Imagine a monkey with a chip in his brain playing a video game with just the thoughts in his head. It seems that the day when such a strange imagination will become reality is not long before.
According to foreign media such as the British newspaper Independent on the 1st (local time), Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently announced that Neuralink has succeeded in implanting a wireless computer chip into the monkey brain in the audio-only social media’Clubhouse’. .
Neurallink is a startup in the field of neuroscience, founded by Elon Musk in 2016. Elon Musk explained that he implanted a computer chip that connects video games to the monkey’s brain so that he could play video games with just his thoughts.
“It looks happy” of the monkey being tested, he said, referring to the fact that a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) investigator said the Neurallink Lab was the best monkey facility ever seen. He added that Neurallink’s facility meets US regulatory requirements.
This is not the first time Neurallink has implanted a computer chip in an animal’s brain. Neurallink spurred the development of technology that connects the human brain and computer, and in August of last year, it introduced a pig with a chip implanted in the brain, attracting attention. Following the pig, this time the chip was planted in the monkey’s brain.
This ultimately brings us closer to the goal of implanting chips into the human brain. Neurallink plans to use its wireless chip for the treatment of brain diseases and diseases in the short term. But the long-term goal is much more ambitious. From the concept of’the symbiosis of humans and AI’ to what Musk calls’conceptual telepathy’, the application area is expected to be endless.
Musk argues that when humans think about a complex series of concepts, they can greatly improve the quality and speed of communication by passing them directly to others without compressing them. Furthermore, he even told a rather science fiction story that he might be able to decide whether to become a robot, a human, or something else, saying that he could even save the state of his brain and return to someone else’s body or robot body after death.
Of course, there are some caveats to this future technology. When downloading or transmitting thoughts and consciousness, some memory and consciousness may be lost. In response, Musk said, “It won’t be exactly the same, but it’s true that when I woke up in the morning, I wasn’t exactly the same as yesterday.
Musk said he will disclose the progress of Neurallink’s research in more detail next month. It is expected that in about a month, you will be able to see the image of the monkey planting the chip through video.
Meanwhile, other companies and research institutes besides Neurallink are also accelerating research and development of the interface (BCI) that connects the human brain and computer. Facebook acquired the neural interface startup CTRL-Labs in 2019 and disclosed its BCI-related achievements using a headset device to read thoughts.
Last year, researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia developed a small, clip-sized brain device (Stentrode™) that drew attention when they discovered a way to connect the human brain to a computer through a vein. In addition, researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in the U.S. developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that converts brain waves into text in March last year.
Reporter Yoon Young-joo of AI Times [email protected]
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