In July, tech billionaire Elon Musk tweeted the mission statement for his neurotech company Neuralink, “If you can’t beat em, join em.”
It was a far cry from his usual warnings on the dangers of the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence. But, Neuralink has been in the works since 2016, when Musk founded the company along with a group of neuro-scientists with expertise ranging from brain-machine interfaces (which DARPA has been working on since the 1970s) to electrical engineering. Musk recently tweeted a call for job applicants with expertise working on wearable technology.
Even for Musk, whose ventures span from disrupting the dominant energy source of the automobile to creating a business out of affordable space-flight, Neuralink remains his most ambitious gambit yet. The idea is to create a workable brain-neural interface that can let users control machines directly with their minds. This will be no easy feat—The work required to make devices that can both read from and write to the brain has been likened in complexity to the effort it took to land man on the moon.
At such an early stage for this technology, initial usecases would be to help paraplegics control computers or smartphones without any physical input. But the overarching goal is to allow humans direct neural access to the benefits of computing—imagine being able to Google something in your mind, or to have an implant capable of regulating your emotions in real-time by sending signals to the appropriate location on the brain. "In principle, you could fix almost anything that is wrong the brain," Musk told Joe Rogan at his podcast in May.
On Wednesday, Musk announced that a live webcast of a “working Neuralink device” would be held at 3pm Pacific Time on Friday (3.30am IST on Saturday).
Responding to a tweet, Musk said the company would demonstrate “neurons firing in real-time” at the event.
“Will show neurons firing in real-time on August 28th. The matrix in the matrix,” Musk tweeted, adding, “They don’t fire all at once. Some go several seconds to minutes without firing. Some fire several times per second. Very wide timing distribution.”
In 2019, Neuralink claimed it had tested a prototype BCI, one that had over 3,000 electrodes that need to be implanted into the cortex (outer layer) of the brain using a precise “sewing machine” type of device. Early trials were conducted on rats and on monkeys, using a surgical robot (operated by a brain surgeon) that performed at least 19 surgeries with a success rate of 87 per cent.
Musk’s eventual goal was to make the process as simple as a LASIK surgery, the billionaire said at the event. While the process currently requires surgery and anaesthesia, Musk hopes it can get non-invasive at some point. The goal is to replace current techniques of BCI, such as the Utah Array, which Musk has compared to “medieval torture devices”.
In the white paper on the subject, Musk wrote, “We have built arrays of small and flexible electrode ‘threads,’ with as many as 3072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads. We have also built a neurosurgical robot capable of inserting six threads (192 electrodes) per minute.”
Like all modern devices, the interface provides data streaming via a USB-C port. The paper notes Neuralink’s progress towards a “flexible, scalable brain-machine interface”.
The paper notes the capability to scale up to help patients with spinal cord injuries control a computer.
“Although significant technological challenges must be addressed before a high-bandwidth device is suitable for clinical application, with such a device, it is plausible to imagine that a patient with spinal cord injury could dexterously control a digital mouse and keyboard. When combined with rapidly improving spinal stimulation techniques, in the future, this approach could conceivably restore motor function.”
It must be noted that Neuralink is not the only company aiming to achieve this, and other initiatives such as DARPA’s Next Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology Program have been working on surgery-free BCIs that could allow soldiers to control drones with their minds with nothing more than a modified helmet. Tech giant Facebook has also been working on a BCI with the goal of letting users communicate at speeds must faster than what they are capable of through keyboard or touchscreen.
How significant Neuralink’s advances have been will be revealed at the livestream. Musk has promised to show “V2” of the sewing-machine style robot last revealed. According to Musk, the new technology is still “far from LASIK” but it could get “pretty close” in a few years.
Human trials of such a device, which Neuralink had earlier envisioned taking place by the end of 2020, would be a huge step for the programme. In fatc, in May, on the Joe Rogan podcast, Musk said the company would "be able to implant a neural link in less than a year in a person".
How far Neuralink had come towards its goals will only become apparent at the webcast.