Contrary to popular belief, Elon Musk is not actually preparing for some sort of doomsday-esque takeover by the robots. Despite making headlines recently for comments that hint he may actually fear an AI-led apocalypse, it seems his more pressing goal is to bring humans up to speed more quickly. Rather than halt AI developments, he wants to put us on a more even playing field with the AI we have created. In fact, his latest venture, Neuralink, shows him proactively exploring the possibility of bridging the gap between the human brain and Artificial Intelligence.

Musk has been hinting at something new for a while now, recently telling a crowd in Dubai that “over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” Neuralink is a venture based on this concept, which has otherwise been referred to as “neural lace”. The term neural lace is basically sci-fi speak for a method of human brain / computer interface, in which electrodes mixed with artificial intelligence are implanted into the brain. As it stands, it is a concept that exists only in the realm of science fiction. When (and if) neural lace does finally see the light of day, it will involve a far more complex process than simply brain chip logistics. When Neuralink was registered in California in July of last year, it did so as under the label of a medical research company. Which brings us to the next major hurdle – is the medical field ready?

You may be surprised to learn that brain implants are not new technology in the medical field. Doctors have been implanting multi-electrode arrays into human brains for years to alleviate the effects of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. There are even less complex devices for stimulating the brain that address disorders like Tourette’s and depression. The problem is, even these procedures are still considered to be experimental in their current iteration. Add to that the fact that neuroscience researchers are still mostly in the dark about how the neurons in the human brain actually communicate with each other, and you start to see that the idea is clearly still in a very embryonic stage. And that’s not even taking into account the most obvious roadblock of all, which is that brain surgery is an extremely dangerous and undesirable option for most people.

While very few details aside from cryptic tweets and vague hints currently exist surrounding the Neuralink venture, we do have confirmation that Elon himself will be delving deep into the topic sometime in the next week on the Wait But Why blog run by Tim Urban. As with any eccentric billionaire idea Musk has had to date, we await his insights on human cranial computers with the same anticipation as his planet-altering concepts on self-driving automobiles, solar power, and space travel. For now, it’s interesting to merely ponder how humans might improve from their own scheduled “software updates”, the ability to access a cloud-like database of memories, and “wirelessly” sending thoughts, words, and feelings to external devices – human and otherwise.