In this still image from the Neuralink presentation video on YouTube, a presenter, lower left, described how a monkey used a wireless transmitter to “type” characters on a keyboard.Credit...Neuralink
Neuralink, the startup Elon Musk founded to link our brains directly to computers, showed progress Wednesday in two medical areas: helping blind people to see and helping people with spinal cord injuries to walk or use their hands.
The company, one of five that Musk leads, is working on technology to drop thousands of electrodes thinner than a hair into the outer surface of human brains. Each electrode is a tiny wire connected to a battery-powered, remotely recharged, quarter-sized chip package that’s embedded into a spot that once held a circle of skull. The chip, called the N1, communicates wirelessly with the outside world.
The technology is still far from the initial medical uses, much less Musk’s ultimate vision of using Neuralink to hang out with superintelligent AIs. But the company is making significant progress, including applying with the Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials it hopes to start within six months, the company said at a “show and tell” event lasting more than two hours.
“Our goal will be to turn the lights on for someone who’s spent decades living in the dark,” said Neuralink researcher Dan Adams, who’s working on the effort to repackage camera data into a brain-compatible format and pipe it directly to the visual cortex.
Musk has some cred when it comes to revolutionary tech. His electric-vehicle company Tesla is profoundly changing cars and his SpaceX outfit is transforming space access with reusable rockets. His reputation as a tech genius has taken a beating, though, with the chaos at Twitter after his $44 billion acquisition. Musk’s Boring Company, which aims to revamp auto transportation with tunnels, also hasn’t lived up to its promises yet.
Neuralink doesn’t look any easier than social networking. Connecting computer hardware to our own wetware comes with enormous technical, regulatory and ethical challenges. Helping the blind see is one thing, but a digital feed straight into our brains might not help those of us who already spend too much time on our phones.
Neuralink tech to help quadriplegics walk
Previously, Neuralink showed how its electrodes can listen in on brain activity. By capturing the brain signals from a monkey named Pager that played the classic Pong videogame, Neuralink computers learned to interpret motor control signals. Later, the monkey’s brain signals alone could control the game.
At Neuralink’s “show and tell” event, designed to recruit new talent, the company showed a new trick: A monkey named Sake used its mind to follow prompts and type on a virtual keyboard. The implants charge wirelessly, with monkeys coaxed by a fruit smoothie to sit beneath a charger embedded in a branch immediately above their heads.
But Wednesday’s biggest developments used those same electrodes to send signals back to the neurons that make up the brain and nervous system.
One experiment used electrodes in a pig’s spinal cord to control different leg movements, a technology that could lead eventually to helping people with quadriplegia walk or use their hands. Neuralink’s approach involves not just intercepting the brain’s movement commands and shunting them to the legs, but also hearing the sensory signals from those extremities and sending them back to the brain so the brain knows what’s going on.
Neuralink has made progress toward its goal of using its N1 chip to intercept signals from the brain and then route them past spinal cord damage so paralyzed people can walk again.
Neuralink; Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET
“We have a lot of work to do to achieve this full vision, but I hope you can see how the pieces are all there to achieve this,” said Joey O’Doherty, a researcher working on Neuralink’s motor control technology.
Seeing images and typing with your mind
Another experiment fed visual data captured with a camera into a monkey’s visual cortex, showing it virtual flashes the monkey interpreted as being in different locations. That’s technology Neuralink hopes will lead to a visual prosthesis for blind people.
The first-generation Neuralink technology uses 1,024 electrodes, but Neuralink showed off next-generation models with more than 16,000 electrodes. That much detail would dramatically improve the fidelity of the image a blind person could see, Adams said.
A monkey named Sake uses its mind to control a cursor to type words with a virtual keyboard.
Neuralink; Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET
“If you put a device on both sides of your visual cortex, that would give you 32,000 points of light to make an image in someone who’s blind,” Adams said.
Another Neuralink application is letting paralyzed humans use their implants for mind typing.
“We’re confident that someone who has basically no other interface to the outside world would be able to control their phone better than someone who has working hands,” Musk said.
One thing that separates Neuralink from some of those efforts is the goal of mass production.
“Production is hard – I’d say 100 to 1,000 times harder to go from a prototype to a device that is safe, reliable, works under a wide range of circumstances, is affordable and is done at scale,” Musk said. “It’s insanely difficult.”
Musk envisions Neuralink making millions of brain chips and said he expects to have one himself. To reach that goal, the company is trying to automate as much of the technology as possible. Its R1 robot threads electrodes into the brain without damaging blood vessels, but a next-gen machine is designed to handle more of the surgery, including cutting through the skull.
Neuralink also is working on locating its brain chips one layer farther from the brain, on the outside of a layer called the dura. That requires major changes to robot’s needles and needle steering systems, upgrades the company is working on today.
“There’s not that many neurosurgeons – maybe about 10 for a million people,” said Christine Odabashian, who leads Neuralink’s surgery engineering team. “For us to do the most good and have an affordable and accessible procedure, we need to figure out how one neurosurgeon could oversee many procedures at the same time.”
Elon Musk’s sci-fi vision for Neuralink
Another big difference between Neuralink and its rivals is Musk’s sci-fi vision.
The company’s ambitions are grand: “A generalized input-output device that could interface with every aspect of your brain,” Musk said. But the long-term plan is much grander.
“What do we do about AI, about artificial general intelligence?” Musk asked. “If we have digital superintelligence, much smarter than any human, how do we mitigate that risk at a species level? Even in a benign scenario where the AI is very benevolent, how do we even go along for the ride? How do we participate?”
