Elon Musk announced his plans to receive a Neuralink brain implant as soon as the device is ready for public use.
“You could have a Neuralink device implanted right now, and you wouldn’t even know. I mean, hypothetically,” Musk stated during an event introducing his startup. “In one of these demos, in fact, in one of these demos, I will.”
The founder of the brain-computer startup took to Twitter to reiterate his pledge to get an implant of their device.
Musk doesn’t think it’ll be too long before Neuralink is ready for human trials. At the event, the billionaire said that he anticipates it being in six months and explained that the only thing holding them back is approval from FDA.
“Obviously, we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human, but we’re submitted, I think, most of our paperwork to the FDA,” he said.
Since 2019, Musk has repeatedly said that Neuralink would begin to implant its devices in human brains, but this has not yet happened.
So far, Neuralink has only experimented with the device on animals such as pigs and monkeys. Last year, Musk showed a demo video of a monkey using the device to play video games with its mind. This year, he provided a video of a monkey “telepathically typing” by utilizing an implant.
One of Neuralink’s chief competitors, Synchron initiated human trials in 2019 in Melbourne, Australia. They beat Musk’s company earlier this year, being the first to implant their device into a US patient. This device has helped multiple people who suffer from paralysis by enabling them to do simple tasks such as shopping online and sending text messages using only thoughts.
The two companies strive to develop brain-computer interfaces by implanting chips that can read and write brain activity. Musk has said that the brain-machine interface could do things like cure paralysis and give people telepathic powers in the past, calling the device “a Fitbit in your skull.”
The billionaire believes that the device could possibly restore vision to people who were born blind.