Elon Musk’s vision of what is to come takes another snuffle forward
埃隆·马斯克对未来的憧憬又向前推进了一步
In idle moments, people sometimes dream about the future.
在闲暇的时候，人们有时会畅想未来。
Of cars that can drive themselves. Of travelling to other planets. Of moving objects by the power of thought.
能自动驾驶的汽车。去其他星球旅行。通过意念的力量移动的物体。
Whichever particular dream you have, though, Elon Musk is probably trying to make it real.
不管你有什么特别的梦想，埃隆·马斯克可能正在努力实现它。
Self-driving cars and travel to Mars are the provinces of two of his firms, Tesla and SpaceX respectively.
他的两家公司特斯拉（Tesla）和SpaceX公司（SpaceX）分别负责自动驾驶汽车和火星旅行。
Moving objects by the power of thought is the province of a third, Neuralink.
Neuralink公司负责第三个领域，用意念的力量移动物体。
And on August 28th, at a presentation broadcast over the internet, Mr Musk showed off the firm’s progress.
8月28日，在互联网上播出的一次演示会上，马斯克展示了公司的进展。
The highlight was the appearance of Gertrude, a pig with a chip implanted into her brain.
最引人注目的是Gertrude(猪名)的出现，一头大脑里植入了芯片的猪。
Reading the brain’s electrical signals, a technique called electroencephalography (EEG), started more than 100 years ago and is now routine.
读取大脑电信号的是一种被称为脑电图(EEG)的技术，早在100多年前就出现了，现在已经非常常见。
It generally involves placing electrodes non-invasively on the scalp, though it sometimes requires the invasive insertion of wires into the scalp or the brain itself.
它通常包括在头皮上非侵入性地放置电极，尽管有时需要将电线侵入性地插入头皮或大脑本身。
Non-invasive EEG provides useful information, and can even be employed to do things like playing simple computer games via software which interprets the signals received and turns them into instructions.
非侵入性脑电图提供了有用的信息，甚至可以用来做一些事情，比如通过软件解释接收到的信号并将其转化为指令，来玩简单的电脑游戏。
It is, though, a crude approach to monitoring the activity of an organ that contains 85 bn nerve cells and trillions of connections between them.
不过，这是一个粗糙的方法来监测一个器官的活动，这个器官包含850亿个神经细胞和它们之间的数万亿个连接。
Invasive EEG offers higher resolution readings from those nerve cells, albeit at greater risk because of the surgery involved.
侵入性脑电图提供了来自这些神经细胞的更高分辨率的读数，尽管由于涉及到手术，风险更大。
The device Gertrude carries, known technically as a brain-computer interface (BCI), carries invasiveness one stage further still by making the EEG recorder a potentially permanent implant.
Gertrude携带的设备，在技术上被称为脑-机接口（BCI），通过使EEG记录器成为潜在的永久性植入物，将侵入性再提升一个阶段。
Signals from implants such as this might be employed to control a prosthetic limb, or even a real one that brain or spinal-cord injury has deprived of its normal nerve connections.
像这样的植入物发出的信号可能被用来控制假肢，甚至是大脑或脊髓损伤后失去正常神经连接的真肢体。
They might also be used to control non-medical machinery, if someone thought it worth the risk of having a BCI implanted to do this.
它们也可能被用于控制非医疗设备，如果有人认为值得冒着植入BCI的风险去这么做的话。
And it is possible to use them to send signals in the opposite direction, too, to give instructions to the brain rather than receive them.
也可以用它们向相反的方向发送信号，给大脑发出指令，而不是接收它们。
That might be used to generate signals which suppress an incipient epileptic seizure.
这可能被用来产生抑制早期癫痫发作的信号。
Neuralink’s BCI, the size of a British tup-penny piece, carries 1,000 flexible electrode threads, each of which has a diameter less than a quarter of that of a human hair.
Neuralink的BCI相当于一枚英国图普便士硬币，携带1000根柔性电极线，每根电极线的直径不到人类头发的四分之一。
This flexibility is important because the brain moves around in the skull and the electrodes must be able to accommodate this movement while continuing to work.
这种灵活性很重要，因为大脑在头骨中活动，电极必须能够在保持工作的同时适应这种活动。
The device communicates wirelessly, and is recharged by induction.
该设备通过无线通信，并通过电磁感应充电。
This means that, unlike many previous attempts to build BCIs, it requires no skin-penetrating cable that might admit infections to the body.
这意味着，与以前许多构建BCI的尝试不同，它不需要可能导致身体感染的皮肤穿透电缆。
Along with this improved interface Neuralink has built a robot that will implant it.
