It seems like nowadays, tech-news sound more and more like science fiction.
Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence have become increasingly popular and will boom even more in the future.
Many sci-fi novels and movies have already shown us a future of transhumanism - a future where humans enhance themselves through science and technology, essentially making technology a part of them to improve their skills and capabilities.
And now, it seems like no one other than Elon Musk plans to make this a reality!
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, is already one of the most revolutionizing and futuristic Entrepreneurs of our time. He made electric cars commercial and plans to populate Mars, so only someone like him could plan something as big as merging human brains with computers!
The new company that Musk has founded is called Neuralink.
Their goal will be to link our brains to computers - to merge humans with technology. Ultimately, they want to make cloud-based Artificial Intelligence a part of the human brain. In the future, they're even planning to achieve "consensual telepathy" between humans.
What exactly is Neuralink's plan / goal?
The first step is to create a device to help people with certain brain injuries.
Neuralink wants to implant it into the brains of people who have suffered from a stroke for example, or who struggle with memory loss.
Musk stated that this technology should be ready within the next 4 years.
“It could help with people who are quadriplegics or paraplegics by providing a neural shunt from the motor cortex down to where the muscles are activated. It can help with people who, as they get older, have memory problems and can’t remember the names of their kids, through memory enhancement, which could allow them to function well to a much later time in life—the medically advantageous elements of this for dealing with mental disablement of one kind or another, which of course happens to all of us when we get old enough, are very significant."-Elon Musk about the first goal of Neuralink
The funds generated from this project will then be used for the 2nd step.
The ultimate plan will be to create a whole brain-computer interface.
Currently, there are two primary "layers" in our brains: the cortex, which manages complex thoughts, reasoning and more, and the limbic system, which is in charge of behaviour, emotions and long-term memory.
Musk's goal is to create an artificial third layer that will complement the other two.
He says that we kind of already have it - in form of smartphones, laptops etc. We just don't use them very efficiently.
So he thought, why not implant those features into our brains!
We already have a digital tertiary layer in a sense, in that you have your computer or your phone or your applications…The thing that people, I think, don’t appreciate right now is that they are already a cyborg…If you leave your phone behind, it’s like missing limb syndrome. I think people—they’re already kind of merged with their phone and their laptop and their applications and everything. -Elon Musk
He wants to make communication faster and more efficient by a form of telepathy:
Currently, we have to "compress" our thoughts by translating them into language, communicating it, and then our partner has to "decompress" the language again.
Musk's plan is to send the thought directly to the other person's brain through the implant.
This would mean a huge improvement for human communication, and would help the keep up with the rapid pace of AI development.
What are the challenges for this technology?
Musk has stated that this technology might be ready within the next 8-10 years, but there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome.
There are challenges with wireless power and biocompatibility, but the biggest problem is probably bandwith.
Currently, we're using a maximum of 200 electrodes on human brains. But for something as advanced as this, there would be about 1 million electrodes needed! So not only would Musk have to figure out how the brain could communicate with all of those at once, he'd also have to find an area to physically put them.
Musk has gathered a team of neurosurgeons, engineers, chip designers and professors to help him figure out solutions for these problems.
Another challenge will be regulatory approval - people are already very scared of Robots and AI taking over one day.
So it might be hard to get the public convinced about this sci-fi vision, as many people might be afraid that the implants can be hacked.
What do you think about this futuristic idea - brilliant improvement or unrealistic and dangerous?
Images: 1, 2, 3, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
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