
Elon Musk, the founder of Neuralink, announced plans to implant hisdevice in a second human patient within the next week.
The company wishes to have devices in patientnumbers “in the high single digits” by the end of the year, Musksaid during a broadcast on social media platform X.
Musk and other key Neuralink executives reflected on the potential and future possibilities of the brain chip device like repairing paralysis and memory loss.
The Neuralink team discussed improvements for future implantations, to avoid some setbacks that occurred in the first implantation of thebrain chip on aman namedNoland Arbaugh from the US state of Arizona.
Musk also emphasised the long-term vision, to reduce the possible dangers of artificial intelligence by developing a deeper merging of human and digital intelligence through Neuralink's technology.
The plan is to give people superpowers, the founder of Neuralinksaid and informed that the companywill make certain changesto ease the issue of its electrode threads retracting from brain tissue in the upcoming surgeries.
The fixes reportedly include eliminating an air pocket that might have contributed to retracting threads in the first surgery. and also to improve accuracy, Neuralink plans to place the threads more precisely within the brain's folds during future surgeries.
The team further discussed future generations of the device and Musk stated it should be possible for patients with older models to upgrade to newer ones.
The founder of Neuralinkalso emphasised that the companytakes good care of the animals it uses for research, saying, “We really do everything we can to maximize the welfare of the animals."
(With inputs from agencies)