logo

Musk's Neuralink to test brain chips in clinical study in Great Britain

Zawya6 days ago
Elon Musk's brain implant company Neuralink said on Thursday it will launch a clinical study in Great Britain to test how its chips can enable patients with severe paralysis to control digital and physical tools with their thoughts.
The company is partnering with the University College London Hospitals trust and Newcastle Hospitals to conduct the study, it said in a post on X.
Neuralink said patients living with paralysis due to conditions such as spinal cord injury and a nervous system disease called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) qualify to participate in the study.
The company raised $650 million in its latest funding round last month. It began human trials in 2024 on its brain implant after resolving safety concerns flagged by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had initially rejected Neuralink's application in 2022.
According to the company, five patients with severe paralysis are currently using its device to control digital and physical tools with their thoughts.
Neuralink, founded in 2016, has raised about $1.3 billion from investors and is valued at roughly $9 billion, according to media reports, citing PitchBook.
(Reporting by Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

The Middle East must get ready for a US-China digital arms race
The Middle East must get ready for a US-China digital arms race

The National

timean hour ago

  • The National

The Middle East must get ready for a US-China digital arms race

A starting gun fired this summer, but many of us didn't hear it. On July 18, when the US unveiled its National AI Action Plan, it wasn't just another policy document. It was a declaration, signalling the start of what could be humanity's ultimate race: a global contest to build the digital foundations of the 21st century and, in the process, redefine the very meaning of national power. For centuries, nations have vied for territory, resources and influence. This new competition is of a different order entirely. It is a sprint to embed artificial intelligence into every sector, every institution and every decision-making layer of society. AI is no longer a far-off concept from science fiction; it has become the invisible infrastructure of our present, the operating system of modern life. With its plan, the US has made its intentions clear: it is mobilising to win. The American strategy is breath-taking in its scale and speed. This is not a cautious roadmap but a full-scale mobilisation of capital, talent and government will. The plan accelerates the National AI Research Resource, a flagship initiative backed by an initial $110 million to arm the nation's researchers with the raw computing power needed to innovate. Yet this public push is dwarfed by the staggering ambitions of the private sector. Elon Musk's xAI is building a $10 billion 'Gigafactory of Compute', a cathedral of processing power designed to run on 100,000 of Nvidia 's most advanced chips. Not to be outdone, Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly planning a $100 billion data centre project codenamed 'Stargate'. These are the moonshots of our time. And their impact is already filtering down into the machinery of government, where AI is being used to slash medical backlogs for veterans and help reduce the nearly 43,000 annual roadway deaths. This isn't just automation; it's a fundamental rewiring of the state into an entity that can learn and adapt in real-time. But America is not running this race alone. For every move the US makes, China has a powerful and increasingly sophisticated countermove, often executed with a different philosophy. While the US champions a public-private partnership model, China's state-led industrial policy delivers breakthroughs with stunning speed. Consider the shockwave sent through the robotics world this year by Unitree, a Chinese firm that launched a sophisticated humanoid robot for just $16,000. It was a watershed moment, transforming advanced robotics from a high-cost industrial tool into something approaching a mass-market product. This focus on tangible, real-world applications is complemented by a brilliant software strategy. While American giants often keep their most powerful models proprietary, Beijing-based DeepSeek AI recently released its powerhouse DeepSeek-V2 model completely open-source. In doing so, it invited the world's developers to build on its technology, a clever play to win the hearts and minds of the global tech community. In this global digital race, there may be no prize for second place However, this digital arms race is running headfirst into a very physical wall: energy. AI is insatiably power-hungry. By 2030, Nvidia's AI servers alone are projected to consume more electricity annually than the entire country of Finland. Mr Musk predicts that within a year, the primary constraint on AI development will shift from a shortage of chips to a shortage of electricity. Here, the competition becomes one of concrete and power grids. The US AI sector is projected to require 50 gigawatts of new power capacity by 2028. In 2023 alone, China added more than 400 gigawatts of new capacity, more than the rest of the world combined. The lesson is stark: winning the AI race isn't just about designing algorithms in the cloud; it's about having the industrial might to power them on the ground. For those of us in the Middle East, the sound of this starting gun should echo with a particular urgency. Regional ambitions are high. The UAE has pioneered world-class Arabic language models and the use of AI in government applications, while Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is reportedly planning a $40 billion fund to invest in AI. But the actions of the US and China reveal a new truth: ambition is no longer enough. Success now demands execution at a national scale, requiring the sovereign capabilities – computation, talent and especially energy – to sustain it. The global race has begun. It is a contest not just for technological dominance, but for the right to shape the future of trade, security and society itself. And in this race, there may be no prize for second place.

