CEO of Tesla and Neuralink, Elon Musk, claimed to have found a way for monkeys to play video games with their minds.
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and meme stock investor, unveiled new developments in Neuralink’s brain-machine technology on Monday morning.
Musk stated that they had made great progress since August’s unsettling live stream of Gertrude the Pig, who had wires protruding from their skull and a coin-sized device attached to their brain. Fast forward six months and now monkeys can control video games wirelessly, with nothing more than the power of their own minds. Think this is unsettling? So do we.
Musk went on to address animal welfare concerns inevitably raised by the public.
“You can’t see where the implant is and he’s a happy monkey. We have the nicest monkey facilities in the world. We want them to play mind-Pong with each other.”
We cannot confirm whether Musk has the nicest monkey facilities. We also cannot confirm if our primate friends are as happy as he says – luckily we should know by the end of the month once footage of our anthropoid friends has been released. One question is yet to be asked: why tho?
Neuralink’s goal is to assist those with brain and spinal injuries, helping them to regain lost functionality using an implanted chip. Musk’s technology has the promise to help paralysed gamers play their favourite titles again.
An early human trial of the chip is found in Nathan Copeland, who was left with no control of his body from the chest down following an accident. He’s harnessed the technology to enjoy games such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Final Fantasy XIV.
In the meantime, we’ll be keeping an eye out for any monkey mind-controlled pong tournaments.
