Elon Musk is no stranger to bold claims – from his plans to colonize Mars to his dream of building transportation connections beneath our largest cities. The world's richest man said this week that his Neuralink division has successfully implanted its first wireless brain chip into the human body.
Is he right when he says that this technology can – in the long run – save humanity itself?
Inserting electrodes into brain tissue is actually nothing new.
In the 1960s and 70s, electrical stimulation was used to trigger or inhibit aggressive behavior in cats. By the early 2000s, monkeys were trained to move the cursor around a computer screen using only their thoughts.
It's nothing new, but implantable technology takes a long time to mature and reach a stage where the company has all the pieces of the puzzle and can really start putting it together," he said
The first neural implant.
Neuralink is one of a growing number of companies and university sectors that are trying to refine and eventually commercialize this technology. At least first of all, the focus is on paralysis and complex neurological diseases.
The human brain has about 86 billion neurons that are connected to each other by synapses. Whenever we want to move, feel, or think, a tiny electrical impulse is generated and sent from one neuron to another at an incredible rate.
Scientists have developed devices that can detect some of these signals – using a non-invasive cap placed on the head or wires implanted in the brain itself.
The technology, known as the brain-computer interface (BCI), appears to be running millions of dollars in research funding at the moment.
Neuralink's device, about the size of a coin, fits into the skull and carries tiny wires that read neuronal activity and transmit wireless signals back to the receiving unit. The company has already experimented with pigs and claims that monkeys can play the basic version of the game Pong
It received approval for human trials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May 2023.
We now know that the first patient had already received the implant – but there were few details on the ground. Musk only said that the man was "recovering well" and that preliminary results showed "promising neuronal spike detection".
It may sound sci-fi, but in some ways, Neuralink is playing catch-up.
One of its main competitors, a startup called Synchron, funded by an investment firm controlled by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, has implanted its stent-like device into 10 patients.
Back in December 2021, 62-year-old Australian philip O'Keeffe, who suffers from motor neurone disease'Keefe) wrote the first tweet, using only his ideas to control the cursor.
Researchers at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland have demonstrated that it is possible for paralyzed people to walk again by implanting multiple devices to bypass the damage caused by bicycle accidents.
In a study published this year**, they demonstrated that signals could be transmitted down from a device in his brain to a second device implanted at the base of his spine, which could then trigger him to move on all fours.
Some people with spinal cord injuries are skeptical of the sudden interest in this new technique.
These breakthroughs have been announced again and again, and there doesn't seem to be any further development," said Greene Hayes, who was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident in 2017 and now runs the public affairs of the Spinal Cord Injury Association.
If there's anything I can get back, it's the ability to walk. For example, it will invest more money to eliminate nerve pain, or improve bowel, bladder, and sexual function.
But for Elon Musk, "fixing" brain and spinal cord injuries is only the first step in Neuralink.
The long-term goal is "human-AI symbiosis", which he describes as "species-level importance".
The real trick is to develop a system that can more accurately interpret or translate signals from the brain. If this happens, humans may be able to communicate with computers and other electronic devices in a way that is difficult to understand today.
Imagine being able to order a takeout with your thoughts just by thinking about it, or searching on the internet, or instantly translating one language into another in your mind.
Musk himself has already spoken about the future where his devices will allow people to communicate with their phones or computers "faster than typists or auctioneers."
In the past, he has even said that it may be possible to preserve and replay memories, although he admits that "it sounds more and more like the plot of Black Mirror".
Others are skeptical: "At the moment, I'm trying to see applications that consumers will benefit from, who will risk invasive procedures," says Professor Vanhoestenberghe. "
You have to ask yourself, would you risk brain surgery just to be able to order pizza on your phone? ”
Instead, she believes that the first use of the mass market could be to stimulate the brain to address issues such as treatment-resistant depression, dementia and even some sleep disorders, although the benefits are far from certain and research is in its early stages.
Dr Dean Burnett, an honorary fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology, also said there were significant practical barriers to Neuralink becoming a mainstream consumer product.
Everyone's brain is different. You can't just have a chip that works for everyone and do the exact same thing. It has to be a very meticulous process," he said.
Technology is advancing, so do you have to buy a new chip every five years? Could it be like you have an old Nokia in your head, which was interesting at the time, and now it's not much use?
One thing that almost all experts in the field agree on is that this cutting-edge technology is at best decades before it reaches a high street brain surgeon near you.
Elon Musk has also said that the ultimate goal is not to speed up delivery orders, but to better protect humans from the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), which he has described in the past as an "existential threat."
He argues that by better combining the brains of humans and computers, we as a species are less likely to be "left behind": "With high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces, we can actually go with the flow." Hotspot Engine Program