This innovation should “allow you to control your phone or your computer, and via them, almost all devices, simply by thinking”, according to the billionaire.
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A first for Elon Musk, but not on a global scale. The owner of Tesla announced Monday January 29 that the start-up Neuralink, of which he is co-founder, placed its first brain implant on a patient on Sunday. This operation has already been carried out several times by other companies and researchers.
Founded in 2016, Neuralink obtained the green light from the American Drug and Medical Devices Regulatory Agency in May 2023. On his X account (ex-Twitter), Elon Musk specifies that this implant must “allowing you to control your phone or computer, and through them, almost any device, simply by thinking”. According to him, “The first users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs.”
Other brain implants already carried out
Neuralink is far from the first start-up to install a brain implant, also called a brain-machine interface, on a human. In September, the Dutch company Onward tested the coupling of a brain implant with another that stimulates the spinal cord, with the aim of allowing a quadriplegic patient to regain mobility. Researchers from the Grenoble Clinatec institute presented in 2019 an implant allowing a quadriplegic person to animate an exoskeleton and move their arms or move around.
Neuralink recently raised some $323 million from investors in August and November 2023. Neuralink says it wants to make paralyzed patients walk again, but also restore sight to the blind and even cure psychiatric illnesses like depression. Elon Musk also aims to offer his implant to everyone, in order to allow better communication with computers and to contain the “risk for our civilization” that artificial intelligence poses.
