It’s been a while since Elon Musk gave us an update on Neuralink. We can’t expect frequent updates from a co-founder who’s handling several companies at once.
Over the last decade, the influence that computers have on lives has risen to alarming levels.
Needless to say that we have grown increasingly dependent on them. They can process information at speeds that humans never can.
This is pushing several firms around the world to somehow find a way through which humans and computers can work together as one.
Neuralink is one among them. Although being new to the race, it has shown significant progress over the years.
The Very First Update On Neuralink
Neuralink aims to help humans keep pace with the fast-growing AI tech. Neuralink might sound like it came straight out of a mad genius’s diary.
But with Elon being the head of the company, we can hope to see a different future for humanity. The company started getting traction when it first announced the production of brain-machine interfaces.
To be clear, they are not even close to making human trials. The initial plan was to help paraplegics do simple tasks such as operating their phones and do mouse clicks with little to no physical effort.
The company says that they had successful results while testing it on rodents and monkeys. This happened back at 2019, after which there hasn’t been any major update on Neuralink.
Surgical Methodology
The company says that they might have to surgically place certain components over the surface of the brain.
This might sound a little scary but brain implants are nothing new to us as there are records that date back to the 1970s.
The gossamer-thin wires placed over the brain would sense the electrical activity. A computer would then receive these impulses and process the information.
The next update on Neuralink would probably have details about making this system as wireless as possible.
Operation Of Neuralink
The company is currently operating from San Francisco and has partnered with UC Davis for research assistance.
The company hopes that it can make a huge change in the lives of people with neural disorders. If things go right, Neuralink can help mitigate these effects.
This upgrade would help us interact with computers at the speed of our thoughts. Brain implants have been in use for decades.
But for the very first time, we are going to be using it to make humans “enhanced”. The process of translating our thoughts into inputs to a computer via keyboard and mouse is extremely lossy.
A lot of macro-details get lost in this process. Establishing a direct link between our consciousness and the computer is the best way to do it.
The Next Update On Neuralink
The chip that’s about to get installed inside the skull is just 8mm in diameter and 4mm tall. These chips have 1024 tiny gossamer electrodes placed in precise locations inside your brain to capture your neural activity.
To put it in perspective, these threads are just one-tenth the diameter of your hair. This is also why the company assigns a robotic surgeon to do the task.
What sounds as a simple task is actually so complex and delicate. The task is actually as complex as landing a space shuttle back on earth.
Conclusion
In various occasions, Elon Musk spoke about his trust issues with the AI. He feels that one day AI might be in complete control of us.
He believes by directly using the human brain for inputs we can always stay one step ahead of it and it can never act independently.
We have no clue about what Elon Musk has in mind for the future of the company. But we hope that the next update on Neuralink will most probably be about starting human trials.