经济学人下载:埃隆·马斯克的脑机接口(1)

Elon Musk, perhaps the world's most famous entrepreneur,
埃隆·马斯克也许是世界上最著名的企业家，

is sometimes referred to as "the Trump of technology"— not for political reasons,
有时他被称为是“技术界的特朗普”—并非出于政治原因，

but because of his habit of making, at short notice, spectacular pronouncements that stretch the bounds of credibility.
而是因为他习惯于在短时间内发表引人注目且超出可信度的声明。

On July 16th he was at it again, unveiling a new type of brain-machine interface (BMI).
7月16日，他再次博人眼球，推出了一种新型的脑机接口（BMI）。

If human beings do not enter a symbiosis with artificial intelligence (AI), he declared, they are sure to be left behind.
他宣称，如果人类不与人工智能（AI）建立共生关系，他们肯定会被甩在后面。

And he, the announcement implied, was going to be the man who stopped that happening.
并且声明暗示，他将是阻止这一切发生的人。

Connecting brains directly to machines is a long-standing aspiration. And it is already happening, albeit in a crude way.
将大脑直接连接到机器上是一个长存的愿望。这已经在发生了，虽然是以一种粗糙的方式。

In deep-brain stimulation, for example, neurosurgeons implant a few electrodes into a patient's brain in order to treat Parkinson's disease.
例如，在深部脑刺激中，为了治疗帕金森氏症，神经外科医生在病人的大脑中植入一些电极。

Utah arrays, collections of 100 conductive silicon needles, are now employed experimentally to record brain waves.
犹他阵列由100根导电硅针组成，目前已被用于记录脑电波的实验。

A team at the University of Washington has built a "brain-to-brain network"
华盛顿大学的一个团队已经建立了一个“脑对脑网络”

that allows people to play games with each other using just their thoughts.
可以让人们利用自己的思维和对方玩游戏。

And researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have captured neural signals from people as they talk,
旧金山加利福尼亚大学的研究人员捕捉到了人们说话时的神经信号

and have then turned that information, via a computer, into intelligible speech.
然后通过电脑将这一信息转化成可理解的语言。

As with all things Musk-related, Neuralink is much more ambitious. The firm does not just want to develop a better BMI.
和所有与马克斯相关的事物一样，Neuralink的野心要大得多。该公司不仅仅想开发一个更好的BMI。

Its aim is to create a "neural lace", a mesh of ultra-thin electrodes that capture as much information from the brain as possible.
其目标是创造一个“神经蕾丝”，一种极薄的电极网，它能从大脑中捕捉尽可能多的信息。

Unsurprisingly, hurdles abound. The electrodes needed to do this must be flexible,
不出所料，障碍大量存在。这样做所需要的电极必须是灵活的，

so that they do not damage brain tissue and will also last for a long time.
这样才不会损坏脑组织并且还能持续很长一段时间。

They have to number at least in the thousands, to provide sufficient bandwidth.
为了提供足够的带宽，它们必须至少以数千计。

And to make the implantation of so many electrodes safe, painless and effective, the process has to be automated,
为了安全、无痛且有效植入这么多的电极，这个过程必须是自动化的，

much like LASIK surgery, which uses lasers to correct eyesight.
这很像是激光眼角膜手术，利用激光矫正视力。

Neuralink does indeed seem to have made progress towards these goals.
Neuralink似乎确实在实现这些目标方面取得了进展。

Its presentation, at the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco,
在旧金山的加利福尼亚科学院，其演讲展示中

included videos of a neurosurgical robot that is best described as a sewing machine.
包含了一个神经外科机器人（最好形容为一台缝纫机）的视频。

This robot grabs "threads" (films, containing electrodes, that measure less than a quarter of the diameter of a human hair),
这个机器人抓取“线”（包含电极的薄膜，尺寸不到人类头发直径的四分之一），

and shoots them deep into the brain through a hole in the skull. It is capable of inserting six threads, each carrying 32 electrodes, per minute.
并通过头骨上的一个洞把它们射入大脑深处。它每分钟能够插入六根线，每根线携带32个电极。