IN THE MIND of Elon Musk, the world's thorniest problems become shockingly, wonderfully simple. Traffic in LA got you down? Here, take a ride on this underground super-luge. Carbon emissions are stinking up the planet? Fix it with a fleet of electric cars—and while we're at it, let's make them drive themselves. Need a backup planet to call home? Mars seems perfectly nice. Musk's startup Neuralink exhibits this way of thinking best of all: Machines with artificial intelligence are outpacing humankind. Ergo, implant computer chips in human brains to level up the species.

Earlier this week, Musk indicated he was one step closer to this goal—and had plans to prove it during a live webcast on Friday at 3 pm Pacific time. Neuralink is far from its ultimate aim of making brain surgery as easy and safe as, say, Lasik. But Musk wrote on Twitter that the company was prepared to show a working "V2" of the device it introduced to the public last summer. He had previously said that the demonstration "will show neurons firing in real time. The matrix in the matrix."

Neuralink's device is a tiny computer chip, meant to be stitched by a "sewing-machine-like" robot into the brain on a network of superfine electrode-studded wires. It is supposed to pick up on signals in the brain and then translate them into motor controls.