Three Breakthroughs of Neuralink
Brain interface from Elon Musk
Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+
According to neuroscientists, the Neuralink technology, if brought to mass production, would give many disabled people the opportunity to feel the touch of the prosthesis on the surface. But Musk wants the startup to work in a different direction. And it is almost impossible to achieve his ambitious goal.
To find out whether there really are innovations in Neuralink's "neural lace" technology, the Business Insider publication talked with a neuroscientist from the University of California, Andrew Hayes.
Neuralink was founded with Musk's participation in 2016, and until 2017 the company remained in the shadows. Then the field of work was outlined – the technology of "merging a computer with a human brain". It would seem that a person who is constantly busy fighting the "production" and "logistical hell" at Tesla factories, building and testing a SpaceX Martian rocket and laying a high-speed tunnel with Boring Company should not have time for other projects. But Neuralink has become Musk's answer to the dangers of artificial intelligence.
The entrepreneur has repeatedly said that one day AI will enslave humanity. To study this problem, he is in at one time he became a co-founder of the non-profit organization OpenAI, from which he eventually left, being in disagreement with the vector of the company's development. Neuralink has become a more practical response to the risks of AI: the future neurointerface will endow people with abilities that will allow them to compete with AI on an equal footing.
In the summer, Neuralink introduced a technology that it had been secretly developing for so many years – a microchip that is installed behind the ear and connected by electrodes to implants implanted in the brain. One day, such a technology, according to Musk's idea, will provide the ground for a symbiosis of a person and a computer. Neuralink intends to start human trials by the end of 2020.
"There are definitely pompous sides to this statement, and some much more realistic aspects," said Andrew Hayes, a neuroscientist at the University of California. For example, the flexible wires that were shown in the presentation are a really important innovation, especially if it comes to mass production. Each wire is slightly thinner than a human hair and is able to perceive brain activity and, theoretically, stimulate it. For long-term wear, of course, elastic electronics are needed.
Another plus of Neuralink technology is an implant device, which the company invented virtually from scratch. According to the principle of operation, it resembles a sewing machine and allows you to abandon the manual labor of the surgeon. Hayes was especially impressed by how accurately the device monitored the smallest fluctuations of the brain.
The third advantage of Neuralink is a chip that interprets brain activity. The problem is that the electrical signal of the brain is very insignificant, and it needs to be protected from interference. According to the expert, the company managed to create a chip that works with sufficient accuracy. "It's like upgrading a normal–resolution TV to HD," Hayes explained.
However, the demonstration of the capabilities of the neurointerface on monkeys did not make such an impression on him. All existing brain-computer communication systems can do this. It is not surprising that Neuralink was able to achieve the same.
The scientist believes that it is still far from the merger of a machine and a person, but Neuralink technology will be able to help paralyzed patients soon. Although the control of robotic prostheses has been known since 2012, the startup Mask can add a tactile response – stimulate the brain in such a way that a person feels the touch of an artificial hand on the surface as if it were real.
But in order to really give new opportunities to human consciousness, it will take not only technology, but also a better understanding of the brain, and a breakthrough in this area is unlikely to happen in the next 20 years, Hayes believes.
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