Neuralink: Elon Musk’s plan to turn us into supercharged cyborgs

Curtis Moldrich Read more March 28, 2017

Elon Musk is already known for futuristic projects such as the high-speed Hyperloop transport system and SpaceX’s reusable rockets – but he’s just unveiled his most sci-fi-like scheme yet. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO unveiled Neuralink Crop, a new venture that aims to supercharge humans with devices planted in the brain. Yes, really.

The idea is simple. As we gain access to even more information, and the capability of AI also increases, it would be useful to have a hard-wired connection to the internet – or just additional resources. Musk’s vision comprises of a “digital layer” built into the brain that’ll merge computers with our own grey matter.

In this way, Neuralink-enabled humans would feature improved memory – or even be able to connect to computers directly. You can see Elon Musk talking about “neural lace,” at ReCode’s Code Conference last year.

Neuralink hasn’t come out of nowhere, as Musk has alluded to the project for the past few months – and as you’d expect from Musk, it’s mainly been on Twitter. The Tesla CEO has always responded to tweets about Neuralink, usually referring to it is as “Neural-lace,” which is sci-fi shorthand for the tech.

“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk recently said in a speech in public engagement in Dubai. “It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.”

Currently, we know very little else about Neuralink Corp. According to ReCode, the company is listed as “medical research” organisation in California, and has someone called Jared Birchall listed as its president, CEO and CFO. Hopefully, both Musk and Birchall will reveal more about the project, and its possible applications, soon.