Elon Musk’s company Neuralink has posted a clip of a monkey controlling video games with its mind. 

The 3-minute video shows Pager, a nine-year-old male macaque with Neuralink chips embedded in its brain, playing ‘Mind Pong’. 

Pager was initially taught to use a joystick in exchange for some banana smoothie delivered through a straw. But after the implants were successfully inserted and calibrated, he is now able to control the paddle simply by thinking about moving his hand up or down.

“First @Neuralink product will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs,” Mr Musk tweeted on Thursday.

“Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again. 

“The device is implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look & feel totally normal.”

Neuralink was formed in 2016 to advance the emerging technology of brain implants. While labs around the world already had devices that enabled the brain to interface with computers, Neuralink is planning an entire process, including designing surgical robots to implant the technology.

Along with $100 million in funding from Mr Musk, the company was formed by eight experts in brain surgery and neural technologies from leading labs.

The company has stated that its initial goals are to create devices to assist people with serious brain diseases. However, it has the broader goal of technological human enhancement, sometimes called transhumanism.

Mr Musk says Neuralink will create a ‘neural lace’ over the brain that functions as a “digital layer above the cortex”, implanted through a vein or artery. He says the long-term goal is “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”, which he believes will be an existential threat to humanity if unchecked.