Elon Musk says an individual with a Neuralink chip could beat an expert gamer in a couple of years

In an episode of Lex Fridman’s Podcast In the article published on Friday, Musk referred to his start-up Neuralink, which implanted a chip into someone’s brain earlier this yr.

“We are pretty confident that in the next year or two, someone with a Neuralink implant could outperform a professional gamer because the reaction time would be faster,” he said.

In March, Neuralink announced that the primary person to have a chip implanted in his brain was a quadriplegic who had gained the power to play video games using his mind.

Looking ahead, Musk said Friday that Neuralink’s long-term goal is to enhance the symbiosis between AI and humans by increasing an individual’s ability to speak at high volume.

Without such an improvement, AI will turn out to be “bored” waiting for humans to speak at a couple of bits per second, despite the fact that it’s able to doing so, namely terabits per second, he explained, adding: “It’s like talking to a tree.”

However, he stressed that Neuralink’s first task shall be to care for damaged neurons within the spinal cord, neck or brain, as is the case with the corporate’s first patients.

“We’re just getting started with the basics, the relatively simple things, which is repairing neuronal damage,” Musk said.

But if the risks of Neuralink brain implants are shown to be low after 1000’s of individuals have used them for years, the corporate may give you the chance to aim to “improve” the function of individuals without neurological problems, he added.

In fact, Neuralink is already planning to support individuals with neuron damage and provides them a “communication data rate” that exceeds that of normal humans.

“Why not, while we’re at it, give people superpowers,” Musk said.

Similarly, Neuralink could improve human vision, constructing on its Blindsight product to revive vision. Initially, it would supply low-resolution images, but over time the resolution might be higher than today’s, and the product would even enable vision in numerous parts of the spectrum, akin to ultraviolet or infrared, he explained.

In February, Musk claimed progress had been made with Neuralink’s first patient, and last month he said his startup had plans to implant a chip in a second patient. On Friday, he told Fridman the second implant had been done and “so far, so good.”

Representatives for Neuralink didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Neuralink’s roughly quarter-sized N1 brain-computer interface is designed to each record and transmit neural activity using over 1,000 electrodes distributed across dozens of various filaments, each thinner than a human hair.

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