Elon Musk wants Tesla and Neuralink to build a cyborg body for amputees

“By combining a Neuralink implant and a robotic arm or leg for somebody that has their arm or leg—or all arms or legs—amputated, we consider we can provide principally a cyborg physique that’s extremely succesful,” he instructed Tesla buyers on Wednesday. 

“I feel it could be unbelievable to probably assist tens of millions of individuals world wide, and provides them an arm or leg that’s nearly as good, perhaps long run higher than, a organic one.”

Nevertheless, the 2 firms are nonetheless a long way from demonstrating they’ll accomplish something of the sort. 

Tesla solely started to conceive a humanoid robotic in 2021 and is taking its first steps in creating purpose-built actuators to allow rudimentary limb motion for such a machine.

Neuralink in the meantime, satisfied the Meals and Drug Administration in Might to approve a primary human scientific examine for its brain-machine interface (BMI) chip, however it has not demonstrated this may truly be of any actual use.

We’re excited to share that we’ve obtained the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human scientific examine!

That is the results of unbelievable work by the Neuralink staff in shut collaboration with the FDA and represents an essential first step that may at some point enable our…

— Neuralink (@neuralink) Might 25, 2023

But Musk is understood for his boundless confidence and sheer optimism.

Maybe his true present is a capability to collect collectively a few of the greatest minds engaged on probably the most difficult issues of the day like OpenAI’s Ilya Sutskever and recruit them for his trigger.

On Wednesday he defined how he satisfied Apple’s then-director of product design, Charles Kuehmann, to work for him, as a result of he may supply the engineer the prospect to work at each Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk is, nonetheless, additionally a showman that borrows concepts from science fiction and offers merchandise names that reference popular culture to make them immediately relatable.

His “Optimus” humanoid robotic was taken from Hasbro’s Transformers toy line, whereas the “Plaid” that designates a sure efficiency model of the Tesla Mannequin S and X is borrowed from Mel Brook’s 1987 Star Wars parody Spaceballs.

Musk has a behavior of promising the moon

The Tesla CEO additionally has a penchant for making outlandish guarantees, prompting allegations some claims could also be fraudulent.

In 2015, he likened the development of his fabled hyperloop tunnel—with aimed to move folks from New York Metropolis to Washington DC in 29 minutes—to one thing basically akin to an air hockey desk. 

“I swear it’s not that onerous,” he instructed CNN, laughing on the chance it may truly be extra complicated than he may conceive.

Practically eight years later, one of the best his Boring Firm has managed, after claiming it could lastly check the expertise in 2022, is a Twitter put up of one thing that resembles nothing like a pod operating on air skies.

Earlier than debuting an preliminary working prototype of his Optimus droid, he predicted his military of robotic butlers would at some point usher in an “age of abundance” the place people would not should chase after scarce items and assets.

Upon unveiling final September, three males wanted to gingerly push the machine onto the stage.

Confronted about his extra wildly unrealistic predictions, Musk’s been identified to sheepishly shrugs his shoulders and say the general public shouldn’t have believed them so simply. 

“I don’t wish to blow your thoughts, however I’m not all the time proper,” he instructed TED Discuss’s Chris Anderson final April.

The place his newest cyborg concept ranks on this scale of concepts is but to be decided.