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Elon Musk’s brain chip implant gets new simplified design
The Neuralink chip that aims to create brain-to-machine interfaces gets tinier and simplified.
By ERIK SEDIN
3 Sep 2020

Neuralink is arguably the most futuristic and exciting project out of all the progressive tech ideas from Elon Musk, and the perplexing brain chip implant just took a leap forward in design and comprehensibility during an online presentation last week. The old bean-shaped design made to sit behind your ear is scrapped for a chip that resembles a really small macaron.

— It [the old design] was complex, and you still wouldn’t look totally normal; you would have a thing behind your ear. So we’ve simplified this to something that is about the size of a large coin, and it goes in your skull, Musk said in the online presentation.

The small chip is implanted at the top of your head by removing a coin size piece of skull, the chip then takes up all the missing skull space when implanted. The fine wires sticking out of the chip connects to your brain neurons, creating a plantable neural link. The chip will then be connected to an app and hopes to warn the user for heart attacks or stroke. Musk also shared that the chip could help you write full sentences and words just by thinking, and in the future also telepathically summon a Tesla.

During the presentation, Musk was asked if the Neuralink chip could save and replay memories in the future.

— Yes, I think that we can save and replay memories in the future. This is obviously sounding increasingly much like a Black Mirror episode… But over time we could actually give someone super vision. Like ultraviolet or infrared and actually have super human vision.

As if the project couldn’t be more exciting (or scary), Neuralink has also made a robot that surgically implants the chip into your skull, so there’s no reason to fear the human error.