Cybernetic brain computer company Neuralink has opened up its first human trial scheme, and is asking for applicants.
The Elon Musk-owned Neuralink’s first human trial is dubbed “Prime”, named after picking selected characters from “precise robotically implanted brain-computer interface”.
There appear to be no half-measures involved in this trial either. The Neuralink blog says applications will have a neural lace, Neuralink’s N1 implant, installed on their brain by the company’s R1 surgical robot.
This large surgical apparatus places the 64 super-thin, hair-like threads of the neural lace over parts of the brain, which are then used to recognise brain activity.
Recoded information can then be transmitted by the puck-like computer, also implanted, which holds all the system’s core electronics.
Who is Neuralink for?
The Prime study is not open for just anyone. You need to have quadriplegia or ALS, and have a “constant and reliable caregiver”. The study will only operate in the US, too, as it’s enabled by a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) exemption awarded in May 2023.
This news arrives amid renewed accusations about deaths during earlier animal trials of the Neuralink neural mesh.
Neutralink trial controversy
Documents acquired by Wired accuse Elon Musk of lying about the number of monkeys who died as a result of these trials. Elon Musk claimed no monkeys had died earlier this month, tweeting “no monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant,” on the X platform.
However, a letter sent on behalf of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine suggests at least 12 monkeys died as part of the Neuralink trials.
“Public records obtained by the Physicians Committee reveal that at least 12 young, previously healthy monkeys were euthanized by Neuralink as a direct result of problems with the company’s implant,” the letter reads.
The document goes on to charge that the Neuralink implant caused “chronic infections”, “swelling in the brain”, “paralysis” and “seizures” among other negative effects.
It says these deaths “relate directly to the safety and marketability of the brain-computer interface Neuralink is developing,” and suggests Neuralink is investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The charge is that Elon Musk could be guilty of securities fraud by suggesting the Neuralink device is safer than it actually is.
Neuralink’s current vision for the N1 implant is to give people with severe motor conditions greater independence.
Musk recently teased far wider plans for the “brain-computer” in tweets, posting, “In the long term, Neuralink hopes to play a role in AI risk civilizational risk reduction by improving human to AI (and human to human) bandwidth by several orders of magnitude.”
