Elon Musk — From the Innovation Breakthrough That Bridges Artificial Intelligence and Life Sciences
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” — This statement is one of the simplest but meaningful quotes that come from one of the most influential modern businessmen in the world today, Elon Musk. These quotes prove that he is a driving force of innovation in the modern world, it is not wrong if he is called the innovation magnate by the public. His unyielding nature is reflected in the many innovations he has made in the business and technology world to date, from Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, OpenAI, Zip2 and SolarCity.
Among these innovations, one that caught my attention was Neuralink. The startup company in the neurotechnology sector was founded in 2016 where Elon Musk is one of the founders. The company focuses on bridging the human brain with artificial intelligence. Specifically, Neuralink innovates by making devices that can be implanted in the human brain, with the aim of helping humans join the software and keep up with advances in artificial intelligence. This upgrade can increase memory or allow more direct interfaces with computing devices (Winkler, 2017). This innovation caught my attention, perhaps because of my background in the field of biology, which indirectly knew the science that was applied to the innovation.
So, what drives Elon Musk to innovate by integrating biology with artificial intelligence technology? What inspired him? Previously, we knew that computers were decreasing in size and power was increasing (increasing efficiency and effectiveness), but we humans as users don’t experience it. In fact the interface between humans and machines has changed very little since the first computers. In fact, with the development of the times, people are increasingly willing to do many things efficiently and one way is through computers. Suppose we just think about what we want to do with the computer and it will do what we need? For example, if we think, “tomorrow I want to exercise so many hours” then the computer can create reminders for us. Computers, instead of being tools for us, become part of us and make life a lot easier. This is what inspired Elon Musk and his friends at Neuralink to innovate by bridging the gap between biological and digital.
According to Mitchell (2017) in his article, actually the fact that the idea of a neural link concept, in which the human brain and digital systems are connected to each other, has existed since half a century ago, even frequently appearing in science fiction films such as in one of the episodes of Star Trek. However, some people might assume that Elon Musk started this idea. In addition, scientific research to connect the brain to digital devices has been carried out for years.
From this we can conclude that in this world there are still many inspirational ideas that can be implied to become possible innovations to help human life and also have a positive impact on nature. “All the shine of a thousand spotlights”; “All the stars we steal from the night sky”; “Will never be enough”, a lyric from one of the soundtracks of the film The Greatest Showman entitled Never Enough, sung by Loren Allred, can be interpreted by thousands or even millions of ideas in our heads will never be enough to reduce our thirst for innovation, so don’t be stop to innovate.
Reference
Mitchell, R. 2017. How Elon Musk’s Neuralink and Bryan Johnson’s Kernal Are Bridging the Biological-Digital Gap. [online] https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/elon-musk-neuralink-bryan-johnson-kernal-bridging-biological-digital-gap/. Accessed on October 28 at 20:40.
Winkler, R. 2017. Elon Musk Launches Neuralink to Connect Brains With Computers. [online] https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-launches-neuralink-to-connect-brains-with-computers-1490642652. Accessed on October 28 at 22:15.
