Elon Musk said that his long-term goal with Neuralink is to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and humans to mitigate the threat posed by the technology.
The brain implant company will help forge a “closer symbiosis between AI and humans,” Musk said in a Monday afternoon Twitter Spaces discussion with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his presidential run.
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The comments are Musk’s first statements concerning Neuralink since obtaining approval earlier this month from the Food and Drug Administration for the company’s first human trials.
“We will be extremely careful,” assured Musk, who stressed that the initial stages of the company’s brain-to-computer interfaces “will progress very slowly.”
When asked about the existential risk to humans posed by artificial intelligence, especially BCI technology, Musk recognized the concern but stressed that the pace of the regulation and the “correctly extremely difficult” FDA procedures will mitigate some of the problems.
Musk warned of the severe danger of AI in an interview with Tucker Carlson in April, noting that the technology is unique in its “potential of civilization destruction.” At the time, Musk also advocated for establishing a larger regulator apparatus to guide AI development.
When explaining the FDA approval, Musk clarified that Neuralink’s short-term goal is to develop BCI technology to “enable functionality lost” due to severe spine or brain injuries, such as restoring motor function to quadriplegics.
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Neuralink announced on Twitter on May 25 that it had obtained FDA approval for its first human trials, but Musk did not comment on the news at that time.
Because it is a private entity, Neuralink is not obligated to provide any public information about its FDA approval process.
