Elon Musk: his bionic eye could give view of the blind

Elon Musk has embarked on a new crazy bet with his Neuralink implant, already in testing to allow us to write by telepathy. From now on, he attacks in the eyes with the creation of a bionic eye capable of resolving the majority of vision problems and even giving sight to the blind.

The bionic eye, soon a reality?

Unveiled as part of a partnership with American and Spanish research teams, the Blindsight project is integrated into a vast study supported by the University of California in Santa Barbara. The objective: to develop an intelligent visual prosthesis capable of decoding visual signals thanks to the AI, and then transmitted them directly to the brain. This system could allow blind to recognize faces, read, or move independently in their daily lives. In short, to give them the sight.

The technology is based on a system for reconstruction of visual scenes, comparable to that of the Microsoft Hololens helmet. It is not only a question of restoring sight, but rather of increasing perception with unprecedented precision. However, the project remains at an experimental stage. The clinical trials on humans have not yet started, even if Neuralink received a preliminary authorities from the American health authorities last September.

“The objective is to answer fundamental questions that will allow the development of an intelligen bionic eyet ”, indicates a description unveiled by BFM.

From sight to men-machine fusion

This is not the first Musk project to be interested in blindness and more generally in disabilities. Recently, Neuralink allowed paralyzed people to find the ability to write thanks to telepathy. In parallel, Neuralink is already working on other implants intended, this time, to restore mobility to paralyzed people, via a direct connection with the spinal cord.

If these technologies seem very promising for science and the medical field, it should also be forgotten that the businessman ventures on land still unknown in matters of ethics. These experiences strongly recall the cyborgs of fiction, but also question a potential control that scientists could have on the body of their patients.

For the moment, only tests on monkeys have been carried out, and the first human patients will be selected with caution. Musk claims, however, that its technology could, by 2030, allow people born blind to see for the first time.

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