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Elon Musk, the famous billionaire behind SpaceX and Tesla, made a promise and he kept it, more or less. Musk’s promise was that he would show a working prototype of a device that connects to the brain of Neuralink, his neurotechnology company. Technically he did, but with the help of “three little pigs.” However, after many explanations about the potential of the technology, it all ended up revealing a recruitment video for computer engineers to send their CV to this company and help build the device.
Neuralink is like a Fitbit [marca de pulseira inteligente] in your skull, with little threads, ”Musk said.
“We are not trying to make money, we are trying to convince fantastic people to come and work at Neuralink.Musk said at the beginning of the presentation bluntly. Even so, he did not stop showing a prototype gadget that wants to help solve health problems in the future and create a more fluid connection between humans and machines.
We need people to help us in engineering, if they worked on devices like smart watches and smartphones, we want them to contact us. Attention, no previous brain experience is necessary. Submit your resumes, ”Musk said.
In practice, the neuralink (the device has the same name as the company) is still a prototype and promises to have real potential, but nothing is certain. You can see it in the image of this article. It is about the size of a “coin”, replaces a small part of the skull to connect to the brain, and is installed through a small operation performed by a robot. Yes, you read that right. So it’s just like any other current device – it charges wirelessly like a “smartwatch or smartwatch” and allows you to transmit signals from the brain directly to an app on your phone via Bluetooth. In total, it communicates with the brain through 1,024 small electrodes that are connected to the brain.
The robot that Musk wants to install neuralink in the brain
This allows you to connect your brain to other devices to Replace eyes with cameras or “know if a person is going to have a heart attack and warn them in advance.”, as Musk explained. And how much does this cost? “At first it will be very expensive, but it will stop being very expensive,” says Musk. “We want to reduce the price to the maximum.” “With the surgery we want it to cost a few thousand dollars, I think it is possible,” said the businessman who wants to launch them in the future, but has not given a specific date.
The evolution of the neuralink Musk introduced in 2019 and what he showed now. It’s only the size of “a coin,” he says
The digital conference was scheduled for 11 pm on Friday and began more than 40 minutes late. At one point, it was Elon Musk who gave some sign of life and said, in the Twitter, that the event was going to “start soon”. What happened next was Musk’s unusual style.
How will a neuralink be installed?
He began the presentation with several promises and showed the “three little pigs” as he called the millionaire, whom he uses for tests. One, Gertrude, had a Neuralink implemented in her brain and this allowed a machine to recognize her every time she smelled food. On the physical technological side, in addition to the machine, this is what Musk showed. Then came the promises of the potential of technology.
The best way to explain what neuralink is is to show how the human body can be improved through technology. So far the answer has been answered by science fiction, be it the Robocop of the 80s, the superhero DC Cyborg or, more recently, with Bethany Bisme-Lyons from the BBC series “Year and Years”.
Taking as an example the last series that shows a future close to ours, without doing too many spoilers [revelações] – Bethany says she wants to be “transhuman”. What does that mean? What Neuralink wants to try to give to the market and it demonstrated at this conference: to allow through technology that, little by little, our body can connect more and more with machines. Unfortunately, as this series also shows, there can be downsides; imagine that you have to update the software in your body to continue living normally, for example.
One of the nuts that Musk brought to the stage. This was Dorothy, who had a neuralink installed and was removed
Each of the pigs Musk brought to the digital stage had a purpose and one of the two that did not have neuralink was “proof” of how the billionaire even thinks about replacing devices that, perhaps, we want to connect to our brains. Sow Dorothy “had a neuralink installed and it was removed,” explained the businessman. “This is to show how anyone who wants to remove the device can do so without damaging or updating it. Nobody wants to walk around with an old smartphone modelIllustrou Musk.
“[Com o Neuralink instalado] You only see a small scar. You could have one now and you wouldn’t even notice it with your hair. Maybe yes, ”Musk explained, laughing. In addition to the device, he also showed the machine that can help doctors perform surgery to implant a neuralink. The businessman explained: “In less than an hour you get settled in, that’s the goal. We can go to the hospital one morning and leave at the end of the afternoon. We close with super glue and then you can walk, it’s very cool ”. Musk says he’s already working with US health officials, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), to be able to develop everything.
We want this robot to be able to do all the surgery. We want to have a completely autonomous system, ”Musk said.
The remainder of the conference was devoted to answering questions posted by Twitter about what the team currently developing neuralink and Elon Musk hope this device can do. “Will it be possible to play video games?”; “Can I one day call my Tesla by telepathy?”; “Are we going to be able to talk telepathically with other people with a Neuralink?”; “Will I be able to save my memories as computer files?”. What was not lacking were almost science fiction questions that, as a rule, had an answer of “yes, it will be possible.” Is that what Neuralink is going to do? After the presentation, it does not feel good. However, Musk and the team showed that they are captivated and have the imagination to think of these scenarios that they want the gadget to do.
[Veja no vídeo abaixo a apresentação desta sexta-feira da Neuralink]
Musk has repeatedly stated that he believes advanced, rampant, and unregulated artificial intelligence represents an existential risk to humanity. For this, he repeated the idea that Neuralink is intended to be a means of protection against this threat. Additionally, Musk has also reported in recent years that connection to a computer via a mouse or keyboard is limited and that a more advanced system can fix these shortcomings.
Neuralink Corporation is a company registered in the US state of California in the field of neurotechnology and was founded in 2016. It aims to develop interfaces between human brains and computers in the form of implants. In 2019, Elon Musk even called this link “symbiotic.” A “neural link”, as the businessman baptized, who said that it would function as “a kind of third digital layer on the cerebral cortex, which covers the limbic system.”
In July 2019, Musk went on to claim that the company had successfully tested these implants in monkeys and rats. At the time, the billionaire said there was an expectation to start testing on humans from 2020.
[O multimilionário tem partilhado no Twitter as novidades sobre a Neuralink até agora]
Live work webcast @Neuralink device
Friday 3pm Pacific https://t.co/PouLbrGzFU– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 26, 2020
In 2019, Neuralink had some renowned scientists in the field working for Elon Musk. Some of them, Timothy L. Hanson, Camilo A. Díaz-Botia, Viktor Kharazia, Michel M. Maharbiz and Philip N. Sabes, published in April a study entitled “The sewing machine for minimally invasive neural engravings”, which in a way to rapidly implement these interfaces in rat brains.
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