Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Elon Musk has invested in many science and technology projects. Among them, Tesla and SpaceX have long been known by people. But Neuralink is a different story.

Neuralink is a company with a sense of future oddities founded by Musk. According to Musk himself, the Neuralink project is to achieve "symbiosis" (symbiosis) between the human brain and artificial intelligence.

In essence, the company's main task is to develop brain-computer interface technology, which is to implant microchips into the human brain-microchips that record brain activity and exert some kind of stimulation. Once this technology is successfully developed, it may be of great help to the research and treatment of nervous system diseases. Musk believes that the technology can be seen as a FitBit product worn in the brain to some extent.

Neuralink was founded quietly in 2016, but was exposed the following year. But it wasn't until 2019 that Musk and the Neuralink team demonstrated their technology live for the first time, and it was the company's first public appearance. Neuralink is currently developing two devices: a brain chip and a robot responsible for implanting the chip into the brain.

Brain chip

Brain chip the brain chip in the development of the robot is about the size of a coin and can be embedded in the skull. A row of tiny wires extends from the chip and is fan-shaped into the brain. Each wire is about 1/20 of the diameter of human hair. The 1024 electrodes on these wires can effectively monitor brain activity and apply electrical stimulation to the brain. The monitoring data can be wirelessly transmitted to an external computer through the chip for researchers to study.

The brain chip transplant robot works a bit like a sewing machine, using a hard needle to pierce the chip's soft wires into the brain. In January 2021, Neuralink released a video showing how the robot works. Musk said that with this machine, the implantation of Neuralink chip electrodes will be as simple as laser-assisted vision correction surgery. Although Musk's claim is bold, some neuroscientists believe that the robot product does have some promising features. For example, during surgery, the position of the brain moves slightly with breathing and heartbeat, and the robot automatically adjusts the position of the hard needle in real time to accommodate this movement. The robot, designed by Woke Studios, is up to eight feet tall, and Neuralink is currently developing basic technology for it.

In 2020, Neuralink successfully implanted a brain chip into a pig's brain and showed for the first time how a chip located in a pig's brain can transmit data to the outside world in real time in a roadshow two months later. In the demonstration, the chip accurately predicted the position of the pig's limbs while walking on the treadmill and recorded the pig's neural activity as it looked around for food.

Professor Andrew Jackson, a neuroscience expert at Musk Newcastle University in the 2020 roadshow, said that as far as the technology itself is concerned, the use of 1024 channels is not surprising, but the electronic devices responsible for wireless transmission of channel data are very advanced, and robot transplants are also very good. "the technology is very solid from an engineering perspective, but mediocre from a neuroscience point of view," he said. " In addition, he also said that the wireless relay technology of Neuralink chips will improve the scientific welfare of laboratory animals and alleviate the suffering of laboratory animals. At present, most neural interfaces used in animals need to be connected to wires that pass through the skin.

In April 2021, Neuralink's technology took another step forward, showing how a macaque can play video games with its mind. A video released shows that a macaque can actually fly a ping-pong video game with its brain alone.

Although Musk brags about the latest technological development of Neuralink, it is not a big step in the eyes of neuroscientists. Neuro-brain interfaces are implanted in primates to enable them to control objects on the screen. In fact, this kind of technology has been implemented in the laboratory as early as 2002, and its origins can be traced back to the 1960s.

None of the technologies Musk and his macaque buddy Neuralink have demonstrated so far are particularly groundbreaking, but neuroscientists are impressed by the company's ability to integrate technology. The magic of Musk is that he has effectively packaged and integrated a large number of laboratory technology and used it in combination with wireless relay technology.

Musk has repeatedly set a timetable for when the brain chip can be implanted into the human body.

In 2019, Musk first expressed his desire to implant a brain chip into the human body by the end of 2020. But in May 2020, Musk said in a podcast that Neuralink would start human testing within a year. In February 2021, he expressed the same idea again.

Experts had doubts about the timetable at the time. Considering that the brain chip will remain in the human body for a lifetime, safety testing requires that the chip be implanted into animal test subjects (usually primates) and retained for a long time to test the life of the device. Some experts said that the safety testing process could not be accelerated and had to wait patiently to see how long the electrode could be used in the body. If you want these electrodes to last in the body for decades, then the testing time will not be short.

By the end of 2021, Musk changed his story, saying that Neuralink was ready to begin human trials a year after the FDA approved human trials. He later reiterated this statement on Twitter. But then Musk updated his plan again, saying he wanted to start human testing in 2022-two years later than he originally thought.

