Elon Musk says Neuralink will begin human trials in six months

Elon Musk is known to work at least 16 hours a day. After acquiring the social giant in October for $4 billion, that hasn't kept him from working on his other projects, including the ongoing effort to revamp his brain-computer interface company, Neuralink.

Musk shared a video of a monkey playing a video game with his mind using a brain chip last year. A nine-year old Macaque was seen playing a MindPong video game telepathically using a brain chip. Musk said that the first Neuralink product will enable someone with cerebral paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using their thumbs.

Elon announced yesterday that he plans to begin human clinical trials in six months with a wireless brain chip developed by his company Neuralink. Neuralink had missed earlier timelines set by Musk.

In a show-and- tell event, Musk shared the much-awaited public updates on the device, saying they expect human trials to start within six months pending FDA approval.

During the event, Musk stated that the goal of Neuralink is to create a complete brain interface with a general input-output device that can interface with every aspect of the brain and solve a lot of problems that cause debilitating issues for people and be able to read signals from the brain. As part of the event, Neuralink DJ Seo also showed off the implanting device called R 1 and showed off a live demo of the device insertion on stage.

Neuralink, based in San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, said its brain chip interfaces could help disabled patients move and communicate again, with Musk saying yesterday that the interface will also target restoring vision.

Neuralink has been conducting tests on animals in the past, as it seeks approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration FDA to begin clinical trials in people. Musk said that we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device into a human.

Musk spoke to a crowd of select invitees in a presentation at the Neuralink headquarters in an event that lasted nearly three hours.

Musk emphasized the speed at which Neuralink is developing its device.

The Food and Drug Administration FDA said it couldn't comment on the status or existence of any potential product applications.

Musk first demonstrated Neuralink's AI-powered brain implant in live pigs in 2020 when he showed the uses and applications of Neuralink with three pigs implanted with Link V 0.9 chips. Musk told the audience that the implementation would be able to cure a wide variety of diseases of the human body, such as blindness, brain damage, and cure addictions.