Elon Musk presenting “Neuralink Progress Update, Summer 2020.”
Neuralink/YouTube
Elon Musk said he plans to implant a Neuralink device in his brain once it’s available to humans.
The billionaire said on Wednesday that he expects Neuralink will start human trials in the next 6 months.
The startup aims to create brain implants that can read and write brain activity.
Elon Musk said on Wednesday that he plans to install a Neuralink brain implant in himself when the device is ready.
“You could have a Neuralink device implanted right now and you wouldn’t even know. I mean, hypothetically,” Musk said during a show-and-tell event for his startup. “In one of these demos, in fact, in one of these demos, I will.”
The founder of the brain computer startup reiterated his pledge to get an implant of the device on Twitter.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2022
Musk doesn’t think he’ll have to wait too long before making good on his promise. The billionaire said at the event that he expects Neuralink will be ready to begin human trials in the next six months and indicated that the only delay was approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.
“Obviously, we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human, but we’re submitted, I think, most of our paperwork to the FDA,” he said on Wednesday night.
A Neuralink spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication.
Since 2019, Musk has repeatedly set and missed his own projections for when Neuralink would begin implanting its devices in human brains.
To date, Neuralink has yet to test on humans and has instead experimented with the device on animals, including pigs and monkeys. Last year, Musk showed a demo video of a monkey using the device to play video games with its mind. This year, he provided a video of a monkey with an implant “telepathically typing.”
Neuralink competitor Synchron launched human trials in 2019 in Melbourne, Australia, and beat Musk’s company to implanting its first device in a US patient earlier this year. The device has been implanted in multiple US patients who have been severely paralyzed and has reportedly allowed patients to shop online and craft text messages using only their mind.
Both companies are working to create brain-computer interfaces with chip implants that can read and write brain activity. Musk has claimed in the past the brain-machine interface could do anything from cure paralysis to give people telepathic powers, referring to the device as “a Fitbit in your skull.”
On Wednesday, the billionaire added that he believes the device could restore vision to people who had been born blind.