Elon Musk Finally Unveils His Plans for Neuralink

Elon Musk has taken the covers off publicly for the first time regarding his secretive company ‘Neuralink’. On Tuesday night, Musk went on stage to rephrase his original pitch, but now with a whitepaper providing more details. Thus making his ideas sound a lot less like science fiction this time, and a lot more tangible.

In case this is the first time you are hearing of Neuralink, the company’s goal is to develop brain-machine interfaces. As artificial intelligence progresses, Musk believes that humans must “evolve” along to keep up. He believes that interfacing with machines is the best way for this to happen since we are not exactly going to evolve naturally.

Does This Mean Surgical Implantation of Devices?

It may sound rather crude, but the earliest plans for Neuralink involve linking the brain with physical wires to transfer data. They are calling these “threads.” Each thread is 4 to 6 μm in width. Which is much thinner than the human hair that are between 17 to 181 μm. Furthermore, it will require as many as “3,072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads,” according to the whitepaper.

Advance plans will forego wires and will instead less invasive laser beams rather than drilling holes. According to Musk, they are hoping to conduct early experiments by end of next year. They are conducting this with neuroscientists at Stanford University.

So far, Musk claims that early tests show success with an implanted monkey able to control a computer.

Where Can I Watch Elon Musk’s Neuralink Presentation?

The event was livestreamed on YouTube last night. You can now watch the presentation in its entirety below.

Aside from Elon Musk opening the presentation, he had several experts taking the stage. This includes Neuralink President Max hodak, Neurosurgeon Dr. Matt McDougal, and more. There is also a Q&A portion towards the end around the 2 hours 47 minute mark.