Elon Musk's Neuralink shares first footage of monkey telepathically typing

A monkey has been filmed typing telepathically while using Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant during the company's Show and Tell Fall 2022 event.

The event featured a range of monkeys with the Neuralink brain implant being able to perform a series of tasks with technology, and Sake was able to type out that he wanted snacks.

While Sake the monkey was using the computer with his mind thanks to the Neuralink device, he wasn't actually typing out words in English as monkeys can't actually spell. Yet.

Instead, he was moving the cursor across a virtual keyboard to click on highlighted keys so he could spell out the phrase 'can I please have snacks', which were later provided.

Musk said: "Here you can see Sake, that’s one of our other monkeys, typing on a keyboard. This is telepathic typing.

"Though to be clear, he’s not actually using a keyboard. He's moving the cursor with his mind to the highlighted key."

"Now technically, he can’t actually spell. So I don’t wanna oversell this thing, because that’s the next version."

Neuralink

The important thing here is not that a monkey can spell, because they can't, but that they could use the Neuralink implant to control a computer with their mind, which suggests that one day humans could use it to do the exact same thing.

Musk reckons the brain implant could be a huge help to people who are unable to use a standard keyboard and mouse while the idea of controlling technology with the brain is pure sci-fi.

The tech billionaire could do with a bit of good news after the disastrous spiral of events which have been going on ever since he took control of Twitter.

It's been estimated that he's lost $310 million in net worth per day of 2022, with a number of his companies losing value and his Twitter takeover almost immediately running into difficulties.

SOPA Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo

This is just the latest in a long line of Neuralink experiments from Musk, who previously used the technology to get a monkey to play the classic video game Pong.

The billionaire CEO had to defend his company after animal rights groups accused Neuralink of subjecting animals to 'extreme suffering' during testing.

Musk's company admitted it had euthanised eight animals, but denied the claims of 'extreme suffering', insisting its tests were conducted in 'the most humane and ethical way possible'.

Neuralink also said it had to conduct animal testing before it could switch to human trials, which Musk said was 'about six months away'.