Link post "Electric vehicles, rockets… and now brain-computer interfaces. Elon Musk’s newest venture, Neuralink, aims to bridge the gap between humans and artificial intelligence by implanting tiny chips that can link up to the brain. At a press conference on July 16, Neuralink’s ambitious plans were detailed for the first time, showcasing a future (a very distant future!) technology that could help people deal with brain or spinal cord injuries or controlling 3D digital avatars."
I hear they’ve implanted some monkeys. Have they talked about what they’ve been able to get the monkeys to do? Controlling high-dexterity mechanical arms, for instance?
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Pager, a nine-year-old Macaque monkey, can play some simple 2D video games, including MindPong, with his Neuralink. These games appear to use the inputs from a single joystick (or the signals from the Neuralink associated with moving a joystick). Here’s Neuralink’s video explaining it. Other companies and devices may have different capabilities.
I don’t recall reading on the Neuralink paper anything related to implants on monkeys. Although they do cite Miguel A. L. Nicolelis et al. "Chronic, multisite, multielectrode recordings in macaque monkeys".