Elon Musk has a dream and as he is the world’s richest man being worth US$190 billion, he is likely to make his dream come true. In essence, he wants to fuse together the human brain with an artificial intelligence computer which will allow a damaged brain to function normally or perhaps even better than normally.
He gave a speech recently on Clubhouse which is a social media app often used by Silicon Valley executives, in which he said:
We have a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull with tiny wires who can play videogames with their mind. You can see where the implant is and he’s a happy monkey. We have the nicest monkey facilities in the world. We want them to play Mind Pong with each other.
Well, I am pleased that his monkeys are happy even if they do have computer chips inserted in their brain with wires coming out of the chip to connect to the neurons of the brain. He’s done the same thing with pigs. He works with a business called Neuralink. They inserted a computer chip into the part of a pig’s brain which controls the snout. The information is relayed to a graph.
The tiny device contains 1,024 electrodes which are attached to the brain by threads narrower than the circumference of a human hair. They monitor the activity of 1,000 neurons and transmit electrical impulses to a computer.
This is the beginning of a computer-to-brain interface. The objective: to help people with brain injuries and diseases to allow them to do tasks by thinking about them. For example, a person with severe paralysis became the first to receive a brain implant allowing them to operate a computer mouse with their mind.
It appears that there are two types of interface, the computer chip inserted in the brain and the alternative which is designed by Synchron, an Australian company which uses non-invasive techniques to allow people to control devices with their minds.
He describes the fusion process as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires that go into your brain”. As mentioned, he wants people’s minds to be fused with the highest levels of AI computing. He has said though that he fears that artificial intelligence computers may overtake humans.
You may know that Elon Musk wants people do fly to Mars and colonise the planet. He’s putting lots of money into that and he has lots of it. He wants a self-sustaining Martian civilisation and considers the project as one of the most important things that humankind can do for “ensuring the long-term existence of consciousness”.
