Fourth Industrial Revolution: Elon Musk’s Neuralink Has Brain-Chipped Monkey Who Plays Video Games

Elon Musk claims his start-up company Neuralink has a brain-chipped lab monkey that can play video games with its mind, highlighting the type of technology that could soon come to market for human use in what some consider the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

The Tesla and Space X CEO claims that his company put a computer chip into the monkey’s skull and used “tiny wires” to connect to its brain.

“We have a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull with tiny wires who can play video games with his mind,” Musk claimed while speaking at a Clubhouse application conference on Sunday, adding, “You can’t see where the implant is and he’s a happy monkey.”

Additionally, Musk said that Neuralink has“the nicest monkey facilities in the world” and wants the monkeys to “play mind-Pong with each other.”

While the video game playing monkey sounds like fun and games, the goals of the company’s brain-linking technology extends to addressing brain and spinal injuries and replacing any lost capacity from conditions like paralysis.

“There are primitive versions of this device with wires sticking out of your head, but it’s like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires that go into your brain,” Musk said Sunday.

The world’s richest man ultimate sees humans “going along for the ride” when it comes to improvements in AI technology with the direct neural interfaces being an extension of the idea that humans are already cyborgs thanks to their attachment to smart phones.

“With a direct neural interface, we can improve the bandwidth between your cortex and your digital tertiary layer by many orders of magnitude,” he said. “I’d say probably at least 1,000, or maybe 10,000, or more.”

The innovations of Neuralink are what some consider to be the a part of a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” under which technology and biology merge together in unprecedented fashion.

Put simply, the Fourth Industrial Revolution refers to how technologies like artificial intelligence, automation and the internet of things are merging with the physical lives of humans.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is best know from its promotion by World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab, who wrote a book bearing it as its title in 2016

Schwab argues the technological revolution is underway and “is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.”

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