Futuristic entrepreneur Elon Musk. – Susan Walsh / AP / SIPA
The video has already been viewed over 300,000 times. The American billionaire Elon Musk posted on his Twitter account on Friday the video of a monkey playing the Pong video game without any other controller than the power of his brain, thanks to a connected chip implanted in his skull by the start-up Neuralink.
“A monkey plays a video game telepathically thanks to a chip in his brain,” tweeted
the futuristic entrepreneur, boss of Neuralink, but also founder of Tesla and SpaceX. “Soon our monkeys will be on Twitch and Discord haha,” he added.
A monkey is literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip !!
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2021
In the video, the Pager macaque can be seen controlling the movements of a racquet with its eyes to prevent the ball from falling into the void, as one might do with a joystick, a touchscreen or the arrows on a keyboard.
“Help people paralyzed or suffering from neurological diseases”
The aim of the operation is to reveal the potential of Neuralink to the general public. “The first Neuralink products will allow a paralyzed person to use their smartphone with thought faster than a person with their fingers,” said Elon Musk. He hopes that Neuralink’s chips will be used primarily to help people who are paralyzed or suffering from neurological diseases. But the long-term goal is to make implants so safe, reliable and simple that they would qualify for elective (comfort) surgery.
Last August, the start-up presented pigs in which it had implanted the prototype of a wireless chip, 23 mm in diameter and 8 mm thick (like a small coin).
Other brain-machine interfaces are under development. Facebook is funding a project to translate brain activity into words, via algorithms, in order to allow people silenced by neurodegenerative diseases to speak again.