Neuralink: what is Elon Musk’s ‘mind-reading’ brain implant?

Controlling your surroundings from a microchip in your brain sounds like the stuff of sci-fi, but Elon Musk wants to make it a reality.

The billionaire announced that he expects to begin human clinical trials of a brain chip developed by his health tech company Neuralink in the next six months, after he submitted most of the necessary paperwork to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“We’ve been working hard to be ready for our first human, and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human,” he said.

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Musk has even vowed to have one of the chips implanted in his own brain, but this isn’t the first timeline Musk has set since he founded the company in 2016, noted Business Insider. And now the firm is facing a federal investigation for potential welfare violations, which might delay the whole process.

How do the chips work?

Known as brain-computer interfaces (BCIS), the system uses tiny electrodes placed in the brain to “read” signals from nearby neurons. “It’s like replacing a piece of your skull with a smartwatch, for lack of a better analogy,” Musk announced in what The Washington Post called a “flashy ‘show and tell’ event” last Wednesday.

Researchers have been developing BCIs since the 1960s, said Wired, but the devices are “still considered experimental and none are commercially available”.

Just a few dozen people around the world have been “outfitted” with these interfaces as part of research studies, it added, giving paralysed volunteers the ability to translate thoughts into speech, feel sensation again, and move a wheelchair. However, the technology remains “in its infancy”.

The goal for Neuralink is to enable people suffering from paralysis or other physical impairments to control computers and smartphones using their thoughts. Patients would be able to think up text for messages or emails as well as move a mouse cursor and navigate the web. It is also working on a robot to implant the chip.

In the long term, it appears the company wants to not only help restore brain function in patients but to help humans “co-evolve with with AI”, said The Register.

“What do we do if we have a digital superintelligence that is much smarter than any human?” Musk asked in last week’s presentation. He said it was his belief that humans will need brain-computer devices - such as Neuralink’s chip - to expand their technical abilities as machines become more powerful. “We are already cyborgs in a way that your phone and your computer are extensions of yourself,” he said.

Is Neuralink's technology ready for human trials?

So far, the company has only implanted its devices into the brains of animals, which Musk has acknowledged is a “sensitive” subject.

Last year, it released footage of a “macaque monkey named Pager playing video games such as ‘Pong’ for banana-smoothie rewards”, said Business Insider. But the website said “implanting primates with neural-brain interfaces that let them control objects on screens has been done before”.

Dr Jason Shepherd, an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah, said all the technology shown had been developed in some form previously, but Neuralink had packaged it “into a nice little form that then sends data wirelessly”.

What about the animal welfare probe?

In February, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a complaint to the US Department of Agriculture against Neuralink partner UC Davis, alleging animal cruelty. It claimed that “invasive and deadly brain experiments” were conducted on 23 monkeys. It was not “simply that the monkeys used in the trial died; the nature of their deaths was particularly grizzly”, reported Dazed.

Neuralink admitted eight monkeys were euthanised, but said it was “absolutely committed to working with animals in the most humane and ethical way possible”.

Then, this week, Rachael Levy at Reuters revealed that Neuralink was also facing a federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations. Separately, Levy said there were “internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths”.

Reviewing dozens of internal documents and speaking to more than 20 sources “familiar with the investigation and company operations”, Levy estimated that around 1,500 animals, including sheep, pigs and monkeys, had been killed.

The figure itself does not flout regulations, as “animals are typically killed when experiments are completed, often so they can be examined post-mortem for research purposes”, she explained. However, sources said the number is “higher than it needs to be for reasons related to Musk’s demands to speed research”, said Levy. And some projects were “marred in recent years by human errors”. In 2021, for example, “25 out of 60 pigs in a study had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads”.

What’s next for Neuralink?

Not everyone is certain that Musk will stick to his six-month timeline. “The world’s richest man often makes outlandish claims and sets overly ambitious deadlines that aren’t met,” said The Register. Musk has “previously said he hoped Neuralink would start human trials in 2020, 2021, again in 2022, and now it's 2023”, the website added.

The Washington Post said it was also “unclear whether the FDA is considering a request to begin human trials”.

Musk has reportedly expressed his frustration at the slow progress to Neuralink staff. “We will all be dead before something useful happens,” he told his team in a recent product review meeting, according to Bloomberg.

But the problems with testing have raised questions internally about the quality of the data and this could “potentially delay the company’s bid to start human trials”, said Levy at Reuters. Neuralink has yet to comment on her report.