In Musk’s mind – conceptually only for now, but maybe eventually physically, too – the answer is Neuralink.
Germany apologized on Thursday (Jan. 26) for using a leopard emoji in a tweet refering to the Russian Foreign Minister’s visit to Africa. The post that was regarded as offensive by some users was called out by the spokeswoman for the African Union chairman Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat.
The German foreign ministry attempted to poke fun at Russia’s top diplomat during his tour of Africa when it tweeted that he wasn’t there looking for leopards, but using the trip to try and justify Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The tweet, and the leopard emoji the foreign ministry used on its official account, apparently sought to play off Germany’s decision to send some of its advanced Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine to back its military fight off Russian forces.
An African Union official questioned the use of emoji, pointing it could be interpreted as the continent being portrayed once again as only about wild animals.
Hi @GermanyDiplo.Your boss @ABaerbock visited the @_AfricanUnion based in one of the more than 20 African countries that Germany enjoys reciprocal diplomatic relations with. Did she come to see animals? Or is the Continent of Africa, its people & wildlife just a joke to you? https://t.co/RkzWsBbBoH
Ebba Kalondo, the spokeswoman for AU Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat, tweeted back to the German government account questioning if Africa, its people and its wildlife was “just a joke to you?”
“Foreign policy is not a joke nor should it be used to score cheap geopolitical points by illustrating an entire Continent with colonial tropes,” Kalondo wrote in a follow-up tweet.
The German foreign ministry apologized and said that the tweet wasn’t meant to offend, but rather “to call out the lies that Russia uses to justify its imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Lavrov has visited South Africa, Eswatini, Angola and Eritrea this week, where he has repeated his claims that the United States and its Western allies are using Ukraine as a tool in a “hybrid war” against Russia.
Many African nations hold historical ties with Moscow. South Africa was one of several to abstain from a U.N. vote last year condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Eritrea voted against the resolution alongside Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Syria.
Congolese Defense Forces soldiers inspect the scene of an attack near the town of Oicha, 30 kms (20 miles) from Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo, Friday July 23, 2021.
A bomb exploded at a market in eastern Congo on Wednesday (Jan. 25), injuring at least a dozen people, authorities said.
An unknown person detonated a bomb inside a bag in North Kivu’s Beni town, said Tharcisse Katembo, a local official.
“Damage was documented (and) at least 12 people were injured. They were injured in the lower limbs, others in their upper limbs and others were hit in the head,” he told reporters in Beni.
The victims were taken to the hospital and an investigation was underway, Katembo said.
No one claimed responsibility for the bomb. However, attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces, which is believed to be linked with the Islamic State extremist movement, have been increasing in North Kivu, according to the United Nations.
Deadly violence
Earlier this month, at least 14 people were killed and dozens injured in an attack on a church in Kasindi town, which was claimed by Islamic State. It said in its Aamaq news outlet that it planted an explosive device inside the church and detonated it while people were praying.
Since April, attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces have killed at least 370 civilians, and the group has abducted several hundred more, including a significant number of children, the U.N. says.
The explosion Wednesday (Jan. 25) occurred in a local market next to a cassava mill, witnesses said.
Danny Syaghuswa, 16, said he was sitting on his motorcycle when a man in a striped shirt put a small bag behind a door, saying he would come back for it, according to an interview with local reporters heard by The Associated Press. “Less than five minutes after he left the bomb exploded,” Syaghuswa said.
Images of the attack circulating on chat groups show people lying on the floor. One woman in blood-stained clothes was carrying a small child.
Violence has wracked eastern Congo for decades as more than 120 armed groups and self-defense militias fight for land and power. Nearly 6 million people are internally displaced, and hundreds of thousands are facing extreme food insecurity, according to the United Nations.
Al-Shabaab terrorists set off a bomb and stormed a government building in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu. The Al-Qaeda-backed terror group has stepped up bombings in the country.
At least six people were killed on Sunday in an attack by Al Shabaab militants at the mayor’s office in central Mogadishu, police said.
A suicide bomber set off a huge blast that tore through building near the office complex with gunfire erupting afterwards, Somali police spokesman Sadik Dudishe said at the end of the four-hour siege.
“All the six attackers died. Five of them during the fire exchange with the security forces and one of them detonated himself,” Dudishe told reporters.
“Six civilians also died during the attack and the situation is back to normal.” All the staffers at the mayor’s office were rescued, the police added.
Al 0Shabaab, a militant group allied with Al Qaeda claimed, responsibility for the attack via its communication channels, saying its fighters “made their way inside the targeted building after killing the security guards.” Witnesses said the initial explosion damaged nearby buildings and gunfire could be heard in the vicinity of the mayor’s office.
The area was quickly cordoned off by security officers, a witness who runs a business near the offices said.
Another witness, Omar Nur, said he was inside a nearby mall when the explosion went off and “was lucky to have escaped safely.” The Al Shabaab militants have been waging a bloody insurgency against the frail internationally backed central government for 15 years, carrying out attacks both in Somalia and neighbouring countries.
The latest attack comes days after seven soldiers were killed on Friday at a military camp in Galcad, a town in central Somalia about 375 kilometres north of the capital Mogadishu. The US military said the attack — in the Somali town retaken by the army this week — involved more than 100 Al Shabaab jihadists.
“The combined actions by partner forces on the ground and the collective self-defence strike is estimated to have resulted in three destroyed vehicles and approximately thirty Al Shabaab terrorists killed” the US military command for Africa (AFRICOM) said in a statement.