Shiny Shiny snippets: Elon Musk’s brain chip firm Neuralink given go ahead for human trials


Elon Musk’s brain chip firm Neuralink has said it has been given the go-ahead to start carrying out studies on humans. Neuralink said in a tweet on Thursday it had won the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “to launch our first-in-human clinical study!” It represents “an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” it said. Mr Musk, who last year claimed the devices were so safe he would happily use his children as guinea pigs, hopes they will one day help conditions including obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia. Sky News 

Customers who had been waiting years for delivery of new Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X vehicles are cancelling their orders in the wake of the firm’s decision to supply the cars in left-hand drive only, albeit with three years’ free Supercharger use.  Tesla’s announcement on 12 May that it would cease production of right-hand-drive versions due to mechanical and logistical complexities took customers by surprise and many rushed to express their shock on social media. Autocar

The boss of the company behind ChatGPT has said it has no plans to leave Europe. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman U-turned on a threat he made earlier this week to leave the block if it becomes too hard to comply with upcoming laws on artificial intelligence (AI). The EU’s planned legislation could be the first to legislate on AI which the tech boss said was “over-regulating”. But he backtracked after widespread coverage of his comments. “We are excited to continue to operate here and of course have no plans to leave,” he tweeted. BBC 

Images claiming to be the first-ever look inside Elon Musk‘s long-awaited Tesla Cybertruck have surfaced online – and they have caused a rift among fans. Several shots of the interior appeared Wednesday, believed to have been shot during Elon Musk’s shareholders’ day last week. One Twitter user said the ‘Cybertruck’s interior looks like it came from a 1980’s low budget sci-fi prop piece,’ while others called the dark gray cabin flat out ‘ugly.’ Daily Mail 

When Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings declared in 2016 “we love people sharing” accounts, the company had a commanding lead in the streaming business and four years of blistering growth ahead of it. No one had yet heard of Disney Plus or the streaming wars.  But after the platform lost subscribers early last year, Hastings called time on this breezy attitude towards password sharing, which has given rise to an estimated 100mn Netflix freeloaders around the world. FT.com

The value of the US tech company Nvidia has soared by a quarter after it predicted a boom in demand for its computer chips to meet the needs of artificial intelligence products such as ChatGPT. Nvidia’s share price rose by 25% in early trading on the back of the announcement and gave it a market valuation of more than $940bn (£760bn) after stock markets opened on Wall Street on Thursday, up from $755bn on Wednesday evening. The share price had already more than doubled over the course of 2023, amid huge optimism over the rapid progress of generative AI products. The Guardian

Chris Price