Elon Musk Wants to Stream Music Directly into Your Brain

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims that the brain-computer interface being developed by his new startup Neuralink will be able to stream music directly into users’ brains.

Futurism reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has begun providing more details about his brain-computer interface startup Neuralink as the company plans a reveal event in August.

Last week, computer scientist Austin Howard posed a question to Musk via Twitter, asking if the Neuralink interface would be able to transmit music directly into people’s brains, to which Musk simply replied “yes.”

In November 2019, Musk alleged that Neuralink could “cure” disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.  During an appearance on the Artificial Intelligence podcast with Lex Fridman, Musk was asked what he believes the most exciting effects of his company Neuralink’s technology will be. Musk replied: “So Neuralink, I think at first will solve a lot of brain-related diseases. So could be anything from like autism, schizophrenia, memory loss — like everyone experiences memory loss at certain points in age. Parents can’t remember their kids’ names and that kind of thing,”

Autism is not a disease that can be cured, it is a developmental disability. The UK National Autistic Society states: “Autism is not an illness or disease and cannot be ‘cured’. Often people feel being autistic is a fundamental aspect of their identity.” Similarly, schizophrenia is not a “disease” but is classified by the World Health Organization as a “severe mental disorder.”

Recently, a Twitter user named Pranay Pathole asked Musk what device capabilities could be expected, asking: “Can Neuralink be used to retrain the part of the brain which is responsible for causing addiction or depression? It’d be great if Neuralink can be used for something like addiction/ depression.”

Musk replied: “For sure. This is both great and terrifying. Everything we’ve ever sensed or thought has been electrical signals. The early universe was just a soup of quarks and leptons. How did a very small piece of the universe start to think of itself as sentient?”

Many have been skeptical of Musk’s claims, such as linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky who questioned whether it would be possible to communicate using only thoughts. “Developing methods by which if I’m thinking of moving my hand, you might be able to pick up the electrical signals that say he’s trying to move his hand, that’s conceivable,” Chomsky told the website Inverse in 2017.

He added: “Trying to find out what I’m thinking, let’s say, there’s no way of developing technology because we don’t understand how to proceed. The technology… is just nowhere near advanced enough.”

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

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