Elon Musk says Neuralink’s first human patient controls a computer mouse with thought

The Tesla and SpaceX boss and X owner announced in late January that Neuralink had performed its first brain implant on a patient, as part of its first clinical trials.

“The progress is good, the patient seems to have fully recovered, there are no side effects that we are aware of.” On his social network, according to the billionaire, guinea pig “Able to control the mouse, move it around the screen just by thinking”The entrepreneur said during a conversation on Space, the audio lounge tool from X, formerly Twitter.

Tesla and SpaceX bosses announced in late January that Neuralink had performed its first brain implant on a patient, as part of its first clinical trials.

“We try to push as many buttons as possible with the idea,” Elon Musk continued. “So we’re currently working on the ability to click the mouse left and right, move it down and up, which is essential if you want to click on something and drag it to another place.”.

Paralyzed patients can walk again

Founded in 2016, the company is far from the only organization developing brain-machine interfaces (BMI). Researchers at the Grenoble Clintech Institute, for example, introduced an implant in 2019 that allows a quadriplegic person to animate an exoskeleton and move their arms or move them around. Neurolink, J It recently raised around $323 million from investors in two phases in August and November, She says she also wants to make paralyzed patients walk again, but also restore sight to the blind and treat mental illnesses like depression.

Neuralink’s coin-sized implant has already been placed in the brain of a macaque, which successfully played the video game “Pong” without a controller or keyboard. But Elon Musk eventually aims to offer his implants to everyone. According to him, better communication with computers should be made possible and included “A Threat to Our Civilization” What does artificial intelligence represent?