Elon Musk wants to 'give people superpowers', 'outperform a pro gamer' with his brain implants

Elon Musk has said he wants to "give people superpowers" with his brain-computer interface (BCI) implants through Neuralink, which the SpaceX and Tesla founder said will let you "outperform a pro gamer".

Elon wants to increase humans' "output rate." With Neuralink's BCI, he said that there's the potential to have "three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude" of how fast our brain processes signals to the chip.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss sat down for the latest episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, with Fridman saying there would be "hundreds of millions" of people getting Neuralink implants in the "next couple of decades" to which Elon agreed.

Musk said: "We feel pretty confident that I think maybe within the next year or two, that someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer. Because the reaction time would be faster".

"If they've got damaged neurons in their spinal cord, or neck, as is the case with our first two patients, then obviously the first order of business is solving fundamental neuron damage in a spinal cord, neck, or in the brain itself. So, our second product is called Blindsight, which is to enable people who are completely blind, lost both eyes, or optic nerve, or just can't see at all, to be able to see by directly triggering the neurons in the visual cortex".

"If you have thousands of people that have been using it for years and the risk is minimal, then perhaps at that point you could consider saying 'OK, let's aim for augmentation'. So we're not just aiming to give people the communication data rate equivalent to normal humans. We're aiming to give people who [are] quadriplegic, or maybe have complete loss of the connection to the brain and body, a communication data rate that exceeds normal humans. While we're in there, why not? Let's give people superpowers".