Elon Musk promises implants connected to the human brain within six months

No, this is not a prologue to an episode Black glass : Within six months, a brain implanted device will be able to communicate directly with a computer through thought. At least that’s what Elon Musk, whose startup Neuralink is working on, predicted Wednesday.

“Obviously we want to be very careful and make sure it works well, but we have submitted all our documents to the FDA (the agency responsible for public health in the United States) and we think we will do it within six months. The boss of Tesla and SpaceX during the presentation of the progress of Neuralink said.

“We are now confident that NeuraLing’s device is ready for humans, so the timeline depends on the FDA approval process,” he clarified on Twitter on the social network that bought it a month ago.

The billionaire is used to making dangerous predictions, especially about the autonomy of Tesla electric cars. In July 2019, he estimated that Neuralink could perform its first trials on individuals in 2020.

But so far, coin-sized prototypes have only been implanted in animal skulls.

Many monkeys are capable of “playing” in this way Video games or to “type” words on a screen by following the movement of the cursor on the screen.

Elon Musk and Neuralink engineers on Wednesday took stock of the startup’s latest advances in development of a robotic surgeon and other implants placed in the spinal cord or eyes that can generate movement or vision.

Beyond the possibility of treating neurological diseases, Elon Musk’s ultimate goal is to ensure that humans are not overly affected by intellectual systems.Artificial intelligence.

Other companies, such as Synchron, which announced in July that it had implanted the first brain-machine interface in the U.S., are working on controlling computers through thought.

In recent months, Elon Musk has urged his employees to work faster. “We’re all going to die before anything useful happens,” he told the Neuralink team, according to Bloomberg.

Musk recently fired more than half of Twitter’s employees, as well as executives at the social network who publicly expressed views against him. He asked the rest of the staff to commit to work in a “very serious” way.

Neuraling’s annual conference also serves to stimulate professional interest in recruiting diverse professionals.

With Agence France-Presse.

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