The billionaire entrepreneur, who represents companies like Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, on his way to hire employees for his neuroscience startup Neuralink, and hopes to recruit over 10,000 people soon. Recently, the brain-machine interface company Neuralink unveiled a tiny and thin device, that contains flexible wires to pick-up signals from neurons during a brain's activity. Musk’s ambitious company demonstrated a pig implanted with the device, as the pig's snout touched things, an array of dots appeared on the connected PC. It contains over 3,000 electrodes attached to its flexible threads thinner than a human hair with the potential to monitor the signals of 1,000 brain neurons. The device hasn’t been implanted in humans yet, but soon to start taking up volunteers. Even though designated as a breakthrough device by The US Food and Drug Administration yet does not mean its approval. The device is expected to resolve neurological problems, including memory loss, strokes, addiction, and even warn about a heart attack. Besides, Musk said about the ability to restore full motion in people with severe spinal cord injuries, for which a second implant on the spine will be necessary.
The implant process takes about an hour and claims to be as simple as Lasik eye surgery. Earlier, the company hoped to start clinical trials in patients with severe spinal cord injuries in 2020. Musk also spoke about what he calls “AI symbiosis,” a fusion of the human brain and artificial intelligence. No doubt that it sounds exciting and ambitious but, also comes the downside with it when considered in terms of misuses. Getting into an age of "superhuman cognition" could be a boon and destructive too.