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Elon Musk has had some other bright idea. Nobody tin accuse Mr. Musk of a lack of intellectual diversity in his pursuits; his interests have ranged from glitzy solar roof tiles to cartoonishly fast cars, colonizing other planets, and domestic free energy infrastructure. He'southward playing a long game. Someone who thinks in the future tense. And he clearly believes that AI is the hereafter.

As AI advances, humans volition have to find a comfortable coexistence with machines that learn, or adventure winding up as a "house cat" to intelligence beyond ours. Toward that goal, and with a happy side outcome of therapeutic benefits for certain brain disorders, Elon Musk has been funding a company called Neuralink that wants to implant an AI interface in your brain.

Elon Musk is arguably a genius and I'm not trying to throw shade on his ideas. But information technology is starting to look like he's got that clone of himself we all sometimes wish for, the one who runs around and does stuff on the to-do list, thereby doubling your ability as a human. What kind of outrageous moon grit smoothies is this guy drinking, that he has the intellectual bandwidth to execute all these lofty ideas here in the meatsphere? What kind of brain trust does he have for administrative administration? Elon, did you build yourself a Jarvis and not tell anyone?

A neural lace, threaded through a drinking glass needle.

The company is currently working with a syringe-injectable, flexible, sub-micron-thickness substrates (note the regular grid in the ribbon pictured higher up) that can function as a component of implantable electronics. The mesh is then gossamer-soft that it doesn't irritate the brain's impossibly delicate cellular matrix, and its electrical properties mean that only the target part of the brain receives the electrical stimulus. With recent developments in flexible electronics and bio-inert materials, implantable brain-reckoner interfaces are coming closer and closer to reality every day.

It has to exist stressed hither that brain implants are not a casual undertaking. The people who resort to implanted electrodes and the similar are people who have no other options. These are people who suffer from degenerative brain diseases, people with intractable problems that they tin't solve by any other means than creating a pigsty in their braincase that incidentally gives the outside microbiome straight admission to the brain. Just what yous wanted: a pigsty in your head that just the most intrepid bacteria can get through. Those brain-eating amoeba are going to think these implants are so cool.

Neuralink has been registered in California as a medical enquiry company every bit of final July, although to date it'southward had no public presence whatsoever. The injectable implants are their platform, and they're working on therapeutic applications for people with brain diseases. But the implants aren't just limited to treating problems. At terminal twelvemonth's Voice Media Lawmaking Conference, Musk talked virtually his ideas for the visitor's futurity in AI-enabled encephalon-computer interfaces. It's critically important to him that auto intelligence remains under our command and aligned with our goals, and to assure that result, Musk wants to implant an AI "layer" in peoples' brains. "If we tin can create a loftier-bandwidth neural interface with your digital self, then you're no longer a house cat," he said.

Neuralink isn't starting from scratch in this attempt — information technology'll commencement with established brain-calculator interfaces (BCI). We have already advanced technology to the point that nosotros can remotely control the motion of rats, allow locked-in ALS patients a "voice" (in early trials), pilot encephalon-controlled prostheses, and wire up prosthetic lower limbs that can be controlled direct by the brain every bit well. All of these technologies are, at best, in the early on stages of commercialization and research, only Neuralink hopes to move across them in a affair of years. Musk told Vanity Fair that we "are already cyborgs" and that he believes a meaningful brain interface is just four-5 years away.

Am I the only one who has a distinct vision of a solar-shingled Wisteria Lane lookalike cyborg housing development on Mars? At that place would be battery-electric Tesla cars you can drive effectually on the Martian surface using only your mind. Remotes to control your upgraded spouse à la The Stepford Wives. Upgrading your cognitive AI interface firmware on Patch Tuesday only to discover that there'south a bug in the lawmaking that bricks your kids. These modern times.

My candle burns at both ends; it shall not final the night;
but ah, my foes, and ah, my friends — it gives a lovely light.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay