near-term medicinal applications as well.

1.One of Elon Musk's odd and futuristic businesses is called Neuralink.

2.It is creating technology for neural interfaces, sometimes known as implanting microchips in people's brains.

3.Neurological problems could be studied and treated with the aid of technology.

What you should know about Neuralink is as follows:

When The Wall Street Journal revealed Neuralink's existence in 2017, it was the first time the public heard of it.The business didn't make its first significant public appearance until 2019, when Elon Musk and other Neuralink executive team members demonstrated their technology in a livestreamed presentation.

Implanting of a chip:

The coin-sized chip that Neuralink is creating would be implanted in a person's skull. A network of tiny wires that are each about 20 times thinner than a human hair fan out from the chip into the patient's brain.

The cables have 1,024 electrodes that can be used to monitor brain activity and, in theory, activate the brain electrically. The chip wirelessly transmits this data to computers so that researchers can study it.

The second option is a robot that could put the chip in autonomously:

Similar to a sewing machine, the robot would operate by forcing flexible wires coming from a Neuralink chip into a person's brain with a rigid needle.

In January 2021, Neuralink unveiled a video showcasing the robot.

Musk has claimed the machine could make implanting Neuralink's electrodes as easy as LASIK eye surgery. While this is a bold claim, neuroscientists previously told Insider in 2019 that the machine has some very promising features.

Professor Andrew Hires highlighted a feature, which would automatically adjust the needle to compensate for the movement of a patient's brain, as the brain moves during surgery along with a person's breathing and heartbeat.

The robot as it currently stands is eight feet tall, and while Neuralink is developing its underlying technology its design was crafted by Woke Studios.

In 2020:

The proof-of-concept demonstration revealed how the chip could precisely predict the location of Gertrude's limbs as she walked on a treadmill and capture brain activity as the pig sniffed about for food.

Musk said that the pig had lived for two months with the chip within her head.1,024 channels may not seem amazing in terms of technology today, but the electronics used to transmit them wirelessly are cutting-edge, and the robotic insertion is wonderful, according to Newcastle University's Professor Andrew Jackson, an expert in neural interfaces.

He declared, "This is good engineering, but poor neurology."As most brain interfaces now used on test animals include wires protruding out through the skin, Jackson told Insider after the 2020 presentation that the wireless relay from the Neuralink chip may possibly have a significant impact on the wellbeing of animal test subjects in science.

In terms of number of channels or other aspects, he said,Even if the technology doesn't do anything more than we are able to do at the moment, just from a welfare aspect for the animals.

I think if you can do experiments with something that doesn't involve wires coming through the skin, that's going to improve the welfare of animals.

In April 2021:

Video of Pager, a macaque monkey, playing video games like "Pong" for banana smoothie prizes was made public by Neuralink.

Pager used a joystick that was not linked to the gaming system to play the games, which required him to use brain impulses in conjunction with arm motions to operate the cursor.

Neuralink, according to Elon Musk, allows monkeys to operate computers through brain waves:

Neuralink successfully implanted its chip into a monkey, Elon Musk enthusiastically stated in a 2019 presentation. He continued, "Just FYI, a monkey has proven able to control a computer with its brain," which seemed to catch Neuralink president Max Hodak off guard. Hodak stated, "I didn't know we were running that outcome today, but there it goes.

Two months before the video demonstration, in February 2021, Musk reaffirmed the assertion. Speaking to Insider in 2019, neuroscientists remarked that while the assertion would catch readers' attention, they did not believe it to be particularly surprising or even noteworthy.

In February 2022 about how the monkeys used in the trial were treated:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an organisation that advocates for animal rights, announced in February 2022 that it had filed a complaint with the US Department of Agriculture after obtaining more than 700 pages of records pertaining to monkeys used in Neuralink research at the University of California at Davis between 2017 and 2020.

Through a public records request, the group was able to collect the data, which also included necropsy results and veterinary records. They claimed to have shown that 23 monkeys had gone through "severe pain due to subpar animal care and the highly intrusive experimental head implants during the tests."

An animal rights organization's charges were denied by Neuralink:

In a blog post, Neuralink stated, "At Neuralink, we are fully committed to working with animals in the most humane and ethical way possible.According to Neuralink, it kept its monkeys at UC Davis while it constructed its own facility for housing animals.

Although UC Davis' facilities and animal care met and still meet legally required requirements, Neuralink stated, "we clearly wanted to improve upon these standards when we moved animals to our in-house facilities."

For its monkeys and "farm animals," it claimed to have established a 6,000 square foot vivarium in 2020. It claimed that the "environmental enrichments" in its animal cages include swimming pools, swing sets, and treehouses.

The innovation that Neuralink has so far demonstrated is very notable:

"All of the technology he demonstrated has already been created in some capacity, [...] They essentially did nothing more than wrap it up into a cute little form that transmits data wirelessly "Following the company's 2020 demonstration, Dr. Jason Shepherd, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Utah, spoke with Insider.

According to him, "if you simply saw this presentation, you would assume that it's coming out of nowhere, that Musk is doing this magic, but in fact, he's really copied and pasted a lot of work from many, many labs that have been working on this."

Regarding the use of Neuralink's technology in the medical field, Musk has also made dubious claims. He stated that the technology could "cure autism" at one point:

Elon Musk claimed Neuralink might eventually "cure a lot of brain-related ailments" while speaking with Lex Fridman on the "Artificial Intelligence" podcast in November 2019. He cited autism and schizophrenia as two examples.

The World Health Organization classifies schizophrenia as a mental disorder and classifies autism as a developmental issue rather than a disease.

One neurologist told Insider that doing brain surgery for purposes other than life-saving treatment presents significant ethical challenges:

It is very unsettling to undertake brain surgery on a healthy person, Dr. Rylie Green of Imperial College London told Insider in 2019.

She said that inserting any of these devices into the brain requires extremely risky surgery. "People engage in it because it offers the chance to enhance their lives despite their significant constraints. Playing around with it is not a good idea, "Added she.