The American tycoon Elon Musk presented, on Friday August 28 via his start-up Neuralink, the new connected chip which aims to restore speech and mobility to paralyzed people.
- This chip initially to treat neurological diseases before being able to endow our brain with computing power.
- The Neuralink company has obtained authorization from the American health authorities to carry out tests.
- Elon Musk wants to develop many advances with this chip: communicate without having to speak, save his memories digitally and cure many diseases.
Elon Musk continues to diversify his activities. After the Tesla electric car, space company SpaceX unveiled it last Friday, August 28 via a press conference broadcast on YouTube, the new model of the chip developed by its start-up Neuralink which should make it possible to restore speech and mobility to paralyzed people. Connected to a computer, it must initially make it possible to treat neurological diseases before being able to endow our brain with computing power. A technology that questions the scientific community.
Bypass damaged transmission circuits
The new model of this chip, presented for the first time a year ago, is wireless and works via Bluetooth. The size of a small coin, 23 millimeters in diameter by 8 mm thick, it recharges at night and can be implanted in the brain without leaving any visible trace apart from a small scar. It is implantable without the need to spend a night in the hospital. “It’s like a Fitbit (connected watch, editor’s note) in your skull”, summarized Elon Musk during the online conference.
The presentation of the chip was made with Gertrude, a pig who serves as a guinea pig for the billionaire’s start-up. As he walks on a roller carpet with his snout in a manger hung in front of her, the computer to which the chip is connected retransmits his neurological signals. The latter is able to predict where each of its members are, enough to give hope of allowing paralyzed people to regain mobility. In the meantime, another action could be used: in the event of a spinal cord injury, the chip implanted at the site of the injury to avoid damaged transmission circuits. “In the long term, I am sure that we will be able to regain the full use of his body.”, projects Elon Musk.
Snout Boops https://t.co/ZJogq2ulvf
—Neuralink (@neuralink) August 30, 2020
A symbiosis with artificial intelligence
According to Elon Musk, the chip is supposed to allow us to arrive at a “symbiosis with artificial intelligence (AI)”. The Neuralink company has obtained authorization from the American health authorities to carry out tests. The latter wants to be able to communicate without the need to speak and therefore to be able to overcome language barriers thanks to “consensual and conceptual non-linguistic telepathy”. He also wishes to be able to put an end to extreme pain, to cure depression and addictions or to unravel the mysteries of consciousness. Finally, the billionaire desires to want to store the memories in digital form. “You will be able to save your memories, and also potentially upload them to another body or to a robothe predicted, referring to an episode of the dystopian series Black Mirror where technologies take over humans. The future is gonna be weird.”
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