Neuralink held its Show & Tell event on Wednesday. It was revealed that Elon Musk is not confident about the company’s product features up to some extent. He says that Neuralink can restore vision for blind humans and also restore full body functionality in humans with a severed spinal cord. It is interesting how this is expected to restore for a person born blind as well.
Musk founded the company to answer some questions. “What do we do if there is a superintelligence that is much smarter than human beings? How do we, as a species, mitigate the risk or, in a benign scenario, go along for the ride?” According to the founder, even if this didn’t work, Nueralink will certainly be able to solve many brain injuries. He said, “Even if we do not succeed with that problem, we are confident at this point that we will succeed at solving many brain injury issues–spine injury issues–along the way,”
Further added, “You want to be able to read the signals from the brain. You want to be able to write the signals. You want to be able to ultimately do that for the entire brain and then also extend that to communicating to the rest of your nervous system if you have a severed spinal cord or neck.”
Other applications
Elon Musk also said that he was confident Neuralink could restore vision even if someone had never seen before and was born blind. He explained that this would be one of the first applications Neuralink is aiming for humans. “The first two applications we’re going to aim for in humans are restoring vision, and I think this is notable in that even if someone has never had vision ever; like they were born blind–we believe we can still restore vision.”
“The visual part of the cortex is still there. Even if they’ve never seen before, we’re confident they could see.” He added that the other application is in the motor cortex and would enable someone who has almost no ability to use their muscles to do so. Elon Musk also said that he was confident Neuralink could restore vision even if someone had never seen before and was born blind. He explained that this would be one of the first applications Neuralink is aiming for humans. “The first two applications we’re going to aim for in humans are restoring vision, and I think this is notable in that even if someone has never had vision EVER; like they were born blind–we believe we can still restore vision. The visual part of the cortex is still there. Even if they’ve never seen before, we’re confident they could see.”
