Elon Musk announced that his neurotechnology company Neuralink will begin implanting its first microchips in human brains in 2022. At this point, Neuralink must get the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Replacing faulty/missing neurons with circuits is the right way to think about it. Many problems can be solved just bridging signals between existing neurons.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 7, 2021
Progress will accelerate when we have devices in humans (hard to have nuanced conversations with monkeys) next year.
Neuralink has been developing brain chips since 2016 to implant them into human brains and record and stimulate brain activity simultaneously. This device is intended for medical purposes and aims to help partially or fully paralyzed individuals and people with severe spinal-cord injuries and neurological disorders.
Musk claims that Neuralink's standards for chip implantation are significantly higher than the FDA requires.
"Neuralink's working well in monkeys, and we're actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it's very safe and reliable, and the Neuralink device can be removed safely," he said.
The Neuralink chip performed well during the test with a monkey, Elon Musk said. In April, the company posted a video on the official YouTube channel with a monkey playing the classic Pong game solely with its own mind.
Kay Lee
The entrepreneur says the first people to receive the microchips may be patients with severe spinal-cord injuries, such as tetraplegics or quadriplegics.
In 2019, Elon Musk planned to begin human testing by the end of 2020. In February 2021, he hoped to start implanting the chips in humans by the end of 2021. Now the date is being postponed again.
