Having recently wiped the floor with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos en-route to becoming the richest man in the world, Elon Musk has revealed another one of his projects – wiring up a monkey’s brain to “play video games with its mind.”
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As per Sky News, Elon said in a speech on the private social app Clubhouse this week that his company Neuralink (which previously implanted coin-sized wireless sensors inside the brains of two pigs) has “a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull with tiny wires” which it is testing its technology on.
He added:
You can’t see where the implant is and he’s a happy monkey.
That should keep the animal activists off his back (yeah right). Elon also told people on the call that an inspector from the US Department of Agriculture described the company’s laboratory as “the nicest monkey facility” they had ever examined:
We went the extra mile for the monkeys.
One of the things we’re trying to figure out is whether we can have the monkeys playing mind pong with each other? That would be pretty cool.
Elon & Neuralink aren’t just pissing about though; the whole point of this is to create a brain-computer interface in order to treat people with brain and spinal injuries. The idea is to help disabled people return to full functionality, as well as curing other conditions such as blindness, nerve damage, Alzheimer’s, dementia, memory loss, depression etc.
Neuralink’s head surgeon, Dr Matthew MacDougall, said the first trials would focus on patients with paralysis or paraplegia, although there’s no date for when the trials will start just yet.
So despite all the flak Elon and his companies will catch over testing these technologies on animals, there’s a good argument to be made for why it’s worth the trouble. I’m sure many of us have already benefited greatly from medical advancements that were first tested on animals to make sure they are safe. Not to mention – the monkey’s having a great time! Elon said so himself!
Elon spoke a bit more about this the second time he was on Joe Rogan back in May 2020:
A microchip in your brain that can heal injuries and treat memory loss, depression and other conditions? Sign me up! If it takes a monkey learning how to play GTA V with its brain to get there, so be it. Go Elon Go!
Meanwhile, Elon’s wife Grimes has announced this week that she’ll be moving to Mars in 20 years. Sounds about right.
