(C) India Today

San Francisco – Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and founder of the brain-neural engineering startup Neuralink, announced that the company is preparing technology to enable those with total blindness to see again.

"We have our first blindsight augmentation ready and are awaiting regulatory approval," Musk posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on the 28th (local time). He explained that the technology will "enable those who have completely lost their vision to see, initially in low resolution and progressing to high resolution over time." He also added, "Neuralink's next generation of cybernetic augmentation will be unveiled later this year with triple the performance."

Marking the second anniversary of the first Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) chip implant in quadriplegic patient Noland Arbaugh in 2024, Neuralink announced that the number of clinical trial participants has increased to 21. This is an addition of nine participants in just four months since last September.

Neuralink stated, "Over the past two years, participants have been using their thoughts to control computer cursors, browse the web, post on social media, and play video games." They emphasized, "Our goal is to verify device performance through data in various environments while maintaining our record of 'zero' side effects."

Neuralink’s 'Telepathy' device involves implanting a coin-sized chip into the brain, connecting microscopic electrodes to brain cells to translate brain waves into computer signals. Meanwhile, OpenAI founder Sam Altman also established a BCI startup called 'Merge Labs' last August, which recently sparked conflict-of-interest discussions following a large-scale investment from OpenAI.