USA TODAY International Edition
Neuralink wants to plug into your brain
Tesla CEO Musk said to be investing in firm doing research on implants
SAN FRANCISCO Electric cars dotting the planet. Rockets racing to Mars. Solar panels eliminating oil dependency.
If there’s anything else entrepreneur Elon Musk has on his todo list, he’ll have to also invent life- extension technology just so he can stick around long enough to get everything done.
And now there’s another venture: creating micro- implants that, once inserted in the brain, can not just fix conditions such as epilepsy but potentially turn your brain into a computer- assisted powerhouse. Time to screen The Matrix, people.
Musk is said to be investing in a new company called Neuralink, according to a report on The Wall Street Journal website Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Late Monday, he confirmed the idea was in motion, tweeting that a “long Neuralink piece” was set to come out on the Wait But Why blog of Tim Urban in about a week. “Difficult to dedicate the time, but existential risk is too high not to,” Musk wrote.
Neuralink’s focus is on cranial computers, or the implanting of small electrodes through brain surgery that beyond their medical benefits would, in theory, allow thoughts to be transferred far more quickly than, say, thinking a thought and then using thumbs or fingers or even voice to communicate that information.
Tesla did not respond to a re- quest for comment about the report, which included confirmation of Musk’s involvement from Max Hodak, a “member of the founding team” who previously co- founded robotic lab services company Transcriptic.
But the topic clearly has been on the big brain of Musk, 45, who already is busy wrangling the ambitious plans of Tesla ( which combines the electric automaker’s goals to democratize electric vehicles with a mission to make solar energy more practical) and SpaceX ( whose rockets are winning government contracts but whose mission is decidedly fo- cused on Mars).
He has also come up with the idea for Hyperloop, a high- speed transportation system being pursued by other companies, and has posited that the solution for traffic in Los Angeles, where he lives, could be provided by his new drilling venture playfully called The Boring Company. Musk also is on a few business councils convened by President Trump.
At a conference in June, Musk cautioned that “if you assume any rate of advancement in ( artificial intelligence), we will be left behind by a lot.”
In August, Musk tweeted a reply to a question about how his research into “neural lace” was going. “Making progress,” Musk tweeted. “Maybe something to announce in a few months.”
In late 2015, Musk joined a group that launched OpenAI, a non- profit aimed at promoting open- source research into artificial intelligence.
Experts have cautioned that while the exponential growth in computing power could lead to breakthroughs in science and health, misuse of such tech could doom the species. As could being lapped intellectually by our sentient computing friends.
“I don’t know a lot of people who love the idea of living under a despot,” Musk said last June.
But, he added, “If AI power is broadly distributed to the degree that we can link AI power to each individual’s will — you would have your AI agent, everybody would have their AI agent — then if somebody did try to do something really terrible, then the collective will of others could overcome that bad actor.”
For Elon Musk, above, now there’s another venture: creating micro- implants that, once inserted in the brain, can not just fix conditions such as epilepsy but potentially turn your brain into a computer- assisted powerhouse.