BIM, Meet Gertrude!

6

October

2020

Gertrude enjoying a well deserved drink during her performance. 

In August 2020, famous tech entrepreneur Elon Musk revealed his latest technological project: a pig called Gertrude. On first sight, Gertrude looks like an ordinary Pig. She seems healthy, curious, and eager to taste some delicious snacks. When looking at her, it is hard to imagine how she managed to get one of the world’s most radical and well known tech entrepreneurs so excited. Gertrude just seems normal.

This is exactly the point!

ElonMuskGotcha

Elon Musk “Gotcha”

Gertrude is no ordinary pig. She has been surgically implanted with a brain-monitoring chip, Link V0.9, created by one of Elon Musk’s latest start-ups named Neuralink.

Neuralink was founded in 2016, by Elon Musk and several neuroscientists. The short term goal of the company is to create devices to treat serious brain diseases and overcome damaged nervous systems. Our brain is made up of 86 billion neurons: nerve cells which send and receive information through electrical signals. According to Neuralink, your brain is like electric wiring. Rather than having neurons send electrical signals, these signals could be send and received by a wireless Neuralink chip.

To simplify: Link is a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires

The presentation in August was intended to display that the current version of the Link chip works and has no visible side-effects for its user. The user, in this case Gertrude, behaves and acts like she would without it. The chip is designed to be planted directly into the brain by a surgical robot. Getting a Link would be a same day surgery which could take less than an hour. This creates opportunities for Neuralink to go to the next stage: the first human implantation. Elon Musk expressed that the company is preparing for this step, which will take place after further safety testing and receiving the required approvals.

The long term goal of the Neuralink is even more ambitious: human enhancement through merging the human brain with AI. The system could help people store memories, or download their mind into robotic bodies. An almost science-fictional idea, fuelled by Elon Musk’s fear of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Already in 2014, Musk called AI “the biggest existential threat to humanity”. He fears, that with the current development rate, AI will soon reach the singularity: the point where AI has reached intelligence levels substantially greater than that of the human brain and technological growth has become uncontrollable and irreversible, causing unforeseeable effects to human civilization. Hollywood has given us examples of this with The Matrix and Terminator. With the strategy of “if you cannot beat them, join them”, Elon Musk sees the innovation done by Neuralink as an answer to this (hypothetical) catastrophical point in time. By allowing human brains to merge with AI, Elon Musk wants to vastly increase the capabilities of humankind and prevent human extinction.

Singularity
Man versus Machine

So, will we all soon have Link like chips in our brains while we await the AI-apocalypse?

Probably not. Currently, the Link V0.9 only covers data collected from a small number of neurons in a coin size part of the cortex. With regards to Gertrude, Neuralink’s pig whom we met earlier in this article, this means being able to wirelessly monitor her brain activity in a part of the brain linked to the nerves in her snout. When Gertrude’s snout is touched, the Neuralink system can registers the neural spikes produced by the neurons firing electronical signals. However, in contrast: major human functions typically involve millions of neurons from different parts of the brain. To make the device capable of helping patients with brain diseases or damaged nervous system, it will need to become capable of collecting larger quantities of data from multiple different areas in the brain.

On top of that, brain research has not yet achieved a complete understanding of the human brain. There are many functions and connections that are not yet understood. It appears that the ambitions of both Elon Musk and Neuralink are ahead of current scientific understanding.

So, what next?

Neuralink has received a Breakthrough Device Designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the organisation that regulates the quality of medical products. This means Neuralink has the opportunity to interact with FDA’s experts during the premarket development phase and opens the opportunity towards human testing. The first clinical trials will be done on a small group of patients with severe spinal cord injuries, to see if they can regain motor functions through thoughts alone. For now a medical goal with potentially life changing outcomes, while we wait for science to catch up with Elon Musk’s ambitions.

 Neuralink-Logo

Thank you for reading. Did this article spark your interest?
For more information, I recommend you to check out Neuralink’s website https://neuralink.com/

Curious how Gertrude is doing?
Neuralink often posts updates on their Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/neura.link/?hl=en

Want to read more BIM-articles like this?
Check out relating articles created by other BIM-students in 2020:

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How is SpaceX disrupting the aerospace industry?

24

September

2017

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In the past, the aerospace industry was an industry dominated by the government and firmly established contractors, creating an almost monopoly. According to Eggers and Gonzalez governments create monopolies, which lack competition and the motive to earn profits (2012). This rigidness, the high level of expertise and the high costs involved with the business make it a very hard industry to enter (Collective Innovation, 2017).

Nevertheless, Elon Musk entered the aerospace industry in 2002 with the private company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). He was convinced SpaceX could reduce the costs of sending a 550-pound rocket into orbit by ten times (Collective Innovation, 2017). Hence, his goal was to inexpensively launch rockets into the orbit and make a business out of this (Wayne, 2006). SpaceX did dramatically decrease the costs of launching a rocket, but how did they do this?

The secret to decreasing the costs of launching a rocket is that SpaceX did almost everything in-house, eliminating expensive contractors (Fernholz, 2014). SpaceX’s research and development let to technology innovations, which let to decreases in the costs. For instance, SpaceX uses a different technique to create the exterior of the tanks of their rockets; their ‘’tanks are friction stir welded aluminum skin and stringer designed as opposed to machined aluminum’’ (Loizos, 2010). This makes the tanks lighter and thus decreases the costs of a rocket launch.

The technology innovations of SpaceX are paying off. In 2014, NASA contracted SpaceX and Boeing to transport US astronauts up to the International Space Station. Competitor Boeing would do this job for $4.2 billion, while SpaceX would do the same job for $2.6 billion (Fernholz, 2014). Hence, the innovations of SpaceX are undercutting its competitors by bringing down the costs and improving efficiency.

However, SpaceX did not stop there, it further reduced its costs and disrupted the industry by launching a reusable rocket in 2016. This was previously not possible (De Selding, 2016). It added economies of scale to SpaceX’s operations and reduced the costs for space travel dramatically. This raises questions such as: how far will SpaceX’s disruption go? And how will this change the industry? We will have to wait and see what happens next.

References:

Collective Innovation (2017) ‘Disruptive Innovation: SpaceX’. Accessed on 24 September 2017 on https://collectiveinnovation.com/disruptive-innovation-spacex/.

De Selding, P.B. (2016) ‘SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9: What are the real cost savings for customers?’. Accessed on 24 September 2017 on http://spacenews.com/spacexs-reusable-falcon-9-what-are-the-real-cost-savings-for-customers/.

Eggers, W.D. and R. Gonzalez (2012) ‘Disrupting the Public Sector’. Accessed on 24 September 2017 on https://hbr.org/2012/03/disrupting-the-public-sector.

Fernholz, T. (2014) ‘What it took for Elon Musk’s SpaceX to disrupt Boeing, leapfrog NASA, and become a serious space company’. Accessed on 24 September 2017 on

https://qz.com/281619/what-it-took-for-elon-musks-spacex-to-disrupt-boeing-leapfrog-nasa-and-become-a-serious-space-company/.

Loizos, C. (2010) ‘Elon Musk on Why His Rockets Are Faster, Cheaper and Lighter Than What You’ve Seen Before’. Accessed on 24 September 2017 on https://www.pehub.com/2010/06/elon-musk-on-why-his-rockets-are-faster-cheaper-and-lighter-than-what-youve-seen-before/#.

Wayne, L. (2006) ‘A Bold Plan to Go Where Men Have Gone Before’. Accessed on 24 September 2017 on http://www.oleeichhorn.com/images/A_Bold_Plan_NYTimes.pdf.

 

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