The American company Neuralink, Co-founded by Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk, posted a video on YouTube on Friday, April 9, 2015. a monkey with a chip implanted in his brain playing a video game he controls from the mind.
In the video, three and a half minutes long, the nine-year-old macaque Pager plays a version of the classic video game Pong and every time he hits he receives as compensation a banana smoothie which is supplied to him through a straw.
On his Twitter account, Musk said the monkey “is playing the video game literally telepathically using a brain chip.”
Earlier this year, the controversial inventor had already announced in a talk on the social video network ClubHouse that in his company had a monkey with a wireless implant in his skull, With small wires and he could play video games with his mind, but the pictures didn’t come to light until now.
According to the employer, the animal “She’s not uncomfortable” and her goal is to see if she can get the monkeys to mentally play Pong against each other, as part of their research to develop a wireless brain-device interface.
A few months ago, Neuralink successfully tested in pigs a chip that, implanted in the skull, allowed to measure the brain activity of animals.
Musk has said that among the potential capabilities of the technology investigated by Neuralink is to manage a Tesla car with thought, Play video games, save and play back memories, or make people with spinal cord damage walk again.
The businessman assured that in the short term Neuralink can “solve brain-spinal injuries” and in the long term achieve a “human-artificial intelligence symbiosis”.