As if 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, billionaire techie Elon Musk has released a technology straight out of a science fiction. Yet, it is to be seen if this science fiction has a happy ending, or a dystopian future.
Implanted chip (Source: MobyGeek)
Elon Musk has unveiled Neuralink, in an event held at the start-ups headquarters in Fremont, California. The discussions for such technology always found their ways into the back of a sci-fi novel, yet in 2019, Elon Musk gave the idea new ground after the radical idea was debuted. The 2019 reveal only showed photos of Neuralink connected to a USB-C port, to a rat. A year has elapsed, and Musk’s radical ambition is taking shape, as the 2020 event displayed Neuralink implanted to a pig for its demonstrations.
The technology aims to develop a digital link between the brain and a computer. The demonstrations roughly illustrated the same, as a live telemetry of a pig’s emotions while going through straws, was shown to the viewers. The demonstration shows the future we believed to be far away, is in fact much closer than we thought. Elon Musk also unveiled a 2nd generation Neuralink, which is much more compact and can fit into a cavity in the skull, with its wires attaching to the skull. "It's like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires," Musk said of the device.
Converse to dystopian beliefs, Elon Musk has stated the technology has a medical focus. Neuralink could help with brain and spinal cord injuries. The technology could for example help a user with a limb he/she lost motor function of. Neuralink is also speculated to help with mental problems such bipolar disorder, depression etc. "I'm confident in the long term it'll be possible to restore somebody's full body motion”, Musk stated.
Yet, Neuralink can achieve far more than what it set out to do. A device which could read the brains receptors, could also store a persons memories. "The future is going to be weird," Musk said, discussing sci-fi uses of Neuralink. "In the future you will be able to save and replay memories," he said. "You could basically store your memories as a backup and restore the memories. You could potentially download them into a new body or into a robot body."
Yet, Elon Musk is also mindful of the prowess of AI, believing technology has to start at ground zero, to develop a relationship between humans and AI. Neuralink is envisioned to connect to their own digital AI incarnations, similar to the hit sci-fi Altered Carbon.