Musk’s Newest Sci-Fi-ish Invention
- Elements of Science
- Aug 26, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 29, 2019
August 2019
Steve Rogers:
Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?
Tony Stark:
Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.
If you just remove the “playboy” tag, you have a real life “superhero”--Elon Musk. While some people have mixed opinions about some of his public behaviors, he has unquestionably been pushing the frontier of technology in many areas. The latest installment of “Musk’s Sci-Fi-ish inventions” features a prototypical method to connect human brains to computers. However, unlike the movies, this technology will not be employed to create an augmented reality interface (like the camera display in “Pokemon Go”) that helps the user to strategize every move. Instead, some of the first applications include using electrodes to rehabilitate patients paralyzed by spinal cord injuries.
Brain to computer connection2
The proposed procedure uses microthreads (essentially very thin wires) to connect the subject’s brain to a chip. Each thread is about 4 to 6 micrometers, which is less than one tenth of the thickness of one standard newspaper page. In order to achieve such precision, the whole process of attachment is handled by a machine. Ultimately, this human-computer integration will allow paralyzed individuals to express themselves by controlling a digital output, like a computer.
Although many are impressed by this groundbreaking announcement, it is not yet time to get overly excited. Technical challenges aside, there are severe ethical problems of these surgical procedures. For example, one of the most controversial problems is if a person is connected to a computer, should he or she still be considered as a human and enjoy the same rights as the others? As a result of these unanswered questions, there is still a long journey ahead for Musk’s company Neuralink to get government approval to experiment and deploy these procedures. For now, these experiments have only been conducted on monkeys.
Even though this project is still at an early stage, developments like this can inspire the younger generation to push the boundaries of technology and literally extend the capabilities of “humans”.
By Peiyao Li
Works Cited
- Musk’s plan source
[2] https://bgr.com/2019/07/17/elon-musk-neuralink-biotech-interface-between-human-brain-and-computer/
- Connection procedure and picture source
- Movie quote source
- Movie picture source
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