By Lucy Caulkett-
A company set up by Elon Musk is to explore ways to connect the human brain to a computer interface, has applied to U.S regulators to start trialling its device on humans.
Neurolink say it has conducted tests on a monkey that was able to control a computer with its brain, and now plans to focus its experiment on patients with severe neurological conditions.
Mr Musk described the plan as “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”, and hopes the first prototype could be implanted in a human by the end of next year. The chips will be implanted through a two millimetre incision to create what he called “some sort of symbiosis with artificial intelligence”.
Mr Musk admits that the goal of implanting the first chip in a human before the end of 2020, will actually take much longer. And he says the device will be so simple, that it would not need neuroscientists to implant or maintain it. The entrepreneur who founded the highly innovative Corporation to create “ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers” said the firm has developed a system consisting of a tiny probe containing more than 3,000 electrodes attached to flexible threads – thinner than a human hair which can then monitor the activity of 1,000 neurons.
The workings of the system requires specific areas of the brain to be targeted to make it surgically safer. It would also be able to analyse recordings using machine learning which would then work out what type of stimulation to give a patient. Musk says that connecting the brain to an interface would create a new layer of “super intelligence” in the human brain, something people “already have via their phones”. A submission to start human testing which will need to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.