Mohith AgadiElon Musk is a well known inventor and well known for his ambitious projects. He is also the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla motors. Now he is funding a new startup named Neuralink that is developing a technology that will allow human brains to be connected to devices like computers. According to The Wall Street Journal, Max Hodak is one of the co-founders of Neuralink who had earlier co-founded another company called Transcriptic. According to his bio at Transcriptic, Hodak worked as a research assistant at Duke University Medical Center. His job was to build brain machine interfaces for monkeys.
Musk has discussed neural lace many times on Twitter and other platforms. Speaking at the Code Conference in 2016, Musk said to think of the arrangement this way: “You have your limbic system, the cortex, and then a digital layer, sort of a third layer above the cortex that could work well and symbiotically with you.”
A neural lace is basically an implant or an appendage that would be attached to the brain; this implant would boost human intelligence and help establish seamless connections with computers. But this is the long term goal. Neuralink a startup that was registered in July last year, and for the time being it will be working on developing brain implants that are safe to use and can be used for treating neurological disorders.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed an optical fiber last year that is incredibly flexible and can be used to place implants within the body and even the brain without causing any harm to the surrounding soft tissue. However, Musk has indicated that the neural lace could be injected into the veins eliminating the need for surgery.
Musk has displayed interest in artificial Intelligence and has even called it a threat to human existence. He sponsors OpenAI, a nonprofit project that is trying to build safe AIs. Musk believes that merging with machines might be the only way that humans can stay relevant in the future.
Sai Bhargav