Bank of England's long unwinding road: Mike Dolan
Bank of England's long unwinding road: Mike Dolan

Zawya

timean hour ago

  • Zawya

Bank of England's long unwinding road: Mike Dolan

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters) LONDON - An expected cut that will take the Bank of England's key interest rate to 4% this week will be merciful relief for an economy badly in need of a lift. But overwhelming caution and a split among policymakers mean the easing cycle is set to be one of the shallowest and most drawn out in modern history. The BoE, like its central bank peers, has had a torrid five years, but with numerous home-grown twists and turns to boot. With Brexit just kicking in, the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 - forcing massive BoE balance sheet support for government rescues during the lockdowns. A supply shock from the post-pandemic reboot combined with massive monetary and fiscal stimulus to sow the first double-digit UK inflation spike in over 40 years - exacerbated by soaring energy costs after Russia invaded Ukraine in March 2022 and complicated by a government-inspired bond market blowout later that year. The scramble to hike borrowing costs ensued as early as 2021 and the BoE has only slowly pared them back over the past year. And inflation is still not sustainably back to its 2% target, U.S. trade barriers are now rising sharply and policymakers and investors alike are struggling to determine exactly what the new normal is. Given this backdrop, the central bank's recent mantra of 'gradual and careful' seems reasonable. Deutsche Bank economists Sanjay Raja and Shreyas Gopal sought to quantify that caution this week by pointing out that the slow and shallow BoE easing cycle so far is already the third-longest since World War Two. If their forecast for the BoE's official bank rate - of four-quarter-percentage point cuts to 3.25% by next February - turns out correct, then this easing cycle will be the longest since 1945. What's more, they calculate that no rate-cut cycle that's lasted more than two quarters has delivered less easing than the current one. The Deutsche team reckon this is all consistent with the central bank's 'softly softly' guidance, but is also likely a "reflection of a very divided MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) following four years of above-target inflation." BoE policymakers broke three ways back in May when the central bank last cut rates - with votes for the majority decision, a deeper cut and no change - and some think that split could re-emerge this week. GROPING IN THE DARK Financial market pricing chimes with Deutsche's take and tentatively prices a "terminal rate" for the cycle at about 3.25%, paring back less than half the hikes that took the rate from the near-zero level to 5.25% during the 2021-2023 period. And that's a quarter-percentage-point higher than where markets think the U.S. Federal Reserve's policy rate will end up late next year. If the BoE policy rate does settle there, it would be a quarter percentage point above the average of the past 28 years of the central bank's operational independence - perhaps the clearest reflection of the big structural hit to both the domestic and global economies in recent years. But as the policymaker split is watched closely again on Thursday alongside the BoE's updated economic forecasts, some banks - such as Morgan Stanley - still assume the bank rate will eventually be eased much further to 2.75% by the end of 2026. To get there, the BoE will likely have to grope around in the dark a bit longer. In a speech last month, BoE policymaker Alan Taylor outlined his thoughts on the fabled "r-star" neutral real interest rate, the theoretical rate that neither spurs nor drags on economic activity and prices. His work suggested that a British r-star is now around 0.75%, which, after adding a 2% inflation rate, would imply that a BoE policy rate of 2.75% is indeed a reasonable landing point. That estimate hasn't changed much in 10 years, even though it's less than half of what it was on the eve of the 2007-2008 global banking crash. Indeed, Taylor underscored the very long-term trend of declining neutral rates in his presentation by highlighting a vast data set of interest rates from around the world clearly showing that interest rates had not just been falling steadily for the past 50 years, but the past 800 years. And yet even a BoE dove like Taylor knows how foggy it still is out there at the moment, especially given this year's expected UK inflation rebound and still punchy wage gains. "Optimism has faded and geoeconomic storms have blown in," he said before concluding on a philosophical note, "We know we will never see the end of the road, but we must always be looking for it." Central bankers everywhere may be trying to do just that, though few are likely seeing anything clearly right now. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters -- Enjoying this column? Check out Reuters Open Interest (ROI), your essential new source for global financial commentary. Follow ROI on LinkedIn. Plus, sign up for my weekday newsletter, Morning Bid U.S.

