Six years have passed since Musk co- founded Neuralink. It has been three years since the company first demonstrated its technology, two years since the company stuck its technology into the heads of pigs, and just over 19 months since they did the same to primate. After a month-long delay in October, Neuralink held its third "show and tell" event on Wednesday where CEO Musk said, "We think probably in about six months, we should be able to have a Neuralink installed in a human."
The co- founder of Neuralink quit just after the April 2021 status update, though he said he was still a cheerleader for the company. The show of confidence was shattered this past August after Musk allegedly approached Synchron as an investment opportunity.
In February, Neuralink confirmed that monkeys had died during prototype testing of its BCI implants at the University of California, Davis primate center but denied accusations by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. On Wednesday, Musk responded to the charges.
He said that they are not cavalier about putting the devices into animals. Whenever we do the implant into a sheep, pig or monkey, we always want the device to be confirmationatory.
Synchron beat Neuralink to market when doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York successfully installed the company's inch-and-a-half long device into a person. The patient who has lost their ability to move and communicate should be able to surf the web and send text messages using their device. Musk had an affair with a Neuralink executive who is now pregnant with Musk's twins.
Neuralink was awarded the agency's breakthrough device designation in July 2020 and is still trying to get FDA approval. Patients and caregivers can more easily access promising treatments and medical devices thanks to this program. The FDA has granted that designation to over 700 medical devices.
Clinical and nonclinical BCI testing guidance has been updated by the FDA. The agency stated in its May guidance that the field of implanted BCI devices is progressing quickly. TheImplanted BCI devices have the potential to bring benefit to people with severe disabilities by increasing their ability to interact with their environment.
Musk likened Neuralink's device to a fitness tracker in his skull. The device uses 1,024, 5-micron diameter leads to "sewn" into a patient's grey matter and provide high-resolution sampling of the brain's electrical emissions and translate between analog electrical impulses and digital computer code. At the minimum. Neuralink has only been able to get a monkey to play a game.
"We are all already cyborgs in a way," Musk said, "in that your phone and your computer are extensions of yourself." He said that the devices pose limitations on our ability to communicate. It's limited by the speed at which you can move your thumbs or talk into your phone. While a computer can communicate at, you know, gigabits, Terabits per second, this method can only transmit a few hundred bits of data per second.
He said that the fundamental limitation that he thinks we need to address is the risk of artificial intelligence.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
