Well, Musk himself has not volunteered for invasive brain surgery as far as we know. But some people do in fact have small electrodes implanted in their brains. I learned from Startalk that this has legitimate medical uses. If a person has brain cancer and would die without brain surgery to remove a portion of the brain, surgeons will implant these electrodes and monitor the brain’s signals for a period of time to understand exactly which part of the brain needs to be removed, and to do that as safely as possible. The ethics of this are pretty clear. Technologically, the next step after this invasive form of brain monitoring is to advance non-invasive brain monitoring technologies, which exist but are currently not as good. And after that, still in the realm of science fiction for now, would come the injectable nanobots that can connect your brain to the internet. According to Ray Kurzweil, that fabulous science fiction future is scheduled to arrive in 2029.

Now back to Musk and Neuralink. A person who had the technology installed about 18 months ago has chosen to speak publicly. The person was paralyzed after an accident, and this has given him the ability to do many things he would otherwise not be able to do.

a Neuralink-made robotic surgery device implanted the chip and connected tiny threads with more than 1,000 electrodes to the neurons in his brain. Now the device can measure electrical activity, process signals, then translate those signals into commands to a digital device. In layman’s speak, the BCI, or brain-computer interface, allows Arbaugh to control a computer with his mind. As a result, Arbaugh can do things like play Mario Kart, control his television, and turn his Dyson air purifier on and off without physically moving his fingers or any other part of his body…

When Arbaugh became Participant 1—or “P1” as he is often referred to by Neuralink employees and subsequent study participants—he joined a list of about 80 people to ever receive such a device. Brain chip interfaces have been a focus of neurological study for more than 50 years, and a dozen companies in the U.S. and China have been conducting limited human trials since 1998.

But becoming the first patient to get a Neuralink implant, in particular, is its own right of passage. For one, Neuralink’s device has threads with more than 1,000 electrodes, giving the device a much higher connectivity rate than most of the BCIs currently being studied in humans in the market. But Neuralink also places its electrodes in the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement—a more invasive approach than competitors like Synchron or Precision Neuroscience, which also have ongoing studies of multiple patients. Neuralink’s device is also wireless, versus competitors like Blackrock Neurotech that require a wired connection from the implant through the skull to an external receiver for signal capture and decoding (Blackrock Neurotech sells a wireless processor that has been used for research).

So there you have it. This brain control (as in brain controlling something other than a human body part) technology is farther along than us laymen not paying attention might have thought.