Elon Musk believes his brain-interface company Neuralink will be able to begin planting microchips in humans from next year.
Musk, who serves as the co-founder of Neuralink, gave an update on the chip earlier in the week during The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit.
He said he is “increasingly confident” the company will be able to begin testing the brain chips in humans in 2022. However, he also said he doesn’t want to “raise hopes unreasonably”.
The Neuralink chips have so far been tested on monkeys to record and stimulate brain activity which allows the animals to perform tasks using their mind.
The company aims to initially roll out the chip to full and partially paralysed individuals to help restore functionality.
“Neuralink’s working well in monkeys, and we’re actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable, and the Neuralink device can be removed safely,” said Musk during The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit earlier this week.
“We hope to have this in our first humans — which will be people that have severe spinal-cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics — next year, pending FDA approval.”
Elon went on to tell the audience that Neuralink’s “standards for implanting the device are substantially higher than what the FDA requires.”
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