Neuralink and its future possibility

Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla, SpaceX, and Hyperloop, has created a company called Neuralink, which is working on putting brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) into the human skulls. The creation of Neuralink is a science-fiction concept called Neural Lace that is part of the fictional universe in Scottish author Iain M. Banks’ series of novels The Culture.

Neuralink will potentially be a way for you to communicate with your loved ones, search the web, and interact with your symbiotic AI. It could even replace your television, streaming content straight into your brain. Neuralink is still in very early stages, so, actual product information is practically non-existent.

As you can imagine, the whole subject of brain-computer interfaces is pretty complicated, so to explain what Musk’s plans are in a way that will make sense, we’re going to explain a bit about Neuralink in this post.

Neuralink

Neuralink Corporation is an American neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk and others, developing implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). It was started in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017. The company’s headquarters are in San Francisco. The company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities to research on this project.

According to Neuralink, it was working on a “sewing machine-like” device capable of implementing very thin threads into the brain. It can demonstrate a system that reads information from a lab rat via 1500 electrodes (said to be 15 times more than the current maximum for systems used in human brains) and anticipated to start experiments with humans in 2020.

At present, some neuroprosthetics can interpret brain signals and allow disabled people to control their prosthetic arms and legs. Neuralink aims to link that technology with implants that, instead of actuating movement, can interface at broadband speed with other types of external software and gadgets.

Neuralink is working on developing implanting devices in paralyzed humans, allowing them to control phones or computers. In the long run, the researchers hope to develop computer chips that can be embedded in a person’s brain by a surgical robot.

Future possibilities of Neuralink

• Neuralink’s technology would allow humans to effectively merge with AI.

• It describes the futuristic technology as an “ultra-high bandwidth” connection between the human brain and computers.

• The implant would connect wirelessly to a small behind-the-ear receiver that could communicate with a computer.

• The implant could one day help quadriplegics control smartphones, and perhaps even endow users with a sort of telepathy.

• Neuralink’s promise of a brain-connected device that looks as nondescript as a hearing aid – the kind of thing you could hide with hair or a hat – is exciting to scientists who have spent years working on this technology.

• It would collect electrical signals sent out by the brain and interpret them as actions.

• This technology can be applied to things like thought transmission, memory enhancement or working with artificial intelligence.

• Neuralink could be a boon for people with conditions such as quadriplegia, enabling increased independence and ushering in potentially life-transforming technology out of the lab and into the real world.

• Neuralink aims to make devices that initially would treat serious brain disease and brain damage.

• The ultimate goal of this system is to allow humans to communicate wirelessly with machines directly from their brains.

• This is expected to bring humanity up to a higher level of cognitive reasoning.

• Neuralink is going to enable humans to upload and download information directly from a computer.

• By 2020 we’ll have computers that are powerful enough to simulate the human brain.

• By 2029, humans will already have completed the reverse engineering of the human brain. That will provide humans with the software and algorithmic methods to simulate all of the human brain’s capabilities including emotional intelligence.

• Computers by that time will be far more powerful than the human brain. Humans will be able to create machines that do have subtlety and suppleness of human intelligence.

• Machines will be able to impart human knowledge with a few keystrokes and remember billions of things accurately.

• Machines will be able to share knowledge in electronic speeds that are a million times faster than the human language.

• With this technology, humans will have expanded the intelligence of the human-machine civilization a billion-fold.

The technology still has a lot of hurdles to overcome, but the presentation shows that they are making real progress. Not only are they working on solving the basic scientific problems to implement the technology, but they’re keeping things in mind that would impede later progress, by designing for those problems from the beginning. They’ll move to treat simpler and simpler problems until the system is very mature.