Elon Musk Launches AI Startup Neuralink That Aims To Create Brain-Computer Interfaces
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, launched Neuralink, a medical research startup in California. The aim of the new artificial intelligence startup is to create brain-computer interface which would allow people to connect directly with electronic devices. By upgrading human cognition, it would prevent people from being made obsolete by robots.
Merging Machine & Biological Intelligence. Before he launched Neuralink, he first spoke about the need to speed up human output at the Code Conference in 2006 when Elon Musk pushed for a basic income for jobless people to confront the expected massive social challenge coming from AI. In January, at the World Government Summit in Dubai, he proposed a merger with biological intelligence and machine intelligence, Live Science reports.
People, he said in Dubai, are already cyborgs since their devices and applications provided them a digital tertiary layer. By developing a high-bandwidth interface to the human brain, it would help humans reach a symbiosis between machine intelligence and people. The netting of electronic implants, called neural lace, needed for the interface, would be one of the things that Neuralink would develop.
Neural Laces To Be Injected Into Veins. However, Elon Musk says that the Neuralink-developed neural laces would not need invasive and extensive surgery. It could just be injected into the veins to directly interact with human brain. CNBC reports that one of the co-founders of Neuralink is Max Hodak who co-established Transcriptic, another company.
At Duke University Medical Center where he was a research assistant, Max Hodak built for monkeys brain-machine interfaces. The co-founder of Neuralink was a witness to the inefficiencies of basic laboratory. He felt the time for robotic optimization has come.
The Verge points out that besides Neuralink, other companies had looked into brain-computer interfaces. It cites Kernel, a new company established by Bryan Johnson, the co-founder of Braintree, to look into ways to improve human cognition.