On January 30, 2024, Elon Musk announced that his company, Neuralink,[1] had successfully implanted neurons in a human being. The implant consists of a thousand electrodes, positioned in the region of the brain that controls the intention to move. This experiment follows on from those carried out on monkeys that were able to play the game of Pong using their brain activity alone.
Such experiments are not entirely new: in July 2022, Synchron, an American company specialising in endovascular brain-computer interfaces, announced the first implants of this type in the United States. The wearer of a StentrodeTM implant is able to use a numeric keypad by thought. We might also mention the work of Clinatec, a French research centre based in Grenoble, which has documented the case of a patient able to walk by controlling his legs with his mind.[2] Of course, the short-term ambition is medical, but the prospects for these devices go far beyond that.
Neuralink’s activities should be seen in the context of the considerable growth in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The spectacular growth in Nvidia’s market capitalisation[3] in recent weeks and the statements made by its chairman are evidence of a boom in demand for the microprocessors used by AI algorithms. At the same time, Microsoft is investing massively in a microprocessor foundry, to the tune of US$300 billion.
This profusion of AI applications can take two main directions. The aim of this equipment may be to replace humans, with the threats that this implies for higher category jobs and, as a corollary, an increase in the supply of low added value activities. Alternatively, this spread may be part of a logic of complementarity, which would have less brutal social consequences.
In the first case, the firefighter is replaced by a robot cap...
