No matter what you think of Musk, or what you think of Musk's amazing plans, you have to admit that Musk's wild imagination is beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Although the idea is amazing, many people are not optimistic about the various plans proposed by Musk, such as Space X's Mars colonization and underground tunnels. Although these plans sound wonderful, they have been difficult to implement, and some parts still lack reliable scientific theories and technical support. No wonder many people are not optimistic about it.
In Musk's many plans, brain-computer combination is definitely a particularly unreliable thing, after all, artificial intelligence has not yet developed to a mature stage, let alone connect the brain to the computer.
But what is unexpected is that Musk's brain-computer interface seems to have really developed to an unexpected stage, because after experiencing animal experiments, it is ready to conduct real experiments!
Brain-computer connectivity technology
Brain-computer interface, in general, is to connect the human brain and computer together. In a broad sense, any direct connection between the brain and external devices can be regarded as brain-computer interface technology. The key to this technology is that when the brain and peripheral devices are connected, the brain's information can be directly transmitted to the peripheral devices, and then recognized by the peripheral devices to make corresponding work.
Don't think that the brain-computer interface was proposed by Musk, in fact, Musk is just an "investor". This technology has been proposed as early as the last century, and in 2008, the university of Pittsburgh in the old United States has initially realized this technology, which successfully allows monkeys to control the installed robotic arm through brain-computer interface technology.
It's just that the gap between human and ordinary animal brains is very large, and brain-computer interface technology is still very early to be applied to humans maturely.
If you want to truly realize brain-computer interface technology, you must at least solve two problems, one is the connection and information transmission between the human brain and external devices, and the other is security problems. The complexity of the human brain is far beyond people's imagination, and how to identify the information transmitted by the brain is a historical problem. There are more than 86 billion neurons in the human brain, and the brain-computer interface technology must at least collect and monitor hundreds of thousands of neurons to initially solve some physiological disease problems. But with the current human technology, this data is only a few thousand, which is very far from the initial goal.
On the other hand, the human brain is also very fragile, and when it comes to brain-computer interface, it is necessary to protect the safety of the brain. Take the simplest case, to carry out brain-computer interface, it is necessary to implant chips, electrodes and other information connection materials in the relevant parts of the brain, in this process, how to protect the brain from harm? On the other hand, if the brain-computer connection is successful, how to ensure that in the future life and work, there will be no negative impact on the brain? In addition, there are many security issues to be paid attention to in the brain-computer connection, which is one of the important reasons for the slow development of this technology.
Neuralink recruited the head of a clinical trial
Neuralink, Musk's company specializing in brain-computer interface technology, has already passed FDA clinical approval in 2020. This means that Neuralink already has the ability and authority to conduct real-person experiments, and it also posted a notice on January 20 to recruit a clinical trial leader. This means that Musk's company will soon begin to carry out clinical implantation of real people and brain-computer combination.
However, Neuralink has not been rumored to carry out experiments on real human transplantation so far, and another company, BlackRock, has made many real-life brain-computer connections before Musk.
On December 23 last year, Australian Phillip O'Keefe tweeted that attracted attention. What piques people's curiosity is not the content of its tweet: Hello, world. It's the way the tweet was sent: through the brain-computer connection, directly input by the brain!
The Australian suffered from frostbite in 2015 and became incapacitated. This makes it impossible to use only the brain and lose the ability to use other human organs, which means that it is impossible to type with a finger and then click "send" to post a tweet.
But brain-computer interface technology allowed him to make up for this shortcoming. Helping him is a new company, Synchron, which was founded in 2017 and has been established for a short time, but has completed successful brain-computer interface technology in a short period of time to help patients with frostbite live better, which is inevitably amazing.
Science and technology affect the future
To this day, we can no longer say that brain-computer interface technology is an impossible thing. A growing number of success stories from related companies show that musk's investment in this technology is not just a joke. The maturity of brain-computer interfaces will help more patients solve the difficulties in life in the future, and may also create girls with mechanical bodies like in the movie "Alita".
Yes, science and technology are influencing the future, or it is not an exaggeration to say that it is shaping the future. Of course, with the maturity of science and technology such as brain-computer interface technology, security issues and ethical issues need to be solved. But there is no doubt that no one can stop the times from moving forward rapidly with the help of science and technology.
Will the "brain-computer interface" conduct real-person experiments? Musk is not kidding
Brain-computer connection technology becomes a reality, musk to carry out real experiments?