Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s start-up and brain-machine interface company Neuralink recently conducted a technological demo on Friday where a wireless coin-sized computer chip showed a pig activity. Musk’s demo received mixed reactions on twitter, while some compared the Telsa and SpaceX CEO with “Iron Man”, some showed interest to volunteer for the program.
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On Friday Musk brought three pigs which had different levels of interests in cooperating and one out of the three pigs, Gertrude which had the computer chip planted in his brain, showed the signs of early steps toward the goal of curing human diseases with the similar kind of implant. It began sniffing a straw and eating off of a stool which displayed a drastic difference in a graph tracking the animal’s neural activity.
As per Musk the chip was implanted in Gertrude for nearly two months. And he said that the three pigs were “healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig.”
The purpose of the California-based Neuralink is to implant wireless brain-computer interfaces including thousands of electrodes in the most complex human organ to help cure neurological conditions like alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries. It also aims to build a digital link between humankind and artificial intelligence.
“An implantable device can actually solve these problems,” Musk said, mentioning issues like memory loss, hearing loss, depression and insomnia. However, he did not provide a particular timeline for the treatments, but going by his earlier statements it is being said that the human trials would begin by the end of 2020.
