Neuralink: Elon Musk’s Test with Artificial Intelligence

Neuralink, the neurotechnology company of Elon Musk, jumped straight into the spotlights at the end of November with a “show and tell” event. But what exactly is this company trying to do?

We examined the details of their project, which is currently scheduled to start human experiments, despite being protested due to the claim that experiments were carried out on a large number of animals.

What is Neuralink?

The name of the company, which was quietly founded by Musk and some engineers in 2016, was not heard until their live online broadcast in 2019.

One of the five companies run by the richest person in the world, Neuralink simply aims to develop and produce an interface that can establish a brain-machine connection, which has long been a popular subject in science fiction, in the most useful way.

The company is working on a technology to attach thousands of electrodes twenty times thinner than a strand of hair to the outer surface of the human brain. These electrodes will be attached to a coin-sized chip embedded in the skull. This chip, called N1, will be powered by a remote rechargeable battery and will communicate wirelessly with the outside world. This “equipage” is expected to electrically stimulate different parts of the brain, collect brain signals, and transmit these signals to the outside world. This is the basis of the Neuralink system, in a nutshell.

The second device being produced by the company is a robot surgeon, which will place the brain-computer interface (BCI). At the “show and tell” event in November, Musk gave viewers their first look at the Neuralink robot in action. The robot inserted 64 threads, each containing 16 electrodes, into a gelatinous “brain proxy” of a dummy patient over the course of about 15 minutes.

The researchers’ aim for the near future is for this robot will be improved to carry out the entire process automatically, just like the robots that perform laser eye surgery.

 What will it do?

One of the first announced purposes of the system is to help people with disabilities interact with their surroundings, such as restoring sight in blind people in different ways.

Another goal is to enable people with paralysis to control their computers and smart devices with direct digital connection and let them use the implant for mind typing.

“We’re confident that someone who has basically no other interface to the outside world would be able to control their phone better than someone who has working hands,” Musk says.

Although these were the first announced potential uses of Neuralink, Musk did claim that the technology could also allow two people to establish some sort of “telepathy” and communicate without speaking simply by sending brain data to each other.

Furthermore, memories could also be recorded and stored (since they would be converted into digital data), and if we take things to a more sci-fi level, the memories could be transferred or uploaded to artificial bodies or a new organic body.

Neuralink also believes that the device could eventually allow people with spinal cord injuries to move their limbs, as it will restore neural activity in the body. The company also aims to tackle neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.

What is the current situation?

So far, the Neuralink implant has only been tested on animals, which sparked off mixed reviews. Musk publicly demonstrated the Neuralink chip on a pig named Gertrude for the first time in 2020. Gertrude’s brain signals were visualized in real time by her implant as she freely wandered around the barn. The next year, to demonstrate how its electrodes could record brain activity, the chip learned to interpret motor control data by capturing the brain signals of a monkey named Pager while playing the classic Pong video game. In a short time, the monkey’s brain signals alone were able to control the game.

At the event on November 30^th, another monkey named Sake was able to follow prompts and type on a virtual keyboard using only its mind. Since the implants charge wirelessly, the monkeys are enticed with fruit juice to sit under the charger hidden in a branch just above their heads.

These demonstrations, although quite impressive to ordinary people, did not really impress expert scientists that much. Such experiments were conducted before, and the results of similar experiments on a monkey had already been published in 2002.

However, the technology behind the chip, which includes wireless communication and charging technologies developed by Neuralink, received high praise from the experts. The fact that the macaque in the experiment was able to move freely and did not carry any devices was considered important progress.

On the other hand, the biggest advance in the last event was sending signals to neurons that make up the brain and the nervous system, by using the same electrodes. An experiment in the demonstration used electrodes attached to the spinal cord to control different leg movements of a pig. Neuralink involves not only capturing the brain’s movement commands and transmitting these to the legs but also receiving sensory signals from the limbs and sending them back to the brain. This may make it possible for paralyzed patients to be able to walk and use their hands.

What are the expectations for the future?

Neuralink is not the only company working on brain-machine interface (BMI) or brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies. Apart from researchers who have been producing articles on this subject since the 1960s, startups such as BlackRock Neurotech, Precision Neuroscience, Synchron Medical and Paradromics are also conducting similar studies. Others, like NURO, work on surgery-free approaches.

Synchron began human trials in April with six patients, to help people with paralysis. Blackrock completed an experiment to test if a computer interface could help people talk. Another experiment aimed at digitally reconnecting limbs to the brain was launched in 2013, years before Neuralink was established.

The most distinguishing thing about Neuralink is possibly its goal for mass production. Musk envisions that Neuralink will produce millions of brain chips. He also seems impatient to get an implant himself. To achieve this goal, the company tries to automate the technology as much as possible. Although the R1 robot surgeon is able to insert electrodes into the brain without damaging blood vessels, a next-generation device is being designed to tackle more aspects of the surgery, including cutting the skull.

Ensuring that a small number of neurosurgeons can manage a large number of surgeries is among the most essential goals in order to transform the entire technology into an affordable, accessible and easy-to-apply product.

Musk’s main goals also include concepts that are quite sci-fi. For him, the question of “What do we do about AI, about artificial general intelligence?” is very important. “If we have digital superintelligence, much smarter than any human, how do we mitigate that risk at a species level? Even in a benign scenario where the AI is very benevolent, how do we even go along for the ride? How do we participate?”

The answer will possibly be Neuralink and other similar human-machine input-output interfaces.