Elon’s Monkey Plays Pong
The road to super intelligence of humans begins with a monkey playing a video game, using only his brain.
Founded by Elon Musk, Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company developing an ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interface (BMI) to connect humans and computers, with the goal of enabling people with paralysis to directly use their brain to operate computers and mobile devices with speed and ease.
Musk has often expressed his confidence that Neuralink will be capable of maturing this technology in the near future, to the point where humans will be capable of utilising such a BMI to seamlessly link with a computer, the Internet, or Artificial General Intelligence, thereby acquiring super intelligence. This all commences with a monkey ...
Neuralink recently revealed the capability of their BMI, which enables a macaque monkey, named Pager, to move a cursor on a computer screen using nothing but his brain. To this end, Neuralink has developed a 1 024 electrode fully-implanted neural recording and data transmission device, termed the N1 Link. Two N1 Links were implanted in Pager’s brain in the areas of the motor cortex associated with hand and arm movement, one in the left motor cortex (which controls movement in the right side of the body) and another in the right motor cortex (which controls the left side of the body). Musk pointed out that the device is implanted flush with the skull, and charges wirelessly via a wireless charging baseball cap, which means that any person with such a device will look and feel totally normal.
PREDICTION BY ALGORITHM
By recording and then developing algorithms to model the different patterns of neural activity and intended movement directions, Neuralink is able to build a model (akin to calibrating a decoder) that can predict the direction and speed of any forthcoming or intended movement. These predictions can then be used to control, in real time, the movements of a computer cursor, or an item or character in a video game, such as the paddle in the MindPong video game that Neuralink used to demonstrate this.
While Neuralink was able to calibrate the decoder by mapping Pager’s neural activity patterns to actual movements, such as a joystick, this specific strategy is not suitable for people with paralysis. Prior research conducted by the BrainGate consortium have shown that neurons in the motor cortex remain directionally attuned to movement intention, even in people with paralysis. It is therefore possible to calibrate a decoder when a person simply imagines moving the mouse on a mousepad or a finger on the trackpad, guiding the cursor to automatically move to an intended target. After the decoder is calibrated, a person is then able to type an email and text message, browse the web, or any other action that can be performed with a computer, or even a robot, by merely thinking about how one would require the cursor to move.
The technology of Neuralink is founded on decades of research. The BMI systems used in previous studies have no more than a few hundred electrodes, with connectors that pass through the skin, and require a technician or caregiver to “connect” the BMI. The mission of Neuralink is to develop a safe and effective clinical BMI system that is wireless and fully implantable, that users can operate all by themselves and take anywhere they go.
Neuralnk also plans to increase the number of electrodes for better robustness and higher information throughput, and to automate the implant surgery making it as rapid and safe as lasik eye surgery. “The first Neuralink BMI (approved for humans) will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs,” Musk confirmed via Twitter.
FREEDOM FROM PHYSICAL IMPAIRMENT
The first goal Neuralink set out to achieve, is to give people with paralysis their digital freedom back: to communicate more easily via text, to follow their curiosity on the web, to express their creativity through photography and art, and, yes, to play video games. After that, the Link may help to improve the lives of those with neurological disorders and disabilities in other ways. For example, for people with paralysis, the Link could also potentially be used to restore physical mobility. In order to achieve this, the Link would be used to read brain signals and then, in turn, use these signals to stimulate nerves and muscles in the body, thereby allowing the person to once again control their own limbs.
Pager, the monkey playing MindPong (as impressive as it is), is an initial demonstration of the potential capabilities of the N1 Link, and as such is a hint of what this device is intended to and capable of achieving in the near future.