Halloween will have a special flavor this year for fans and critics of Elon Musk.
The whimsical and charismatic CEO of Tesla (TSLA) has indeed just encouraged everyone to tick next October 31 in their calendar.
The only certainty for the moment is that the billionaire will not talk about Tesla, the manufacturer of electric vehicles, that day. Nor will he mention the prowess of SpaceX, his space exploration company with which he promises to conquer the planet.
There will also be no question of The Boring Company, his company which digs tunnels, in Las Vegas in particular, in order to relieve the city of traffic jams. By elimination, that leaves us with Neuralink, the billionaire's company specializing in artificial intelligence. This company made headlines recently because Musk admitted having had twins last November with Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive.
Big Announcement on October 31st
But a recent tweet from Musk aims to put the firm back in the news for its missions and ambitions. Indeed, the richest man in the world with a fortune estimated at $260 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires index, promises important announcements about Neuralink on Halloween night.
"Neuralink progress update show & tell on October 31 st (Halloween)," Musk posted on August 22 without giving further details.
The choice of the day of Halloween is surprising because it is a Celtic pagan festival supposed to celebrate ghosts or the return of spirits. But Neuralink is surrounded by the cult of secrecy. Of Musk's companies, this is the one we know the least about.
Elon Musk launched Neuralink in 2016. The company designs and installs brain-machine interfaces. The objective of this technology is to strengthen our cognitive abilities by interacting directly on our brains. In August 28, 2020, the billionaire and Neuralink tested their chip on a pig.
Gertrude is a young sow who is part of these tests. She is equipped with The Link, Neuralink's first brain-machine interface. The animal has had an 8 millimeter chip implanted in her brain, which already makes it possible to observe cerebral activity.
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For Musk, Neuralink will soon make it possible to save our memories, and potentially to download them into another body or into a robot. Its technology, the company said, should also provide a better understanding of neurological diseases. With Neuralink, we will probably also be able to stream music to our brains.
But the firm has fallen behind the competition. Synchron, which is developing its own brain-machine interface technology, obtained regulatory approvals from the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2021 to test its chip on humans.
Synchron also conducted tests on four people in Australia. Unlike the Neuralink implant, the Synchron implant can be installed without having to open the patient's skull. The purpose of this technology is to make life easier for paralyzed people by offering them a way to control electronic devices with their thoughts.
Neuralink thought it could start its trials in 2022, but still does not have the authorizations. Faced with this situation, Musk is in talks with Synchron to invest in the company, according to several news outlets, citing anonymous sources.
Neuralink is bleeding: Musk and Dongjin Seo, implant engineer who is "designing computer chips to seamlessly connect human brains and machines," are the only ones of the eight founders of the startup to still be present. Former Neuralink CEO Max Hodak, who left his post in 2021, is now one of Synchron's investors.
In the absence of being able to experiment on humans, Neuralink has multiplied the tests on animals. After a pig, the firm tested its technology on monkeys. A practice that had sparked controversy because some monkeys died as part of its testing procedures. Neuralink disputed that it was animal cruelty.
"The use of every animal was extensively planned and considered to balance scientific discovery with the ethical use of animals. As part of this work, two animals were euthanized at planned end dates to gather important histological data, and six animals were euthanized at the medical advice of the veterinary staff at UC Davis [University of California, Davis Primate Center]," the company defended itself last February.
