/ It will be in “symbiosis with artificial intelligence” /

Dear readers, welcome back! I’m once again looking at artificial intelligence applied to human beings, because a future that was thought to be very far away is closer than we think, given the latest experiments.

Those with short-term memory problems will be able to undergo a memory expansion, just like a personal computer: “You could basically store your memories and potentially download them into a new body or into a robot. The future is going to be weird,” Elon Musk announced.

Elon Musk never stops. After rewriting the history of space exploration with the launch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft made by his company SpaceX, now the visionary wants to amaze the world with his latest invention: a chip to be implanted in the human brain to restore speech and mobility to people who are paralysed. His brain-computer interface design is receiving a lot of attention, but also scepticism, from the scientific community. “It’s like a Fitbit (a smartwatch) in your skull”, Musk explained during an online conference on the progress of the project which, pending approval for humans, is being tested on a pig, called Gertrude, by Neuralink, one of the many start-ups of the founder of Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk presented a chip with ultra-thin wires a year ago, which can be implanted in the brain by a robot. The new model, using Bluetooth wireless technology, recharges at night and measures 23mm in diameter (like a small coin) by 8mm thick. Theoretically, the round chip will be implanted in the brain without having to spend a night in the hospital and leaving no trace except a small scar under the hair. 

It will primarily be used to treat neurological diseases, but the long-term goal is to make the implants so safe, reliable and simple that they qualify for elective surgery. People could then spend a few thousand dollars to equip their brains with computing power.

For the time being, in the Neuralink labs, Gertrude the pig walks on a treadmill, with her snout in a trough hanging in front of her, while the chip transmits her neurological signals. From this information, the computer can predict at any time where each of its limbs are. This gives hope to restore the mobility of paraplegic people. In the event of a spinal cord injury, another chip could be implanted at the injury site and bypassed the damaged “transmission circuits”, Elon Musk envisages. The chip should allow us to reach “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”. His team dreams, among other things, to end extreme pain, to cure depression and addictions or to reveal the mysteries of consciousness. “The future  is going to be weird. In the long term, it will be possible to restore full body motion,” Musk said.

Musk’s goal with this YouTube presentation was primarily to attract and recruit engineers, surgeons, chemists, robotics specialists and others. The start-up only has 100 employees, but hopes to reach 10,000 as soon as possible, to face the many challenges that will arise on the road to this project. The computer chip must be protected against both external (wave interference, signal strength) and internal disturbance. Communications with the smartphone and any other machinery must be inviolable. And of course, as with Tesla’s self-driving cars, behind the boss’s ambitious announcements, the chip will need the green light from regulators.

But the billionaire isn’t alone, as more brain-machine interfaces are being developed. Facebook is funding a project to translate brain activity into words, using algorithms, to let people who are mute due to neurodegenerative diseases speak. Many scientists point out, however, that the brain is not as compartmentalised as one would like to think. “Each brain has a unique, massively interconnected structure,” commented Cardiff University researcher Dean Burnett before the conference, saying he is sceptical of Neuralink’s true findings. But with Musk the step from science to science fiction is a short one, and indeed he even dreams of colonising Mars and the Moon.

Oscar Giacomin  / General Manager, Facto Edizioni

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