Elon Musk says second Neuralink brain implant will be in a week

(Bloomberg) — Brain computer startup Neuralink Corp. aims to implant its device in a second human patient in about a week, founder Elon Musk said during a video update on Wednesday, and hopes to have devices in “higher number” patients. single digits” by the end of the year.

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In a wide-ranging discussion broadcast on Musk’s social platform X, the billionaire and several key Neuralink employees described the device’s current capabilities and future possibilities, such as repairing paralysis and memory loss. They also outlined steps the team would take in future surgeries to avoid some mishaps that occurred after the first implantation, in Arizona man Noland Arbaugh.

The long-term goal “is to mitigate the longer-term civilizational risk of AI,” or artificial intelligence, Musk said. Neuralink can help with this by creating “a closer symbiosis between human intelligence and digital intelligence”. The idea, Musk said, “is to give people superpowers.”

In the short term, the company aims to help patients with brain and spinal cord injuries by allowing them to control phones and computers with their minds. He does this by implanting a device he calls Telepathy into the skull, a round disc with wires of electrodes attached to it that insert into the brain tissue.

In upcoming surgeries, Neuralink will make some changes to try to mitigate the problem of electrode wires retracting from brain tissue, Musk said. Proposed solutions include eliminating an air pocket, a normal part of brain surgery, which may have contributed to the retraction of the wires in the first surgery. The company will aim to insert the wires more precisely into the folds of the brain and place the implant flush with the contour of the skull.

In the video, the team also discussed future generations of the device. Musk said it should be possible for patients with older models to upgrade to newer models. “You want the iPhone 15,” he said. “It’s not the iPhone 1.”

At the end of the presentation, Musk emphasized the care that Neuralink takes with the animals it uses for research.

“We really do everything we can to maximize animal welfare,” he said. The startup has been criticized in the past for the way it treats animals in the laboratory.

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