Max Hodak, co-founder and president of Neuralink, left Neuralink in April 2021. In May 2021, weeks after leaving, Hodak tweeted that he was still a "super cheerleader" for the company.

But in February 2022, Hodak revealed on his blog that he had invested in and joined Neuralink's competitor Synchron. "I don't want this to be interpreted as a blow to Neuralink by the outside world," Hodak told the media at the time. Synchron has started human trials in May 2022 ahead of Neuralink with its own neural interface technology.

Hodak also told the media that he believes that Neuralink will soon enter the human clinical trial stage.

Neuralink's development of human brain chip technology has also sparked a dispute over the welfare of laboratory animals. In February 2022, an animal rights group legally obtained documents about Neuralink conducting animal experiments at the University of California, Davis between 2017 and 2020. The documents, which cover the use of monkeys, including veterinary records and autopsy reports, are more than 700 pages long. After reviewing the documents, the animal rights group filed a complaint with the United States Department of Agriculture about animal use.

The group claimed that as many as 23 monkeys did not receive adequate care during the experiment and suffered greatly from highly invasive head transplant experiments. However, a spokesman for the University of California, Davis said that during the cooperation with Neuralink, the pilot program was reviewed and approved by the university's animal welfare ethics committee, and that the project was completed in 2020. "We have provided the best possible care for the animals involved in the experiment," the spokesman said. animal experiments in schools have always been strictly regulated and comply with all relevant laws and regulations, including those of the United States Department of Agriculture. "

Neuralink also refutes the group's allegations, saying the company is committed to conducting animal experiments in the most humane and ethical way. Neuralink said that based on the fact that animal facilities and care at the University of California, Davis are up to federal standards, the company also built its own higher-standard animal farm at the university in 2020. The 6000-square-foot farm is animal-friendly and includes facilities such as swimming pools, swings and tree houses.

Musk likes to imagine the future of human brain chip technology. Among other things, in the near term, the technology does have some potential medical applications.

In the near future, chips implanted in patients' brains are expected to help treat neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease. Neuralink's improved neural interface technology will also contribute to the research and treatment of severe neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Neuralink chip transplant robot needle close-up brain chip another application scenario is to let people use their minds to control robot prosthetics, thus providing a better prosthetic experience for paralyzed patients. Electrodes in the brain may also help patients rebuild their sense of touch, thus achieving fine motor control of the prosthetic limb.

Neuralink has hinted that the first real-world application of human brain chips will be to allow paralyzed patients to control mobile phones and laptops. In a $205 million round of financing at the end of July 2021, the company announced that the first commercial use of human brain chips might be to help paralyzed patients regain digital freedom and manipulate computers or mobile phones as freely as ordinary people do. The funds raised in this round will be used for the marketing of Neuralink's first product and for accelerated research and development of future products.

In December 2021, Musk told the outside world that Neuralink wanted to first implant brain chips into "people with severe spinal cord injuries, such as tetraplegic patients."

Musk also said that in the long run, Neuralink's brain chip could be used in the fusion of human consciousness and artificial intelligence. Musk has a lot of doubts about artificial intelligence and believes that the technology is a great threat to human survival. Musk's solution is to integrate human beings with artificial intelligence. "humans can't be smarter than supercomputers. If humans can't surpass it, then become one with it." Musk believes that human beings will be able to use the technology developed by Neuralink to achieve "symbiosis with artificial intelligence", and Neuralink's mission is to "solve the survival risks associated with digital super intelligence."

Musk has a lot of whimsical ideas about how Neuralink can enhance human capabilities. For example, he said in 2020 that people would be able to "preserve and play back memories" or telepathically summon their cars in the future, as described in the series Black Mirror.

But experts are skeptical of these claims. Some experts say it can't be said that these ideas will never come true, but the scientific basis is still fragile-humans still know very little about the neural processes of the brain-and can predict the position of a pig's legs when walking on a treadmill. Doesn't mean you can automatically read thoughts in the human brain. Moreover, Musk's talk about the merger of the human brain and artificial intelligence is largely a fantasy of his own.

Musk also once claimed that Neuralink's technology could "solve many brain-related diseases", such as autism and schizophrenia. This has also raised a lot of questions. First of all, autism is a developmental disorder, not a disease; schizophrenia is also a mental disorder (and therefore not a disease). In addition to basic treatment, there are great ethical problems in performing brain surgery on healthy people with these two mental disorders. In addition, implanting these electronic devices into the brain is a high-risk operation, which is fine for patients, but it is not a good idea for healthy people.

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