Elon Musk reveals his startup wired up a monkey's brain to play video games with its mind

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed that a monkey has been wired up to play video games with its mind by a company he founded called Neuralink.

Musk said that Neuralink put a computer chip into the monkey's skull and used "tiny wires" to connect it to its brain, CNBC reported on Monday.

He said videos would be released soon, perhaps in around one month, showing the wired monkeys.

Neuralink's facilities meet US regulatory requirements, Musk said during a talk on Clubhouse -- a new private social media app, adding that "You can't even see where the neural implant was put in, except that he's got a slight like dark mohawk and he's a happy monkey. We have the nicest monkey facilities in the world."

Musk, who also spoke about space travel, colonies on Mars, crypto, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Covid-19 vaccines, said Neuralink is trying to figure out if it can use its chips to get monkeys to play "mind Pong" with each other.

"That would be pretty cool," said Musk, who is CEO of Neuralink, in addition to SpaceX and Tesla.

He explained that the "idea with neural link is addressing brain and spinal injuries" and making up people's lost capacity with an implanted chip.

"There are primitive versions of this device with wires sticking out of your head, but it's like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires that go into your brain," he said.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Neuralink's team of around 100 people is trying to develop an implementable computer-brain interface. Elon Musk said the aim of Neuralink is to increase the rate at which information can flow from the human brain to a machine.