Musk start-up has monkey playing video game with its brain

Elon Musk’s start-up devoted to meshing brains with computers was closer to its dream on Friday, having gotten a monkey to play video game Pong using only its mind.

Musk has long contended that merging minds with machines is vital if people are going to avoid being outpaced by artificial intelligence.

A video posted on YouTube by the entrepreneur’s Neuralink start-up showed a macaque monkey named Pager playing Pong by essentially using thought to move paddles that bounce digital balls back and forth on screen.

“To control his paddle, Pager simply thinks about moving his hand up or down,” said a voice narrating the video. “As you can see, Pager is amazingly good at MindPong.”

Neuralink devices were implanted on two sides of Pager’s brain to sense neuron activity, then the monkey played the game a few minutes using a joystick to let software figure out the signals associated with hand movements.

Pager’s reward was banana smoothly served through a straw when he successfully batted the digital ball from one paddle to the other, according to the demonstration.

After a few minutes, the “decoder” programme figured out what neuron signals to look for and the joystick was no longer needed for Pager to play the game.

“A monkey is literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip!!” Musk tweeted triumphantly.

The decoder could be calibrated to enable a person to guide a cursor on a computer screen, potentially letting them type emails, text messages, or browse the Internet just by thinking, according to a blog post at neuralink.com.