Scientists Can Read a Bird's Brain and Predict Its Next Song

Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley this year set themselves an audacious new goal: creating a brain-reading device that would allow people to effortlessly send texts with their thoughts. In April, Elon Musk announced a secretive new brain-interface company called Neuralink. Days later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared that "direct brain interfaces [are] going to, eventually, let you communicate only with your mind." The company says it has 60 engineers working on the problem. It's an ambitious quest--and there are reasons to think it won't happen anytime soon.