Elon Musk Shows Neuralink Brain Link Working In a Pig
With a pig named Gertrude, Elon Musk demonstrated his startup Neuralink’s technology to build a digital link between brains and computers. A wireless link from the Neuralink device showed the pig’s activity activity as it snuffled around a pen on stage Friday night.
The demonstration shows the the technology to be significantly closer to delivering on Musk’s radical ambitions than during a 2019 product debut, when Neuralink only showed photos of a rat with a Neuralink connected via a USB-C port. It’s still far from reality, but Musk said the US Food and Drug Administration in July granted approval for “breakthrough device” testing. Musk also showed a second-generation device that’s more compact and that fits into a small cavity hollowed out of a hole in a skull. “It’s like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires,” Musk said of the device. It communicates with brain cells with 1,024 thin electrodes that penetrate within brain c