Elon Musk says Neuralink could help humans compete with AI: 'Let's give people superpowers'

• Elon Musk said his Neuralink implant could help humans compete with AI in the future.
• Neuralink implanted its first brain chip in a human patient in January 2024.

Elon Musk says his Neuralink brain implants will be the best way for humans to both integrate and compete with advanced AI systems in the future.

Neuralink is Musk's venture into futuristic brain-implanted microchips. The company is developing the microchips to record and simulate brain activity. Musk hopes the technology in the near future could heal neurological disorders or improve natural senses like sight.

"Let's give people superpowers," he said in a recent podcast interview with computer scientist Lex Fridman.

Musk said the company embedded a Neuralink chip into the brain of its first patient in January 2024. Weeks later, the company said the patient was able to control a computer mouse using just their thoughts. Musk said the company has since embedded a chip into a second patient.

Musk has billed Neuralink as a technology that, in the future, could facilitate "symbiosis" between humans and artificial intelligence. In his conversation with Fridman, Musk said Neuralink chips could be the best way to prevent AI from surpassing humans and going off the rails all "Terminator" style.

"It's an idea that may help with AI safety," he said. "We could better align collective human will with AI if the output rate especially was dramatically increased. And I think there's potential to increase the output rate by, I don't know, three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude. So, it's better than the current situation."

The world's biggest tech companies are in a race to develop artificial general intelligence, which is a theoretical future technology in which AI can reason like humans. The idea has been met with no small amount of concern. Musk himself has criticized OpenAI, the world's leading AI company, which he helped found, for being too aggressive and not adequately considering the importance of safety.

The possibilities of Neuralink to improve health

Musk said Neuralink devices will eventually be able to repair damaged neurons to help people with issues like blindness and paralysis.

"It can also solve, probably, schizophrenia if people have seizures of some kind," Musk said on the podcast. "It could probably solve that. It could help with memory."

He added that Neuralink's aim isn't just to give people with neurological damage a full range of communication but to enhance their already natural abilities. He even suggested that a person using Neuralink might eventually have vision that is "higher resolution than human eyes."

"While we're in there, why not?" Musk said.

Musk compared vision enhancements with Neuralink to the visor worn by the character Geordi La Forge from Star Trek. La Forge wore a thin visor over his eyes that allowed him to see by reading the electromagnetic field and sending inputs to his brain.

"Do you want to see it in radar? No problem," Musk said. "You could see ultraviolet, infrared, eagle vision, whatever you want."

Musk said solving issues like neuron damage is the first "baby step" to getting Neuralink to a point where it can do more complex things like communicating with artificial intelligence systems.

Correction: August 5, 2024 — This story has corrected the spelling of Lex Fridman's name throughout. It is Lex Fridman, not Lex Friedman.