Elon Musk Wants Neuralink's Brain Chip To Begin Human Trials in 6 Months

Shortly after its first “Show and Tell” event on November 30, Neuralink published on its YouTube account a video showing how animals’ well-being is taken care of. Supposedly, the goats, pigs, sheep, and monkeys in the laboratories can choose when they want to recharge the brain implant and engage in activities at their own will.

We have our doubts that they wanted a chip implanted into their brain in the first place, and Neuralink doesn’t present any data to support their claims. That’s strange because we suspect a brain interface should be able to surpass human-animal language barriers. Nevertheless, Elon Musk’s company, led by one of the mothers of his children, wants us to see for ourselves whether a brain implant is really what we want.

According to Musk, the company is close to starting human trials, and for the Nth time, he promised this would happen in six months. Coming from Musk, we’re not at all surprised, because he’s always well ahead of the times, especially when he promises things. Neuralink’s brain implants could help disabled patients move and communicate again, and even restore vision for those unable to see, claims Musk. But before Neuralink can use this on humans, the company wants to perfect the technology on animals, hence the sheep video you can watch below.

“We want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human,” Musk said during the event. “The progress at first, particularly as it applies to humans, will seem perhaps agonizingly slow, but we are doing all of the things to bring it to scale in parallel. So, in theory, progress should be exponential.”

Slow is good, and we’re happy that somebody is at least supervising Neuralink’s progress. The company had submitted the paperwork needed for a human clinical trial to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), since its brain implant is considered a medical device. The clinical trials would not start earlier than 2023, although Musk previously said it would happen in 2020 and later pushed it to 2022.

Musk described Neuralink’s implant as having multiple “threads” that can be inserted into the brain. A robotic system can implant the threads into the brain during a 15-minute operation. This requires the utmost precision, and the process needs to be repeated 64 times in a reasonable amount of time, hence the robotic system.

Like Tesla AI Day, Neuralink’s Show and Tell was also a recruiting event. The company has many job openings as it tries to move with the development. The progress is far from what Musk demands from his employees, and frustration would be an understatement. Earlier this year, Musk approached competitor Synchron about a potential investment after he scolded Neuralink’s employees for the slow progress.