The American company Neuralink, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, posted a video on YouTube this Friday, April 9, 2021 in which it appears a monkey with a chip implanted in the brain playing a video game that he controls from the mind
In the video, for three and a half minutes, the nine-year-old macaque Pager plays a version of the classic video game Pong and each time he succeeds in doing so, he receives a banana shock in compensation delivered to him with a straw.
In his Twitter account, Musk assured that the monkey “literally plays the video game telepathically using a brain chip.”
At the beginning of the year, the controversial inventor had already announced in a chat on the social video network ClubHouse that in his company had a monkey with a wireless implant in its skull, with small cables and that he could play video games with his mind, but the images did not come to light so far.
According to the businessman, the animal “He’s not uncomfortable” and his goal is to see if he can get the monkeys to play pong in their heads. against each other, as part of their research to develop a wireless interface between brain and devices.
A few months ago, Neuralink successfully tested a chip in pigs that, implanted in the skull, made it possible to measure brain activity in animals
Musk has said that one of the potential possibilities of the technology Neuralink is exploring is to drive a Tesla car with thought., play video games, save and replay memories, or get people with spinal cord damage walking again.
The businessman assured that Neuralink can “solve brain-spinal cord injury” in the short term and achieve a “human-artificial intelligence symbiosis” in the long term.