Why Elon Musk is Betting on Brain-Computer Interfaces
Elon Musk has been in quite the hot seat recently. From being sued by the SEC for promising to take Tesla private, to smoking on a radio show, he has received criticism from all over. But, one thing can be certain when it comes to Musk. When he has his mind set on disrupting a space… he does just that. From building a rocket company from scratch to producing thousands of well built efficient electric cars (resulting in a scramble by all other manufacturers to catch up), he has yet to truly fail in disrupting. When he mused about better transportation he started hyperloop, then, realizing they would need to build tunnels, the Boring Company. It really never ends with Musk.
So. What was Musk thinking when he invested millions of his own dollars into NeuroPlus, a Brain-computer interface company.
I believe there are three main reasons Musk could be doing this.
1.) Interest in the future
2.) Complimenting AI
3.) Curiosity in the Government
The first reason, Interest in the Future is a popular opinion. From this wait but why article on Musk you can see that the motivation for many of his ventures is to “further” mankind. From building rockets to help humankind expand beyond earth to building tunnels so as to ease transportation in the future, Musk has founded many projects of this nature in hopes to better the future. The goal of these is not so much to provide the answer to the problem as it is to provide motivation for other companies to all work towards this common goal.
One clear example of this is Tesla. Musk has built an electric car company from scratch, but even now, after many years Tesla is still only producing a fraction of the gas powered cars produced in similar amounts of time. However, Tesla’s popularity has pushed most other major car producers to invest heavily in electric vehicle research and development. From the Nissan Leaf to the BMW i8, the recent increase in electric cars from other producers is astounding.
This could be one reason that Musk is investing millions of his own dollars into Neuralink. He hopes that by doing so he can drive interest from Venture Capitalists to fund other smaller companies all researching the same goal, the same technology. He has definitely been successful in this front, causing widespread public attention and interest into the field by founding Neuralink.
The second reason Musk could be interested in personally exploring this field is that he has a keen desire to “safeguard” human intelligence against what he claims is the “evil of artificial intelligence.” Musk has encouraged and supported his Brian child, openAI, an open source platform for expanding the reach and power of AI, while also ensuring it is done in a “safe” way. He believes that the technology to link our brains with the internet lies within brain-computer interfaces and therefor that furthering that area will sooner allow the progress of human intelligence.
And finally, curiosity in the government could quite possibly be the main driving force behind Musks run for the hills. Starting back in 2013, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced its Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, with the goal to ultimately help researchers find new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.
Promising $300 to $500 million a year to funding a series of companies, DARPA drew considerable interest from the private sector… including, potentially, the likes of Musk and Bryan Johnson, another entrepreneurial sensation and founder of the brain-computer interface company Kernel. It can be argued that the BRAIN initiative and the huge interest of DARPA planted a seed in the minds of these two men and that that seed grew into the two companies they have both started and invested millions into.
Whatever the reasoning for the interest, it is there and undoubtedly the interest from silicon valley sensation Elon Musk has driven investors to look towards backing other, smaller companies. This is the silver lining. Many small companies, started by devoted serious researchers, are receiving much needed funding that is allowing them to push forward in there own research. SO whatever your views of Musk, he can be accredited with some, definitely not all, of the praise for helping this funding come down the line.
Stay tuned to hear more incredible stories of how these interfaces are changing people’s lives and our perception of the human mind. I hope you enjoyed this post — if you want to connect you can reach me here via email admangan2018@gmail.com or connect with me on social: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I am super excited to share that my book will be live on Amazon this Tuesday! Here is the link to buy it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H7RJLYC
