The terrifying 'Neuralink' machine that Elon Musk will use to turn humans into cyborgs by putting a chip in their BRAIN gets an 'awesome' upgrade, the tech billionaire claims
- Neuralink is working on an 'awesome' device to be unveiled this year, Musk says
- His company revealed an implant that connects brains to computers last year
- It will start trials on human brains sometime this year in a bid to compete with AI
Elon Musk has improved his controversial Neuralink technology that he hopes will allow people to hook themselves up to a computer and become cyborgs.
Musk's company Neuralink is building tiny and flexible 'threads' which are ten times thinner than a human hair and can be inserted directly into the brain.
Musk, the billionaire boss of Neuralink, SpaceX and Tesla, took to his usual stomping ground of Twitter to parade his latest development.
He called the improvements to Neuralink and the scary robot that will insert the device into human brains 'truly transformational' and 'awesome' in several tweets.
The tiny brain implants, called brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), connects the human brain to external devices and enables them to control computers.
The company say these 'high bandwidth, high precision neural interfaces', dubbed N1, could be implanted in humans within the next 12 months.
Threads will be needled into people's brains using this rather scary-looking machine, some time this year, Elon Musk has said
Last year, Neuralink unveiled a version of the tiny device that could be implanted in a brain through a small incision by a robot.
This device consists of a chip that would sit on the side of a human head, connected by the tiny threads that are implanted into the brain.
But this new version, to be unveiled sometime this year, will be even more advanced, Musk said, without spilling too many details.
The tiny threads would be connected into the brain are about 10 times thinner than human hair
'Wait until you see the next version vs what was presented last year,' Musk tweeted. 'It's awesome.'
The CEO says the technology could help patients with neurological disorders restore motor functions.
'It will ultimately be used to make up for entire lost sections of the brain due to stroke/accident/congenital,' Musk said.
Elon Musk called the improvements to Neuralink 'truly transformational' and 'awesome' in several tweets
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'Don't want to get too excited, but the potential is truly transformational for restoring brain & motor functions.
'There is no other way to do it in my opinion.'
Musk hopes his secretive Neuralink startup hopes to link human brains to computers some time in 2020.
Elon Musk has revealed his secretive Neuralink startup hope to being testing out an interface linking brains with computers on people next year
The optimistic timeframe does seem unlikely however, as the company will have to pass strict regulations.
And with Musk's track record of announcing ambitious timelines that never come to fruition, it remains to be seen if Neuralink will be pass stringent regulations for human tests.
'First, we need to make it super safe and easy to use, then determine greatest utility vs risk,' Musk tweeted.
The chip that amplifies signals received by the threads and then sends them off to a computer
Tiny threads thinner than a human hair will be implanted into the human skull that will link up to a chip on the side of a head
'From initially working to volume production and implantation is a long road.
'As with vehicle safety, it will be much harder to pass our internal standards than minimum regulatory standards.'
Musk said the goal is to make adding brain-enhancement implants as easy a procedure as laser eye surgery.
It is also building a surgical robot that can insert six of the BMI threads per minute into the brain.
Neuralink also showed off a concept image of a smartphone app for its brain implants last year
Before the company's first media event last summer not much was known of Neuralink, which has been carrying out research at the University of California, Davis and has published one research paper.
Musk said last year that team has had success with animal testing and that in its labs a monkey has been able to control a computer with its brain.
The Tesla founder has long contended that a neural lace meshing minds with machines is vital if people are going to avoid being so outpaced by artificial intelligence.
The ultimate aim of the company is to give humans AI-enhanced capabilities such as the ability to access the internet with a single thought.
'With a high bandwidth brain machine interface I think we can actually go along for the ride and we can effectively have the option of merging with AI,' he said last year.
'This is extremely important.'
Musk has long been a critic of artificial intelligence, warning that should it fall into the wrong hands or become too smart, it could wreak havoc on humanity.
A TIMELINE OF ELON MUSK'S COMMENTS ON AI
Musk has been a long-standing, and very vocal, condemner of AI technology and the precautions humans should take
Elon Musk is one of the most prominent names and faces in developing technologies.
The billionaire entrepreneur heads up SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring company.
But while he is on the forefront of creating AI technologies, he is also acutely aware of its dangers.
Here is a comprehensive timeline of all Musk's premonitions, thoughts and warnings about AI, so far.
August 2014 - 'We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.'
October 2014 - 'I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence.'
October 2014 - 'With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.'
June 2016 - 'The benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI is that we would be so far below in intelligence we'd be like a pet, or a house cat.'
July 2017 - 'I think AI is something that is risky at the civilisation level, not merely at the individual risk level, and that's why it really demands a lot of safety research.'
July 2017 - 'I have exposure to the very most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it.'
July 2017 - 'I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.'
August 2017 - 'If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.'
November 2017 - 'Maybe there's a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe].'
March 2018 - 'AI is much more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?'
April 2018 - '[AI is] a very important subject. It's going to affect our lives in ways we can't even imagine right now.'
April 2018 - '[We could create] an immortal dictator from which we would never escape.'
November 2018 - 'Maybe AI will make me follow it, laugh like a demon & say who’s the pet now.'
September 2019 - 'If advanced AI (beyond basic bots) hasn’t been applied to manipulate social media, it won’t be long before it is.'
February 2020 - 'At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake.'
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