Brain surgery robots, neural Fitbits and electronic pigs
The Translation Bureau is a subordinate translation team, focusing on science and technology, business, workplace, life and other fields, focusing on introducing new foreign technologies, new perspectives, and new trends.
Editor’s note: Musk has extraordinary sales and innovation capabilities. This allowed him to brag and realize one by one. His latest development is Neuralink, a brain-computer interface technology company, which integrates medical equipment, brain surgery, robotics, neuroscience and machine learning into a neural implant Link. What can this thing do now? What can not be done? What can be done in the future? In response to these problems, Thomas Smith, a scientist and engineer, interpreted. The original title is: A Scientist and Engineer Explain Everything Elon Musk’s Neuralink Can (and Can’t) Do. In terms of space, we publish it in two parts, this is the first half.
Making key points:
It’s hard to tell from Musk’s presentation that he is discussing a real technology that has been achieved today, or an ideal vision that still takes decades to achieve< /span>
Link is a Fitbit with a cable implanted in the brain. Compared with the existing implants, it has many progressive improvements p>
Neuralink may use this device to create artificial limbs connected to the brain for amputees to restore the sense of touch
Link only realizes the docking with the surface of the cerebral cortex and cannot solve the memory loss, Depression, anxiety, insomnia, addiction and other problems
A technical presentation with a stunt larger than the content?
At the end of August, more than 150,000 people watched a webcast of the brain-computer interface company Neuralink demonstrating the latest technology. The secret startup company founded by Elon Musk plans to use tiny brain implants to fuse humans and AI together.
The viewers enjoyed one of the most fascinating and peculiar technical demonstrations in their recent memory. They saw the neurosurgical robot, the real-time stimulation of the spike neurons in the living brain, and the billionaire wearing a customized sports coat. The strange scene of a millionaire talking secretly with a Tamworth pig. It seems that he wants to coax it to perform on stage (“Come on, Gertrude, we Here is delicious!”).
Musk is a talented performer who is known for performing stunts, such as launching his Tesla car into space and selling real flame guns to promote his tunneling company. However, it is difficult to see from his stage effect this time. He is discussing a real technology that has been realized today, or an ideal vision that still takes decades to realize. Neuralink is also an extremely complex company that integrates medical equipment, brain surgery, robotics, neuroscience and machine learning. This makes it more difficult to understand its technology.
I own John.Hopkins University Cognitive Science (Neuroscience and Linguistics ) Degree with ten years of experience in AI. My friend, co-author Chris Chiang (also from Hopkins) has a degree in biomedical engineering and has been working in the field of medical devices for the past eight years. Ma Sk’s speech wasn’t even over, we started to study what Neuralink’s demonstration showed. Which parts of its technology are useful for medicine? Since the last time they shared in 2019 Since the details of the device, what changes and sacrifices has the company made? When will we achieve telepathy? This means the future of computers connected to the brain What are you doing?
However, it is difficult to see from his stage effect this time, whether he is discussing a real technology that has been realized today or an ideal vision that still takes decades to realize.
The core of Neuralink technology is Link, a coin-sized implant. Musk described Link in the demo as “Fitbit with a cable and implanted in the brain.” Just like a mobile phone that is charged wirelessly, Link is charged by electromagnetic induction, and its thickness is roughly the same as that of a human skull (8 mm). Neuralink uses custom surgical robots to install Link. This kind of robot is a bit like a sewing machine in operation. The robot will first drill a hole in the skull, and then plug the Link in, just like corking a wine bottle. Then use the device to suture the scalp to make the Link invisible. Musk joked in the demo that he might have installed a link in his head.
There are 1000 many small electrodes at the bottom of the link, these electrodes are organized into a “line”, each line is about 5