New Neuralink Video Purportedly Shows Monkey Playing Video Games Using Its Mind

The man who can’t seem to keep his cars (or his recent spaceships) from spontaneously combusting now claims that his mind-machine interface company, Neuralink, can allow a monkey to play video games using only its mind.

Neuralink released footage this week that purports to show a monkey named Pager, who is nine years old, playing video games in exchange for a banana smoothie delivered through a straw. Pager was hooked up to a Neuralink system six weeks ago, according to RT.

The video shows links recording activity from more than 2,000 electrodes implanted in the monkey’s motor cortex. The activity is then wirelessly fed to a machine-learning algorithm, which “sensed modulations in the monkey’s neurons and allowed the system to predict intended hand movements via a mathematical model of neural activity and the corresponding joystick movements.”

Researchers calibrated the system, the report says, by monitoring Pager’s brain waves as it manipulated a joystick. Then, they disconnected the controller without telling the monkey, who wound up playing pong using only its brain, sans the joystick.

And what would an inch of progress be without Elon Musk taking a mile? Musk quickly took to Twitter to proclaim that Neuralink’s first product would “enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs”. 

“Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again,” Musk wrote. 

Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2021

This prompted some critics to inconveniently point out some of Musk’s past predictions, and timelines.

Hmmm… what happened to this claim?https://t.co/SwcK802goe

— Gordon Johnson (@GordonJohnson19) April 9, 2021

We think it must be capital raising time for Neuralink. Either way, it’s starting to smell like the Neuralink SPAC – or perhaps the Neuralink/SpaceX merger, or something equally as heinous – is just right around the corner.