The wealthiest person on Earth has taken the next step toward a commercial brain interface.
Billionaire technologist Elon Musk announced this week that his company Neuralink has implanted its brain-computer interface into a human for the first time. The recipient was “recovering well,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Monday evening, adding that initial results showed “promising neuron spike detection”— a reference to brain cells’ electrical activity.
Each wireless Neuralink device contains a chip and electrode arrays of more than 1,000 super thin, flexible conductors that a surgical robot threads into the cerebral cortex. There the electrodes are designed to register thoughts related to motion. In Musk’s vision, an app will eventually translate these signals to move a cursor or produce text—in short, it will enable computer control by thinking. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal,” Musk wrote of the first Neuralink product, which he said is named Telepathy.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved human clinical trials for Neuralink in May 2023. And last September the company announced it was opening enrollment in its first study to people with quadriplegia.