How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

Elon Musk’s vision of what is to come

takes another snuffle forward

Brain-computer interfaces

And pigs may drive

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The Economist

September 5th 2020 

Science & technology

69

2

not Mr Musk’s presentation but rather the

arrival of Gertrude. Her 

bci

is connected to

nerve cells in a part of her brain called the

olfactory bulb. As she snuffled around her

pen searching for food, and also sniffed her

handler’s hand, a display showed the elec-

trical activity which those cells were mani-

festing in response to these stimuli.

Not everyone is impressed. Andrew

Jackson, a professor of neural interfaces at

Newcastle University, commented that

there was not anything “revolutionary” in

the presentation, saying it was “solid engi-

neering but mediocre neuroscience”. Mr

Musk replied, in a tweet, that it was com-

mon for academia to undervalue the bene-

fits of bringing ideas to fruition.