マスク氏設立の米企業、脳埋め込み技術の治験許可取得

【サンフランシスコＡＦＰ＝時事】起業家のイーロン・マスク氏が立ち上げた新興企業「ニューラリンク」は２５日、同社が開発中の脳とコンピューターをつなぐ技術の治験について、米食品医薬品局の認可を得たと発表した。（写真は起業家のイーロン・マスク氏。仏パリで）
　同社はツイッターに、「わが社初の人体内における臨床試験を開始するための認可を得た」と投稿した。被験者の募集は開始していないという。
　同社の脳インプラントの試作品は硬貨ほどの大きさのディスクで、初期のデモンストレーションでは、手術用ロボットの支援によってサルの頭蓋骨の一部をこのディスクに置き換え、微細なワイヤを脳内に挿入していた。
　マスク氏によると、脳の神経活動がディスクに検知され、その情報を一般的なワイヤレス信号であるブルートゥースでスマートフォンなどのデバイスに送信する。
　プレゼンテーションでは、数匹のサルがインプラントを通じて簡単なビデオゲームで「遊んだ」り、画面上のカーソルを動かしたりする様子が紹介されている。この技術はブタでも試験が行われている。
　マスク氏は「ディスクは頭蓋骨の中にうまく収まる」「髪で隠され気づかれないかもしれない」と述べている。
　インプラントの目標の一つに、失われた視力や運動能力の回復がある。マスク氏は「奇跡のように聞こえるかもしれないが、脊髄を損傷した人の全身機能を回復させることも可能だと確信している」としている。
　さらにそうした神経障害の治療にとどまらず、人間が人工知能（ＡＩ）に圧倒されないようにすることが最終目標だとも述べている。
　マスク氏は以前から、人間がＡＩの「飼い猫」のような存在になる事態を避けるには、脳とコンピューターを融合させる技術が不可欠だと主張してきた。
　だが、専門家や研究者は、超強力なコンピューター技術と人間の心を共生させるという同氏のビジョンに慎重な姿勢を崩していない。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/05/26-17:12）

Elon Musk's start-up Neuralink on Thursday said it has approval from US regulators to test its brain implants in people.
Neuralink said clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its first in-human clinical study is an important first step for its technology, which is intended to let brains interface directly with computers.
We are excited to share that we have received the FDA's approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study, Neuralink said in a post on Musk-run Twitter.
Recruitment for a clinical trial is not yet open, according to Neuralink.
The aim of Neuralink implants is to enable human brains to communicate directly with computers, Musk said during a presentation by the start-up in December.
We've been working hard to be ready for our first human (implant), and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human, he said at the time.
Neuralink prototypes, which are the size of a coin, have been implanted in the skulls of monkeys, demonstrations by the startup showed.
At a presentation, Neuralink showed several monkeys playing basic video games or moving a cursor on a screen through their Neuralink implant.
The technology has also been tested in pigs.
With the help of a surgical robot, a piece of the skull is replaced with a Neuralink disk, and its wispy wires are strategically inserted into the brain, an early demonstration showed.
The disk registers nerve activity, relaying the information via common Bluetooth wireless signal to a device such as a smartphone, according to Musk.
It actually fits quite nicely in your skull, Musk said during a prior presentation.
It could be under your hair and you wouldn't know.
- Uploading memories? -
Musk said the company would try to use the implants to restore vision and mobility in humans who had lost such abilities.
We would initially enable someone who has almost no ability to operate their muscles... and enable them to operate their phone faster than someone who has working hands, he said.
As miraculous as it may sound, we are confident that it is possible to restore full body functionality to someone who has a severed spinal cord, he said.
Beyond the potential to treat neurological diseases, Musk's ultimate goal is to ensure that humans are not intellectually overwhelmed by artificial intelligence (AI), he said.
Other companies working on similar systems include Synchron, which announced in July that it had implanted the first human brain-machine interface in the United States.
Members of the Neuralink team have shared a wish list that ranged from technology returning mobility to the paralyzed and sight to the blind, to enabling telepathy and the uploading of memories for later reference -- or perhaps to be downloaded into replacement bodies.
Meanwhile, Musk recently established a business devoted to developing sophisticated AI. The boss of Tesla has also predicted that autonomous driving technology at the electric car maker is heading for a breakthrough.
Musk has contended that synching minds with machines is vital if people are going to avoid being so outpaced by AI that, under the best of circumstances, humans would be akin to house cats.
Experts and academics remain cautious about his vision of symbiotically merging minds with super-powered computing.