Reusable launch vehicles, spaceships, payment systems, unmanned electric vehicles, machines for drilling tunnels under densely populated cities, high-speed vacuum railways. It would seem that Elon Musk tried himself in almost everything. But the entrepreneur still can't calm down. This time, too, his new company, Neuralink, will work on creating a way to connect the human brain to a computer.
According to a publication in the Street Wall Journal, Elon Musk has founded a company whose employees are working on a highly promising technology for combining the human brain with a computer. While the project is in its early stages of development, nevertheless, in the future, brain implants may well become available to us, transforming us into something similar to what we all saw in the films "Johnny Mnemonic" or "The Matrix". After all, which of us would refuse to master kung fu in a couple of minutes? Elon Musk himself is sure that humanity is only four to five years away from a full-fledged neurocomputer interface.
In fact, Musk has already hinted several times that he is preparing to tell us something very interesting. For example, not so long ago, during a speech in Dubai, he remarked: "After some time, we may witness a combination of biological intelligence with digital intelligence." And then Musk added: "Everything here depends on the bandwidth, the speed of the established connection between your brain and the computer."
In addition, in his personal Twitter account back in January of this year, Musk, answering questions from fans, admitted that very soon he would share with them information about the so-called “neural lace” technology. This is what science fiction calls neurocomputer interfaces. While all this really sounds too fantastic to be true. But the first steps in this direction have been made for several years. For example, in patients with neurodegenerative diseases, arrays of electrodes are implanted in the brain to relieve symptoms with stimulation.
Elon Musk isn't the only one working on fantastic technology. Brian Johnson, founder of startup Kernel and co-owner of Braintree, has also been working on something similar since 2013. Johnson has invested more than $ 100 million out of pocket in research and has made significant progress. His company employs dozens of top-notch neuroscientists and software engineers. But their primary task is still the fight against neurodegenerative diseases, and not just the creation of a ligament man -
computer . Johnson plans to achieve all this by making the human brain faster and smarter when it is connected to the digital network.
Neuralink was founded in California last July. According to the documents, she will be engaged in medical research. The human brain hides in itself many mysteries, the answers to which scientists have been looking for for decades. Perhaps Elon Musk's undertaking will at least speed up this process a little, and our descendants will really be able to quickly and painlessly connect to their computers.
SERGEY GRAY
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