Why did Elon Musk create Neuralink?
Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk and others, developing implantable brain–machine interfaces (BMIs). The company's headquarters is in San Francisco. It was started in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.
2021-04-08 19:00:00 - Ridddle
Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities. By July 2019, it had received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from Musk) and was employing a staff of 90 employees.
At that time, Neuralink announced that it was working on a "sewing machine-like" device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width) threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that read information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes, they had anticipated starting experiments with humans in 2020, but have since moved that projection to 2021.
Some claims made by Musk in relation to the technology have been criticized by several neuroscientists and publications, including the MIT Technology Review.
Technology
By 2018, the company had "remained highly secretive about its work since its launch", although public records showed that it had sought to open an animal testing facility in San Francisco; it subsequently started to carry out research at the University of California, Davis.
In 2019, during a live presentation at the California Academy of Sciences, the Neuralink team revealed to the public the technology of the first prototype they had been working on. It is a system that involves ultra-thin probes that will be inserted into the brain, a neurosurgical robot that will perform the operations and a high-density electronic system capable of processing information from neurons.