The Chinese government announced a plan to develop standard, brain chips, or brain-computer implants(BCI), in an effort to catch up with and surpass Western technology in this field. The design is inspired by Elon Musk’s Neuralink breakthroughs, and the large Asian country is looking to close the technology gap and maintain competition with the United States.
Brain chip program in China
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China revealed that it will establish a specialized committee to oversee the development of these innovative guidelines and standards. In addition, they will publish a detailed plan to initiate this pilot project.
According to Bloomberg, so far, multiple technical experts, companies, research institutes, universities and other related industries have provided feedback and guidelines to assist in the creation of these standards.
In addition, the Ministry has set July 30 as the deadline for Chinese residents to submit their ideas on the formation of the committee. The main objective is to address the needs and management of industrial development in a comprehensive manner.
The new committee will play a key role in creating standards for the acquisition, preprocessing, encoding and decoding of brain information, as well as for data communication and visualization. In addition, its influence will extend into the public health sector, where it will draft and review standards for education, healthcare, consumer electronics and clinical applications.
A new era for brain-computer interface
Last April 25, a new Chinese BCI implant called Neucyber, developed by Beijing Xinzhida Neurotechnology, was presented. This implant, similar to the Neuralink, was initially tested on a monkey, which managed to control a robotic arm with its thoughts.
Local media outlet Xinhua noted that this technology was “independently developed” and represents the first “high-performance invasive BCI” in China. The Beijing municipal government’s state-owned asset regulator, Qichacha, is Xinzhida Neurotechnology’s largest shareholder.
Although neither the scientists nor Xinhua specifically mentioned Neuralink the presentation of the Neucyber chip at the Zhongguancun Forum, an annual technology event in Beijing, clearly evidences China’s aspirations to create technologies comparable to those of Elon Musk.
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Source: The Dedbrief
Photo: Unsplash
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