ELON MUSK isn’t content with electric cars, shooting people into orbit, populating Mars and building underground tunnels to solve traffic problems. He also wants to get inside your brain. His startup, Neuralink, wants to one day implant computer chips inside the human brain. The goal is to develop implants that can treat neural disorders — and that may one day be powerful enough to put humanity on a more even footing with possible future superintelligent computers.

In a video demonstration Friday, Musk showed off a prototype of the device. About the size of a large coin, it’s designed to be implanted in a person’s skull by a robot. Ultra-thin wires hanging form the device would go directly into the brain. An earlier version of the device would have been placed behind an ear like a hearing aid.

Musk’s end goal is to be able to solve certain human medical conditions like memory loss, seizures, hearing loss, extreme pain, blindness, paralysis, addiction, depression, insomnia, anxiety, strokes and brain damage. But it would also involve complex human trials and FDA approval among many other things. Friday’s demonstration featured three pigs. One, named Gertrude, had a Neuralink implant.

Created by Vancouver-based industrial design firm Woke Studio, Neuralink’s bot features clean white (required for ensuring sterility), arcing lines and smooth surfaces for a look that at once flags its advanced technical capabilities, but also contains some soothing and more approachable elements, which is wise, considering what the machine is intended to do.

“While the patient may not be awake to see the machine in action, it was still important to design a non-intimidating robot that can aesthetically live alongside the iconic machines in Musk’s portfolio,” the company explains in a press release. “It also needed to meet a long list of medical requirements in terms of sterility and maintenance, and provide safe and seamless utilization for its operators.”

Woke says the Neuralink surgical robot can be separated into three main parts: The head, the body and the base. The head of the robot is that helmet-like piece, which actually holds the head of the patient. It also includes a guide for the surgical needle, as well as embedded cameras and sensors to map the patient’s brain. The intent of the design of this piece, which includes a mint-colored interior, is to give the robot “an anthropomorphic characteristic” that helps distract from the invasive nature of the procedure. There are also single-use disposable bags that line the interior of the helmet for sterile operation.

The Neuralink robot also has a “body,” that humped rear assembly, which includes all the parts responsible for the motion of the robot as it sets up from the procedure. The third element is the base, which basically keeps the whole thing from tipping over, and apparently also contains the computing brains of the brain-bot itself.

Hooking a brain up directly to electronics is not new. Doctors implant electrodes in brains to deliver stimulation for treating such conditions as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and chronic pain. In experiments, implanted sensors have let paralyzed people use brain signals to operate computers and move robotic arms. In 2016, researchers reported that a man regained some movement in his own hand with a brain implant.

But Musk’s proposal goes beyond this. Neuralink wants to build on those existing medical treatments as well as one day work on surgeries that could improve cognitive functioning, according to a Wall Street Journal article on the company’s launch.

While there are endless, outlandish applications to brain-computer interfaces — gaming, or as someone on Twitter asked Musk, summoning your Tesla — Neuralink wants to first use the device with people who have severe spinal cord injury to help them talk, type and move using their brain waves.

“I am confident that it would be possible to restore someone’s full-body motion,” said Musk, who has also famously said that he wants to “die on Mars, just not on impact.”

Neuralink is not the only company working on artificial intelligence for the brain. Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who sold his previous payments startup Braintree to PayPal for US$800 million, started Kernel, a company working on “advanced neural interfaces” to treat disease and extend cognition, in 2016.

(SD-Agencies)