Apologies for the sensationalist subject line, but seeing the latest reveal from Neuralink - the brain hacking company set up by Elon Musk - sent me into paroxysms of joy and dread. I truly love to hate his bizarre attempts to transform the world.
But what’s he - and Neuralink - actually done?
Icymi, Musk’s ‘neurotech’ company revealed today that it has developed a way of creating an interface between a brain and a computer. By using something called neural lace, a network of threads that come together to form a neatly tailored network of electrodes, Neuralink believes it will be able to transfer more ‘brain data’ in a safer manner than these types of technologies have done up until now. Ultimately Neuralink wants to be able to transfer this data wirelessly, and with a new custom made chip believes it will soon be able to. However, it currently relies on a USB connection…
If you want to read more about the announcement I’d highly recommend this article on The Verge.
However, while it isn’t hard to find outlets that are covering the story, it is nevertheless hard to get much detail on what Neuralink’s innovation will actually look like and how it works in practice.
As the BBC report highlighted with a sentence that I can only imagine being written with a wry smile, “NeuraLink [sic] did not explain how the system translated brain activity or how the device was able to stimulate brain cells.”
This isn’t to say the work done by Neuralink isn’t without value. It’s just that its value is still a long way off and a little vague.
Krittika D’Silva, an AI researcher, told the BBC, “the plans they describe will require many years of work to deal with technical and ethical challenges, but the technology could be a big step in working to alleviate certain serious medical conditions like epilepsy and Parkinson's." So, yes, it could have a positive impact - it’s just that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to even get near that stage.
Elon Musk’s big brain
This is the interesting thing about what innovation looks like in the world of Elon Musk: promising if you look hard enough, but ultimately nothing more (right now, at least) a jumping off point for Musk to talk about his own hobby horses.
Take artificial intelligence, for example. There’s no obvious reason for Musk to be talking about AI at the Neuralink launch, but somehow the entrepreneur manages to talk about helping humanity “to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence.”
This is something I’ve noticed with Musk in the past, with the cave rescue mission being the clearest example - I wrote about it last year.
And although it might just be the typical egotism of a man with significant wealth and status, because of his prominence within wider culture it’s essential that we call out this sort of bullshit wherever we see it.
The problems Musk wants to solve always match the size of the ego. That kind of ambition is sometimes admirable, sure, but we shouldn’t let this way of thinking become the template for how the world thinks about concepts like ‘innovation’.
Small problems matter - they’re worth solving. Telling people they aren’t will only exclude more people from the technology sphere, which is something we already know is happening on a dangerous scale.
So, just stop it, Elon.