Elon Musk Seeks More Neuralink Test Subjects

Neuralink has announced that it is seeking new test subjects for its brain implantation despite the issues the company experienced with its first test subject.

Back in May, the Elon Musk-owned company received approval from the FDA for its newest test subject. The business pledged to fix the problems it ran into during the initial deployment. The biotechnology company claimed that an electrode fault limiting the device’s operation was the root of the problem.

Noland Arbaugh, the initial patient, experienced problems because the brain implant’s “threads” had come loose, making it unable to translate the electrical signals that allowed him to act on his ideas. It was barely a month after implantation when the threads came loose.

Arbaugh, however, stated on Good Morning America that he was afraid the Neuralink implant would need to be removed due to a malfunction, but he didn’t regret obtaining it. “I can control a computer just like anyone else can, which is not something I was able to do beforehand,” he said. “It was very, very hard to give up all of the amazing things that I was able to do.”

Now, according to France 24, Musk claimed he was looking for more volunteers as test subjects, promising a quality of life improvement for those who participated.

“We’re only just moving now to our second Neuralink patient,” Musk said. “But we hope to have, if things go well, high single digits this year.”

There has, however, been some concern about Musk’s apparent desire to “play God,” even by his own admission. Musk claims that Neuralink’s ambitions extend beyond the practical.

“We want to give people superpowers,” Musk stated. “Not just that we’re restoring your prior functionality, but that you actually have functionality far greater than a normal human.”

He continued: “Quite important for human-AI symbiosis is just being able to communicate at a speed AI can follow. It’s very sort of ‘Cyberpunk’ or ‘Deus Ex,’ [God is] if you play those games. An exciting possibility long term also is to take parts of the Optimus humanoid robot and combine that with a Neuralink — you could have basically cybernetic superpowers.”