Neuralink - The merging of Brain and Machine

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It has been showcased in numerous movies, how people in sci-fi universes is capable of uploading their brain to a computer or a network either to escape death or as way to achieve super human intelligence. However, as of now such ideas has been kept within fiction and not something that anyone thought could be possible in the near future, this however might just have changed after Elon Musk and the Neuralink company revealed their current research at a press conference which took place Tuesday 16th of July 2019. So in this blog post we will look further into exactly what Neuralink is doing and how they are doing it, along with some advise of how you can get into this exiting area yourself.

Should you be interested in the full Neuralink event it can be seen at Neuralinks own YouTube channel below:


What is Neuralink?

The company were founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and 8 others and has since its founding raised more than 150 million dollars in funding to support its vision and future work. Neuralink is an American neurotechnology based in San Francisco where it shares offices with OpenAI another company by Elon Musk. The long term goal of the company as stated by Elon Musk is to achieve "Symbiosis with Artificial Intelligence".


How will Neuralink do it?

The whole idea behind Neuralink is to make a fully working Human-Brain Interface(HBI), which will allow a human to control a computer or a smartphone directly from the brain. This Interface will remove the need for touching a keyword, screen or mouse as this is currently where we are limited as humans. When we want to search for something like restaurants located in our town, it takes Google milliseconds to give us the information, but we usually use 2-5 min on typing in the search query and read through the results. By using a HBI our brain can communicate the search query directly to the computer, decreasing the entire process to only seconds.

To utilize this Neuralink has invented a chip that is to be implemented to our brain using laser beams once the technology has been finally developed. The chip will then be wireless, to avoid any cables hanging out of our heads. The chip will have four sensors which is going to be attached to two different areas of our brain. Three sensors will be attached to the motor area and one to the somatosensory area. 

Currently they have only conducted tests on rats and at least one monkey, but Musk says that he hopes to have human patients by the end of next year.

Why Neuralink?

At the event Neuralink stated the following three reasons for why Neuralink exists and what they are trying to achieve.

Understand and treat brain disorders

When attaching chips to different areas of our brain, scientists will be able to record and study yet to be found information about our brain. Neuralink therefore hopes that the increased amount of information will help cure brain disorders, which we currently have a little understanding of how to treat.

Preserve and enhance your own brain

Apart from treating brain disorders, the HBI allow communication to flow between our brain and a computer, which can enhance the current limitations of our brains. In the future we might be able to download road navigations when traveling, or download all known Math techniques before an exam. However smart this sounds it also has some moral problems as the entire communication flow would in the end possibly make it possible to transfer our entire brain to a computer, to preserve it after our body dies. Which removes a vital element of being a human as death is what currently clears out the old and make space for the next generation.


Create a well-aligned future

Even though there could be and already is some moral problems with this new technology, it still has some major areas where its uses seems very promising, as it can improve the future of man-kind, This especially count for the process optimization and treating of brain disorders which Neuralink will be able to address in its first years of usage.

How to get into Neuralink or the industry in general?

With the above understanding of Neuralink and its operations it's time to see how one could join Neuralink or a similar company within the HBI industry. In this section we will look at what exactly Neuralink is looking for in its job openings. For full information see: https://jobs.lever.co/neuralink. At the writing of this post, Neuralink is looking for multiple peoples within different areas namely Science, Operations and Engineering and since this blog is centered around Computer Science and engineering our sole focus will be the engineering section.

By taking a look at the job openings, it seems clear that especially software engineering is in high demand at Neuralink along with robotics which compared to the Science section which is dominated by surgery positions is something any of us can study and master with the use of a computer and a internet connection. Should you be interested in software engineering the below resources are good places to start:




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