Musk's Subsidiary Puts a Microchip Into an Adult Macaque Monkey

SingularityNET, a financial technology company that seeks to develop blockchain solutions with artificial intelligence features, has rallied by nearly 1000% this year. The AGI token used by this company serves to purchase access to application programming interfaces and code bases that have been developed within the SingularityNET platform. The company is know for Sophia, a humanoid powered by AI and machine learning routines.

On Friday, the AI industry got a major boost after Neuralink, a company that includes Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk as a co-founder, announced that it had successfully implanted a microchip in the brain of an adult macaque monkey. The primate was taught to play a simple video game, which he could later control with his mind through AI routines translated by the microchip implant. This technology is being leveraged to improve the mobility and quality of life of individual who live with paralytic conditions.

There is an interesting nexus developing between artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. There are a number of things in place that provide for the emergence of this. The first is the principle of virtual currencies and the second is the prevalence of blockchains. The third is the undeniable interest by the technology sector to marry these two technologies. A lot of energy is being put into identifying and bridging these two areas and this seems like a great opportunity.

The technology and the underlying concept of what currency tokens can be used for, and the underlying functionality of blockchain are two very different things. On the one hand, we have a technology that enables a decentralized global transaction system, but as part of this is there is an underlying theory of how money is supposed to work. A blockchain could potentially be used as a secure medium for money to operate, but this does not mean that other technologies such as AI cannot be integrated.

There are some who will argue that we need these technologies, but many we do not need them at the same time. These individual thing that we do not need AI to support a global system of payments.