Elon Musk is reportedly launching yet another company with some far-out goals. The new venture, Neuralink, aims to develop a brain-computer interface (BCI) that could help treat health conditions like epilepsy in the short-term and allow humans to keep pace with artificial intelligence further down the road.
The launch of the company was made public via a Wall Street Journal report Monday and a company website also popped up that consists of nothing more than a logo and an email address, apparently to be used for inquiries from potential employees.
It's been no secret that Musk has been working on developing a so-called "neural lace" that can directly connect our minds to machines, thereby working around the lag time of current interfaces, such as keyboards, touchscreens and voice assistants, that can't quite keep up with the speed of thought.
"If you assume any rate of advancement of A.I., we will be left behind by a lot," Musk said on-stage in the below video from the 2016 Code Conference where he made the case for just such a direct brain connection.
While Musk might be inspired by what he sees as a need to keep up with Skynet in the future, the WSJ reports that Neuralink will start with products that could treat specific disorders, such as epilepsy or major depression.
Musk hasn't been shy about voicing his concerns over the potential dangers of unchecked artificial intelligence. He's also attacking the issue through a non-profit called OpenAI that aims to keep the advancement of AI as benign as possible.
Source: WSJ
