Elon Musk's Neuralink startup releases clip of a monkey playing video game called Pong with its brain

Elon Musk’s startup devoted to meshing brains with computers was closer to its dream on Friday, having gotten a monkey to play the video game Pong using only its mind. A video posted on YouTube by the entrepreneur’s Neuralink startup showed a macaque monkey named “Pager” playing Pong by essentially using thought to move paddles that bounce digital balls back and forth on screen. “As you can see, Pager is amazingly good at MindPong.” A monkey is literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip!! — Elon Musk April 9, 2021 Neuralink devices were implanted on two sides of Pager’s brain to sense neuron activity, then the monkey played the game a few minutes using a joystick to let software figure out the signals associated with hand movements.