Bank of England, facing jobs-inflation dilemma, poised to cut rates
Bank of England, facing jobs-inflation dilemma, poised to cut rates

Zawya

time2 hours ago

  • Zawya

Bank of England, facing jobs-inflation dilemma, poised to cut rates

LONDON: The Bank of England looks poised to cut interest rates for the fifth time in 12 months on Thursday but nagging worries about inflation are likely to split its policymakers and cloud the outlook for its next moves. Governor Andrew Bailey and most of the Monetary Policy Committee are expected to favour taking Bank Rate to 4% from 4.25% as they react to a jobs slowdown made worse by a tax hike on employers and U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war. But two MPC members might push for a bigger cut to prop up the economy while another two might prefer no cut at all due to their inflation concerns, a voting pattern last seen in May and reflecting the conflicting pressures on Britain's central bank. Investors will be watching to see if the BoE sticks to its "gradual and careful" language about the pace of lowering borrowing costs, a message that economists have taken to mean one rate cut every three months. That slow and steady path no longer looks so clear, with inflation running above the BoE's projections and forecast by some economists to reach 4% in coming months, double the central bank's target. Economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics have predicted Thursday's rate cut will be the BoE's last for a while due to the persistence of inflation. That would be a blow for finance minister Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who have promised to speed up Britain's slow economic growth. By contrast, analysts at investment bank Evercore think the BoE might accelerate the pace of cuts later this year as hiring weakens further. Investors are mostly pricing in another cut in November after Thursday's expected move but only one or two more reductions in 2026, which would leave Bank Rate at 3.5% or 3.25%, higher than the euro zone's benchmark rate of 2%. HIGH INFLATION EXPECTATIONS High inflation expectations in surveys of the British public mean Bailey and the rest of the MPC cannot focus squarely on giving the economy a boost by cutting borrowing costs. Inflation has been above the Bank of England's 2% target almost constantly since May 2021. "If I'm a worker and I'm bargaining for a wage, am I really going to believe that inflation is going to come back to 2%?" Stephen Millard, deputy director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank, said. "I would, personally. But I could imagine there's still quite a bit of wage pressure just coming from that." In contrast to the BoE, which has forecast that inflation will only return to 2% in early 2027, the European Central Bank expects inflation in the euro zone to hold below 2%. It has cut borrowing costs eight times since June of last year. Growth in wages in Britain has proven slower to ease after surging during the COVID-19 pandemic. At about 5% in the most recent data it remains above the 3% level that the BoE thinks is roughly consistent with its inflation target. The BoE will announce the MPC's latest decision and forecasts for the economy at 1100 GMT, half an hour before Bailey and other top officials hold a press conference. The central bank is also expected to assess the impact of its programme of running down its stockpile of government debt ahead of a decision in September on the pace of sales over the following 12 months, a key decision for bond investors. (Editing by Catherine Evans)

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store