Elon Musk’s Neuralink demo shows the brain-machine interface in action

The mysterious neuroscience company Neurelink, backed by Elon Musk, is expected to unveil more details on Friday about its plans to connect computers to the human brain. While the development of this future-sounding technology is still in its infancy, the introduction is expected to Second edition A small, robotic device that inserts tiny electrode threads through the skull and into the brain. Musk Says It will show “firing neurons in real-time. The matrix in the matrix.”

Like building an underground car tunnel and sending a private rocket to Mars, this musk-backed endeavor is incredibly ambitious, but it makes it after many years of research into the brain-machine interface. The brain-machine interface is a technology that allows a computer-like device to interact and communicate with the brain. Neurlink, in particular, aims to create an incredibly powerful brain-machine interface, a device that has the power to handle a lot of data that can be inserted into relatively simple surgery. Its short-term goal is to create a device that can help people with specific health conditions.

The actual state of Neurlink’s research is somewhat weak, and Friday’s big announcement is that former employees are complaining of internal chaos in the company. Musk has already said the project could allow the monkey to control the computer device with his mind, and the New York Times reported in 2019 that Neurlink had demonstrated a system with 1,500 electrodes attached to a laboratory rat. Since then, Kasturi has hinted at the company’s progress (sometimes on Twitter), although those involved have generally spoken more closely about the state of research.

Of course, we’ll probably find out a little more during Friday’s demo. Neurlink says it will post a link to the livestream on its website before the demo starts at 6pm ET.

It is worth highlighting that Kasturi wants Neuralink to do more than treat a specific health condition. He sees the technology as an opportunity to create a widely available brain-computer interface for consumers, which he thinks could help humans keep pace with the increasingly powerful artificial intelligence.

So modest as it may be, Neurlink’s research already provides an insight into how this technology could one day change lives. At the same time, it is a reminder that, potentially, eventually merging humans with computers is destined to present a wide range of ethical and social questions, which we should now begin to think about.

Neurlink wants to connect your brain to the computer, but it will take some time

Founded in 2016, Neurlink is a neuroscience technology company focused on building systems with super-thin threads that carry electrodes. When implanted in the brain, these threads create a high-capacity channel for the computer to communicate with the brain, a system that is thought to be more powerful than research on existing brain-machine interfaces.

One of the biggest obstacles to inserting these tiny wires, which are thinner than human hair strands, is actually getting them closer to the skull and into the brain. That’s why Neurlink is also developing a tiny robot that “connects” humans and electrodes. Ultimately, the idea is to have surgery about as intensive as the Lasik eye procedure. That, at least, is the goal.

Nolan Williams, director of the Stanford Brain Stimulation Laboratory, said, “We’ve been connecting the brain to the brain for 20 or 30 years already in computer forms,” ​​citing the stima stimulation used for Parkinson’s patients as an example of connecting the brain. Computer.

“The brain uses certain frequencies and certain types of electrical thresholds to communicate with itself,” Williams explained. “Your brain is a series of circuits that intercommunicate and communicate with each other.”

Essentially, the brain-machine interface can use the electricity already used to work with a series of electrodes to connect the brain to the machine. Neurlink cites previous examples in which humans have used electrodes to control cursors and robotic limbs with their minds as the basis of their systems. But the novel about Neurlink’s scheme is minimizing the process of connecting the device to the brain, while also increasing the number of electrodes engaged. Essentially, the idea is not just to install brain-machine interfaces, but to make them more powerful.

According to Stanford Neurosurgery Professor Mahen Ams Dumson, the research is still in its infancy and as it progresses, the focus will first need to be on how technology can help people with certain, serious health conditions. While the medical applications of such technology may be widespread, it will require close oversight by the Food and Drug Administration to move it from its current, abnormal state, which will not comment specifically on Neurlink.

But Neurlink’s plans go beyond treating certain conditions. The company said it hopes to allow people to “maintain and grow” their brains and “create a coherent future.” While it may not seem like a particularly pressing need for the average person, the project sits close to Musk’s long-standing concerns about artificial intelligence. Musk had previously said the technology could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons, and warned that AI could be too powerful to prevent humans from maintaining it.

The ultimate goal for Neurlink, Kasturi explained at the 2019 launch event, is a “complete brain-machine interface” that will achieve “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”. But again, it’s still a long way off.

Brain-machine interfaces are nothing new, but they raise ethical concerns

Neurallink and Musk are not the only ones interested in the brain-machine interface. Facebook, for example, is working hard on researching its own brain-machine interface with the University of California, San Francisco. The company aims to create a “hands-free” way of communicating with computers and has also shared some very preliminary results. Last year, Facebook bought CTRL-Labs, a startup that developed technology that measures neuron activity through wearable wearables to control digital activity.

Then there is medical research, which is more general than you think.

“This has done something today,” Steven Chase of the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon said. “Clinical trials are currently underway where quadriplegic patients have implanted electrodes in their brains, and they use the neural activity recorded on those electrodes to control external devices, such as cursors on computer screens or robotic weapons.”

In fact, some of the first medical discoveries in such technology came in the late 20th century, and to some extent, brain-machine interfaces currently exist with limited capabilities. Deep brain stimulation, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, was invented in the 1980’s, using “magnetic fields” to stimulate nerve cells in the brain, which can be used to treat patients with depression, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Braingate came in the early 2000s, an experimental device that uses an array of electrodes to move the desire to move organs from the brain to an essential device, which is still being researched. The FDA approved a system in 2013 called RNS Simulator, which runs small electrical signals in the brain to prevent seizures in some patients with epilepsy.

Already, there are some major commercial devices that do something similar to the brain-machine interface. There are headbands that claim to use EEGs to measure your brain activity and then use that data from focusing on everything from operating a drone. These applications are far from technical Neurlink’s purpose, it could hint at what our future might be like: Two years ago, DARPA used an experimental brain-computer interface, a surgical microchip that allowed a paralyzed person to explore the simulation plane. Was. .

“The idea of ​​sending complex ideas wirelessly around the world is far, far away from our lifetimes,” said Tim Marler, RAND’s senior research engineer. “This is definitely not science fiction. It will eventually be mature and practical and professional, but there is still a lot of work to be done. ”

There is a large technological divide between what is currently possible in today’s research laboratories and the Musk concept, which requires devices that can handle significant information going in and out of the brain. One of the great hopes of brain-machine-interface technology is that it will ultimately help paralyzed people complete their own daily tasks. Chase, Carnegie Mellon, explains, “The greatest thing about these patients is freedom; This technology is likely to provide them with that. ”

But in addition to the technical challenges, the development of the brain-machine interface is also advancing in an unethical ethical and legal field. On Thursday, the government-funded think tank RN&D released a report on the need for policies surrounding the use of brain-machine interfaces in the military context, where new concerns such as technology-wide hacking could emerge. Of course, with devices that can snatch data from your own mind – including people’s psychological and emotional states – the privacy effects of brain-machine interfaces are also enormous.

“If brain-reading devices have the ability to read the content of ideas, governments will be interested in using this technology for interrogation and investigation in later years,” Marcelo Inca, a researcher focused on neuroscience, told Vox last year.

The list of challenges continues. Chase follows another scenario: a world in which this technology is only available to the wealthy, creating a highly technological divide. And then there are the unexpected health risks, you know, of surgically inserting computer hardware into the human brain.

With no reason to worry about it right now, Neurelink’s next big announcement is a sign that the idea of ​​connecting the human brain to a computer more regularly is rapidly becoming a reality.

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