Regulators have also raised concerns about Neuralink’s research and its ethical approach. Reuters reported that US animal welfare authorities are investigating the deaths of multiple test subjects by the company.
Reuters reported that 1,500 animals, including monkeys, pigs, sheep and mice, died during four years of testing at the company. Neuralink has not responded to the allegations. Musk has previously claimed that the company is not ambitious with its experiments.
In February last year, he admitted to euthanizing several animals as part of his research. “Two animals were euthanized on the scheduled end dates,” the company said, while “six animals were euthanized on the medical direction of veterinary staff.” The animals were killed due to device failure, infections, and “surgical complications.”
Katya Kornysheva, assistant professor of human neurology at the University of Birmingham, is skeptical that invasive surgery is the way forward. “The risk profile and costs of invasive techniques are significant. Clinical risks may include infection, bleeding, and mechanical damage to brain tissue.”
The innovation, he says, is best used by “a very small group of severely disabled patients.”
Neuralink faces plenty of other, well-funded competition. One startup, Synchron, has raised more than $200 million from investors including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Its technology is already being used in human trials.
It uses a stent-like device, a small set of wires, that is placed in blood vessels near the brain. This can then be used to translate brain signals into simple commands, such as typing on a virtual keyboard. The company describes it as “Bluetooth out of your brain.” Test patients are already using the tiny machine to control computer screens.
Elsewhere, Meta, the owner of Facebook, is developing a non-invasive EEG scanner that tries to convert brain waves into words using artificial intelligence.
Right now, this intrusion can theoretically translate signals in more detail than Cogitat’s non-intrusive method. But that could change. Kornisheva says: “Offline machine learning technologies have shown that these non-invasive signals carry much richer information about movements than previously thought.”
Musk’s brain-machine chips may sound like science fiction. But mind reading technology is somehow closer than you think.
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