The South African magnate Elon Musk and his company Neuralink are preparing brain chips for human implantation in 2022.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has one of the world’s most creative and advanced technological minds: now, with his company Neuralink, he seeks to create a chip that can be implanted in the human brain.
According to Musk’s predictions, the device will be ready for human implantation at some point in 2022. The businessman’s main objective is that the chip can be used to help people who have a spinal cord injury to regain mobility throughout the whole body.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in an online interview, Musk stated that he did not want to make predictions about the results of the device but he expected it to become a functional interface between the human brain and computers.
“I think we have a chance with Neuralink to restore full-body functionality to someone who has a spinal cord injury,” said Musk, and although he did not want to generate false hope, he was “cautiously optimistic”.
Although the aim of the device will be to help people who have reduced mobility or a disability that does not allow them to move freely, this is not the only objective of Neuralink: the world’s richest man states that he aims to use the brain chip to help solve health problems related to age and neurological damage.
Musk understands that a brain chip may sound scary and questionable for many, but he emphasised the safety of the device, saying that the standards for its creation and implementation will be higher than those required by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Last April, at a conference at which Musk announced the creation of Neuralink, the magnate shared the video of a monkey with a brain chip, where the animal can be seen playing Pong, an extremely complicated game, simply “with its brain”.
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