Elon Musk’s brain chip company has got approval to test on humans.
Neuralink has been given the go-ahead by the United State’s Food and Drug Administration to begin running experiments on humans in their efforts to help people restore their vision and mobility via computers.
The company reported they have no active plans to begin looking for subjects to be involved and prior attempts by the 51-year-old billionaire have not come to fruition.
The FDA is yet to supply a statement on the decision but a previous request was denied by them after they cited safety concerns, according to a report by Reuters that interviewed both ex and current employees.
Neuralink has already tested their wares on monkeys and the microchips have been made to understand brain signals and pass it on the chip through Bluetooth tech.
The company wrote on Twitter: “We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!
This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people.
Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!”
Elon has spoken about how his plans could be considered as a way to mitigate perceived threats of artificial intelligence.
In 2019, he said in a presentation that the plan will permit “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”.
This comes after he warned that AI will pose a huge threat to society and that humanity could be “left behind”.
He said: "Even in a benign AI scenario, we will be left behind.
"With a high bandwidth brain machine interface, we can go along for the ride and effectively have the option of merging with AI."
