Neuralink Releases Videos of Monkey Playing Pong With Its Brain

Rei writes: Having moved from pigs to rhesus macaques in pursuit of the goal of hopefully beginning human trials by the end of the year, Neuralink has continued their recruitment drive with a pair of videos showing their latest progress. In the first video, they show how they train the macaque to control a joystick with its mind, and how after associating the neural signals with intent, they can disconnect the joystick and the macaque continues to be able to operate the training interface solely through Neuralink. They then switch it over to controlling a cursor in Pong (picture-in-picture showing synapses here). Even with the game set to high speed and with the distraction of his banana-milkshake reward, the macaque puts out an impressive gaming performance. Musk expects the first commercial product to enable a paralyzed person to interact with a smartphone faster than a healthy person using their thumbs. ['Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again,' adds Musk. 'The device is implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look & feel totally normal.']

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