As reported by [arstechnica]:
Elon Musk recently unveiled the work thats been going on at his secretive Neurolink company, which was founded with the purpose of developing neural implants and more advanced Brain Computer Interfaces for humans. Many of these devices have been done over the years, such as those controlling a cursor on the screen with their mind, or moving a robotic arm, but these are highly specialized and unique cases. Neurolink hopes to change that, by making such neural implants not only more versatile, but affordable and deployable to the general public, or rather to those with special needs in the near term.
Part of that goal is to make implant insertion an outpatient affair that can be done quickly and with as little fuss as possible. To do this, Neurolink showcased a teleoperated surgical robot that can allow a doctor to drill an 8 millimeter hole into the skull of a patient, and stamp in a 4 by 4 millimeter Neurolink implant, and connect it to thin wires through the brain to recieve information. They suggest that several of these implants could be inserted, upto as many as 5 to 10, with the implants networking to a small reciever behind the recipients ear. Its suggested that patients could go home the same day and fiddle with their new implants with an app on their phone.
Now, there are several questions and concerns about all this. First is that inserting any kind of implant can damage or impair neural connections, second is that the results may not provide much value at the moment, and this also somewhat side steps the possible complications of having implants long term, or lingering questions of "upgrades" or dealing with firmware issues, or even security implications with the wireless connections to neural implants. Whatever the result however, it could certainly provide a great deal of information on these particular kinds of approaches to cybernetics and neural implant research.
