A Macaque With Elon Musk's Neuralink Implant Played Pong Using His Mind

A Video Shows How A Macaque Is Perfectly Able To Play An Old Video Game Through The Neural Implant Devised By Neuralink.

Connecting the brain with computers – Elon Musk's lifelong dream seems to be getting closer to reality. As a matter of fact, Neuralink – the startup owned by Tesla Inc. TSLA's patron – released a video showing a macaque monkey intent on playing a video game only by using thought, thanks to a neural implant allowing him to move the well-known “vintage” Pong game bars with its mind.

Elon Musk Exults: The event was commented upon by Elon Musk himself in one of his usual tweets, in which he announced: "Monkey plays Pong with his mind." Musk has long been claiming the necessity to combine mind and machine, in order to prevent human beings from being overtaken by artificial intelligence.

Scientific Implications: Neuralink experts explain that, if experiments are successful, the implant could allow a person to guide a cursor on a computer screen with their minds, allowing them to perform various activities, including surfing the Internet and writing e-mails or text messages. "Our first goal is to give people with paralysis their digital freedom back," states the firm. Neuralink team members involved in the project had published a sort of "wish list" relating to the technology's possible applications, such as restoring mobility to people with physical disabilities, allowing the blind to see, as well as enabling telepathy and memory download. In the near future, these memories may be reloaded in replacement bodies, as in sci-fi movies.

The Macaque-Test: A Neuralink implant was embedded on both sides of Pager's brain, as the macaque was called, to detect his neuronal activity. The installation was performed by a surgical robot that replaced a piece of the monkey's skull with a Neuralink disk, inserting ultra-thin wires into it. The disk's purpose is to record the nervous activity and transfer all the related information to a smartphone-like device through a Bluetooth wireless signal. "It actually fits quite nicely in your skull," Musk explained, warning that "It could be under your hair and you wouldn't know."

This article originally appeared on Financialounge.com and was translated from Italian to English. It does not represent the opinion of Benzinga and has not been edited. For news coverage in Italian or Spanish, check out Benzinga Italia and Benzinga España.