US launches probe into Elon Musk’s company
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An investigation into Elon Musk’s Neuralink has begun in the United States, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The reason for the start of the investigation was experiments on animals. It is conducted by the Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Agriculture at the request of the Attorney’s Office, where employees of the company complained.
The agency reviewed dozens of company documents and interviewed 20 former and current Neuralink employees. They said that the tests were carried out in a hurry and caused unnecessary suffering and death of test subjects due to Elon Musk’s desire to speed up the development of equipment.
Reuters estimates that about 1,500 animals have died since 2018. Among them – more than 280 sheep, monkeys and pigs. In addition to them, rats and mice were involved in the experiments.
At the same time, agency sources said that Musk’s company does not keep a strict record of the destroyed individuals.
Musk created the startup Neuralink in July 2016 to bring together leading experts in the development of neural interfaces and create robots that allow electrodes to be implanted into the brain in a fully automatic mode.
In the future, according to the businessman, neural interfaces will allow people to become cyborgs capable of resisting artificial intelligence and help them control a computer using the power of thought.
In February 2021, the company conducted a study of the chip on monkeys. According to Neuralink, the connection to the chip is via the iPhone. Experts were able to decipher the connection of neural activity with certain actions, which made it possible to reproduce the feedback. Thus, the monkey was taught to move the cursor on the screen without a joystick.
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