US multi-billionaire Elon Musk Photo: picture alliance / NTB | Carina Johansen
From BZ/afp
The US multi-billionaire Elon Musk wants to implant a computer chip in a human brain with his start-up Neuralink before the end of this year.
He announced this on Friday at an event in Paris. “We hope that later this year we can do our first implantation.” The recipient will probably be someone who suffers from “a form of quadriplegia” – that is, paralyzed in the arms and legs.
Musk spoke in a question and answer session with around 3,600 people in the French capital. His start-up Neuralink received approval from the US authorities last month to test computer chips in the human brain.
Communicate directly with computers through thought
According to Musk, the implants, which are about the size of a coin, should make it possible to communicate directly with computers through thoughts. So far, the roughly coin-sized prototypes have only been implanted in animals.
Neuralink isn’t the only company working on brain-computer interfaces. In July of last year, competitor Synchron announced that it was the first company to have a corresponding chip implanted in the brain of a US patient.