Elon Musk isn't content with electric cars, shooting people into orbit and populating Mars. He also wants to get inside your brain.
His goal is to develop devices that can provide treatment to neural(神经的)diseases-and that may one day be powerful enough to put humanity on an equal footing with possible future super intelligent computers.
Not that it's anywhere close to that yet.
In a video Friday obviously aimed at seeking new employees, Musk showed off the second version of the Neuralink, a device about the size of a large coin. It's designed to be put in a person's head. An earlier version of the device has to be placed behind an ear like a huge hearing aid.
But the young company is far from having a commercial product, which would involve complex human trials and governmental approval. Friday's video showed three pigs. One, named Gertrude, had a Neuralink device in its brain.
Musk, a founder of both the electric car company Tesla Motors and the space-exploration firm SpaceX, has always been worried about that smarter AI machines will outwit humans. His solution? Link our brains to computers so we can keep up with or even win over them in intelligence!
Musk urged coders(程序员), engineers and especially people who have actually created a product to apply. "You don't need to have brain experience," he said, adding that this is something that can be learned on the job.
Connecting a brain up directly to electronics is not new. Doctors have already put similar devices in brains to treat such conditions as Parkinson's disease. In 2016, researchers reported that a man regained some movement in his own hand with a similar brain implant. But Musk's proposal goes beyond this. Neuralink wants to build on those existing medical treatments and work on devices that could link our brains to computers one day.
