Within six months, Neuralink will be able to implant its first device in the brain of a human to communicate with computers through thought.
"Obviously we are careful that it works well, we have submitted all our documents to the FDA (the agency that deals with public health in the United States, ed) and we believe that within six months we will be able to have our first implant in a be human,” announced Elon Musk, head of the start-up that deals with neurotechnologies and also of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter.
"We are confident that Neuralink's device is ready for humans, so the timing depends on the FDA approval process," Musk later clarified on Twitter.
The six-month horizon is a further postponement of the project.
In July 2019, Musk estimated that Neuralink could perform its first tests on people in 2020. But so far, the tests have been done on animals.
Some monkeys, with experiments, have been able to "play" video games or "type" words on a screen, simply by following the movement of the cursor on the display with their eyes.
Musk and Neuralink engineers also took stock of the start-up's latest advances in the development of the surgeon robot and the development of other implants, to be installed in the spinal cord or in the eyes, to restore mobility or vision.
Other companies are working on controlling computers with thought, such as Synchron, which announced in July that it had implemented the first brain-machine interface in the United States.