This morning, Beijing time, Elon Musk showed a monkey that can type with his mind at the latest conference of his brain-computer interface company-it typed two complete sentences .
Another highlight of this conference is: Musk announced that their equipment is expected to be implanted in the human brain within half a year , and has submitted all the documents required to start human trials to the US FDA.
In addition, they also played the implant surgery process on the spot . Of course, a dummy was used.
In 2016, Musk and several other co-founders established the brain-computer interface company Neuralink;
In July 2019, Neuralink announced the prototype of its project. Simply put, they made a “punching machine” and a “sewing machine”. A quarter-thick “thread” is implanted in the brain. Such lines, full of electrodes and sensors;
In August 2020, the company produced the brain-computer interface chip N1, which was only the size of a silver coin, and was implanted into the surface of the brain of a living pig. A pig’s brain activity can be transmitted wirelessly to a computer screen;
In April 2021, Neuralink’s experimental monkeys converted brain waves into computer instructions and played a game of “mind ping pong”;
I can’t spell English, the monkey can?
The monkey tested was called Sake, and it typed “welcome to show and tell” (welcome to this press conference) with its mind, and then typed “can i please have snacks” (can you give me some snacks)… …Then, the staff handed over a tablet, and Sake took the initiative to choose the pattern of green grapes.
How do monkeys type?
First, they are pre-implanted with Neuralink’s “little coin” N1. Now shrunk down to the size of a quarter, the N1 has 1,024 channels for recording and stimulating brain signals.
What needs to be emphasized is that monkeys do not know how to spell English. The order in which letters appear is pre-set by the computer, such as “welcome”. Every time a letter comes, it will be highlighted in yellow, prompting the monkey to move the cursor to the highlighted letter with his mind. letters.
So, monkeys don’t speak English, they just know how to translate brain signals into cursor movements.
In addition to “typing”, Neuralink also said that their monkeys can also press left and right buttons, click and drag, swipe input, handwriting, and swipe with gestures.
By the way, the device implanted in the monkey needs to be charged . Although it is extremely advanced wireless charging, it needs to “trick” the monkey to a tube that supplies banana milkshake. After the monkey is aligned with the nozzle, the top of the monkey’s head can just touch the charging stand.
That’s it? Musk said the vision is big
They placed a dummy on the operating table, and the screen next to it showed the target surgical area.
It can be seen that the numbers are densely marked. Their surgical robot R1 will cut open the human skull and insert thin wires into the numbered points. This operation required 64 threads and took 15 minutes.
Musk once expressed the hope that in the future, brain-computer interface surgery can be as simple as an on-the-go myopia surgery. They also plan to establish their own clinic in the future, and currently have a double operating room in Austin.
Human consciousness is usually erratic, and controlling movements through ideas is sometimes not as efficient as directly using hands and feet. But for patients with inconvenient hands and feet, mind control may even be their only way of expression.
At the beginning of the press conference, Musk said that what Neuralink has to do is to make a general “I/O interface” for the brain (the link between the host and the controlled object for information exchange), and he hopes to help those suffering from ALS , stroke sequelae and other illnesses.
Neuralink hopes to help those suffering from ALS, stroke sequelae and other diseases丨Unsplash
In addition to the brain-computer interface, Neuralink will also launch a spinal cord implant that “can restore full-body function to people with severed spinal cords,” and an eye implant that “can improve or restore human vision.”
Musk has also always emphasized that these implants can be upgraded, “If the iPhone 14 is on the market, you certainly don’t want the iPhone 1 to be stuck in your head like that.”
references
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YreDYmXTYi4&ab_channel=Neuralink
[2] https://ift.tt/hS13YZK
[3] https://ift.tt/L1CjhWf
Author: biu
Edit: Worm
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