If you haven’t heard of Neuralink, your mind is about to be blown. Most of us have heard of Elon Musk, founder and CEO of many notable companies such as SpaceX and Tesla. Right now, as co-founder of Neuralink, Musk is using his innovative mind to possibly bring about a technological revolution. The company plans to put a chip in the brain that will ultimately allow for computers in the brain. The Nueralink chip is 8mm in diameter and 4mm tall. For reference, a dime is about 18mm in diameter. Coming out of this chip are 1,024 tiny threads 6 nm in diameter. This is the size of a piece of your hair divided by ten. The company has developed a robot that will connect the threads to the neurons in your brain.

Neuralink plans to implant this chip into humans to essentially let humans use computers while eliminating the middleman. Instead of having to use your fingers to control the phone in your hand, your brain will be able to control this device. This means that communication speeds will be increased tremendously. Think about it, I can only convey my thoughts through this computer that I am typing on at the rate that my fingers can move to type the keys, and I can only speak my thoughts through a phone at the rate that I can speak. If a computer were in our brains, we would be able to communicate at monumental speeds because our thoughts move faster than any of the above.

Although commercial use of this product would be far in the future, the technology is here which is amazing. Musk revealed that the first priority of this device would be to fix dire brain injuries. He stated in an interview in May that “It could, in principle, fix almost anything that is wrong with the brain.” This means that diseases such as Alzheimer’s, addiction, and Epilepsy could all be cured. It could also restore all sensory and movement functions such as eyesight and paralysis. Musk even says that the technology could replay all the memories that you have ever had in your brain like a movie. Tell me that doesn’t get you excited.

You may be thinking that this sounds too far-fetched to be true but recently, the chip was successfully implanted in a monkey’s brain. The brain chip in the monkey allowed it to play Pong against another monkey with their minds. As for the monkey’s well-being, Musk insists, “it’s not an unhappy monkey.”