If you have never heard about Neuralink before, it is a secretive company from Elon Musk like many others. This company develops brain-machine interfaces and it has now shown off new technology.
With this new technology, Neuralink plans to give the power to humans for controlling their phones or computers with just their mind.
We already know that all of our actions are controlled by our brain. However, we still need to perform those tasks with our hands such as functioning a computer or using our legs to walk.
In particular, we sometimes wonder how we can control our computer or phone with just the mind. Neuralink thinks that this is possible and they are already working on it.
Neuralink is developing flexible “threads” and they are said to be much less damaging then what is currently used for brain-machine interfaces. There is also a white paper credited to “Elon Musk & Neuralink” which says that the threads can transfer high volume of data.
The white paper also reveals that “as many as 3,072 electrodes per array distributed across 96 threads.” might be included.
At just 4 to 6 μm in width, these threads are considerably thinner than a human hair. Now, it is one thing to develop a thread and another to insert them into humans. Neuralink has developed a machine that automatically embeds them as well.
Musk, in its presentation for Neuralink last week, said that the main reason for doing the presentation was recruiting. President of Neuralink, Max Hodak, said that he did not think that “this technology was a good idea,” but Elon Musk convinced him.
Rather than drilling holes in a human body, Neuralink hopes that they can just use laser beams for this purpose. Elon Musk has also revealed that they plan on having this (threads) inside a human patient by the end of next year.