Monkeys introduced to Elon Musk's Neuralink technology were trained to play Pong using only their brains

Either the coolest thing you'll see all day or the scariest thing you'll see all day (probably both) And not only does this technology seem to be working, it even seems to be improving his performance when he is playing

A three-minute video explains that six weeks before the film was shot, Pager had two Neuralink devices implanted, one on each side of his brain

Pager initially uses a joystick to control the on-screen cursor and receives a banana smoothie as a reward for hitting the correct square The unnamed narrator of the video explains that by mapping the neurons that fire when the pager moves the joystick, it was possible to use a decoder algorithm to predict the monkey's intended hand movements based on data recorded by the Neuralink device They state

The team then removed the joystick, but the pager was now able to continue to control the cursor using only its brain

Next, the joystick was completely removed and the pager was shown using only his head to pong

Musk, who founded Neuralink with Max Hodak five years ago, announced in 2019 that monkeys can now control computers with the Neuralink N1 implant However, this is the clearest evidence yet that it actually works

Tesla bosses intend to use this sci-fi technology to help paralyzed people, tweeting earlier today that the first version "will allow paralyzed people to use their smartphones with their minds faster than people using their thumbs" Later models, he claimed, would "allow paraplegics to walk again"

Whether Neuralink will succeed as Musk predicts remains to be seen, but the monkey video is certainly impressive: in 2015, a paralyzed man drank a beer using a brain implant and a robotic arm, and in 2006, another paralyzed man used his mind and implant implant alone allowed him to hit the pong