Elon Musk, perhaps the world's most famous businessman, has a habit of making statements that stretch the bounds of believability.
On July 16th, 2019, he introduced a new type of brain-machine interface (BMI), starting from the design of a "neural lace (神经织网)", a net of thin electrodes (电极) that capture the information from the brain. However, the electrodes must be flexible, so that they do not damage brain tissue and will last for a long time. And to make the implantation (植入) of so many electrodes safe, painless and effective, the process has to be automated.
Mr. Musk's team does indeed seem to have made progress towards these goals. Its presentation included videos of a robot that is best described as a sewing machine. This robot grabs "threads", and shoots them deep into the brain through a hole. The firm has also designed a chip that can handle signals from as many as 3,072 electrodes.
With all these technological breakthroughs, the firm now hopes to help people overcome such illnesses as blindness and paralysis. They designed a small device that would sit behind someone's ear, picking up signals from the implanted chip and passing them on as appropriate. In a few years, using a brain implant to control your devices may be asprevalentas wearing wireless earphones today. Finally, Musk predicts neural lace will allow humans to be combined with AI systems, thus enabling the species to survive.
Though, as this announcement shows, Mr. Musk does have a habit of presenting himself as the hero of the human race, the idea that some machines at least will come under the direct control of human brains seems possible to be carried out. The biggest barrier to this happening will probably not be writing the software needed to interpret brainwaves, but rather persuading people that the necessary surgery, whether by sewing machine or otherwise, is actually a good idea.