随着这种改进的接口，Neuralink已经制造了一个机器人来植入它。
To do so, the robot first takes a high-resolution scan of the recipient’s brain.
为此，机器人首先对受试者的大脑进行高分辨率扫描。
Using this, it is able to sew the electrode threads into place with a precision that avoids any blood vessels in the area.
使用这种方法，它能够精确地将电极线缝合到位，避开了该区域的所有血管。
That, Mr Musk said, reduces the risk of damage during surgery.
马斯克表示，这样可以降低手术中的损伤风险。
The robot can put the interface in place in less than an hour, he said, though it cannot yet open the skull in order to do so.
他说，机器人可以在不到一个小时的时间内将接口安装到位，尽管它还不能为安装接口而打开颅骨。
General anaesthesia is not, he said, needed for the procedure.
他说，手术不需要全身麻醉。
The highlight of the show, though, was not Mr Musk’s presentation but rather the arrival of Gertrude.
不过，这场演出的亮点不是马斯克的演讲，而是格特鲁德的到来。
Her BCI is connected to nerve cells in a part of her brain called the olfactory bulb.
她的脑机接口与她大脑中一个叫做嗅球的神经细胞相连。
As she snuffled around her pen searching for food, and also sniffed her handler’s hand, a display showed the electrical activity which those cells were manifesting in response to these stimuli.
当她在围栏周围嗅着寻找食物，还嗅了闻训练员的手时，显示屏显示了这些细胞对这些刺激的反应所表现出的电活动。
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 engineering but mediocre neuroscience”
并不是每个人都对此印象深刻。纽卡斯尔大学(NewCastle University)神经接口教授安德鲁·杰克逊(Andrew Jackson)评论说，这份报告没有任何“革命性”，他说这是“扎实的工程学，但平庸的神经科学”
Mr Musk replied, in a tweet, that it was common for academia to undervalue the benefits of bringing ideas to fruition.
马斯克在推特上回复称，学术界低估将想法实现的好处是很常见的。
Admiration will surely increase if and when Neuralink performs on people a similar procedure to that which Gertude has undergone.
如果Neuralink在人们身上进行类似于Gertude经历的手术，人们肯定会更加钦佩。
The firm received a “breakthrough device designation” from America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July.
该公司于7月获得了美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）的“突破性设备命名”。
This means the FDA thinks the gadget shows promise (in this case for the treatment of paraplegia), and offers it a faster pathway for regulatory review.
这意味着FDA认为这种装置展现了希望（在本例中用于治疗截瘫），并为其提供了一个更快的监管审查途径。
The next challenge the firm wants to tackle is that of sending electrical signals into the brain.
公司想要解决的下一个挑战是向大脑发送电信号。
Mr Musk says this will require a range of inputs, as some brain areas require delicate stimulation while others take a “lot of current”.
马斯克表示，这将需要一系列的输入，因为一些大脑区域需要轻微的刺激，而另一些区域则需要“大量电流”。
The point of doing so will be to establish two-way communications.
这样做的目的是建立双向通信。
This could allow entirely new areas of treatment to be explored.
这将有助于探索全新的治疗领域。
Besides epilepsy suppression, some think that such brain stimulation might also work to treat depression and anxiety.
除了抑制癫痫，一些人认为这样的大脑刺激也可以治疗抑郁症和焦虑症。
More important in the long run, it is also essential to Mr Musk’s vision of widespread engagement, at a neurological level, between people and machines.
更重要的是，从长远来看，这对马斯克先生在神经学层面、人与机器之间广泛接触的愿景也是至关重要的。
This, he hopes, will result in a future in which memories can be downloaded and stored elsewhere, and human beings can form a “symbiosis” with artificial intelligence.
他希望，这将导致一个未来，即记忆可以下载到其他地方存储，人类可以与人工智能形成“共生体”。
Critics worry that Neuralink is too secretive, and that Mr Musk’s vision promises more than he can deliver.
批评者担心Neuralink过于隐秘，而且马斯克先生的愿景承诺比他所能实现的要多得多。
He does, though, have a record of doing what he says he is going to, albeit sometimes not as rapidly as he says he will.
不过，他确实有说到做到的历史记录，尽管有时没有他说的那么快。
He more-or-less single-handedly introduced battery-electric cars to the market and he built a successful space-rocket business out of nothing.
他或多或少是单枪匹马地将电池电动车推向市场，他从0开始地建立了一家成功的航天火箭企业。
Brains are a lot more complicated than cars, and even than rocket science.
大脑比汽车复杂得多，甚至比火箭科学还要复杂。
But do not bet against the coming into being at some point of the Musk vision of brains and computers collaborating directly.
但别打赌马斯克版本的脑机直接协作不会在某个时间点出现。
