Elon Musk wants people to communicate via direct, neural interface

Elon Musk confirms he is CEO of Neuralink, a company working on a brain-computer interface. In time, people should have a direct, high-bandwidth neural interface for telepathy-like communication, Musk believes.

Speaking to Wait but why, Elon Musk confirms a report from The Wall Street Journal at the end of March, claiming that he founded the company Neuralink. Other company employees include Paul Merolla, who worked at IBM on the SyNapse program for developing neurosynaptic chips, and DJ Seo, who developed micro-scale silicon sensors called neural dust.

Neuralink is working on a high-bandwidth brain-machine interface to connect humans to computers. The company is still looking for various experts in fields such as electronics, neurosciences, software and biomedical fields. The initial aim is to have a working interface within four years to be able to help patients with brain disorders as a result of, for example, a stroke. This has to be done with micrometer scale devices. The idea for neural dust, for example, was to have microsensors in the brain communicate with a device in the meninges via ultrasound.

In the long run, Musk’s ambitions extend much further. “What people don’t realize right now is that they’re already a cyborg,” Musk said. “If you don’t have your smartphone with you, it already seems like you have a phantom limb. People are already kind of fused with their smartphone, laptop, applications and so on.” According to him, the big change is that the interface to the digital world will change.

In the most commonly used current interface, we ‘type’ with our two thumbs on a touchscreen. According to Musk, this is a setback compared to the interface where we type with ten fingers. “We should be able to vastly improve that with a direct, neural interface.” Two of those interfaces must be able to provide uncompressed, direct communication between people.

Musk speaks of conceptual conversations that would then take place. “Then when I’m communicating a concept, you’re basically doing telepathy. You don’t have to say anything verbally unless you want to add some flair to the conversation.” Musk is coming out with Neuralink a day after Facebook announced it is working on a brain-computer interface.