Elon Musk says the surgical scalpel is about to lose its top billing to algorithms and actuators, predicting "robots will surpass good human surgeons within a few years and the best human surgeons within ~5 years." Replying to tech commentator Mario Nawfal's post on X touting robot-run operating rooms, Musk added that Neuralink "had to use a robot for the brain-computer electrode insertion, as it was impossible for a human to achieve the required speed and precision." Neuralink's R1 machine places 64 hair-thin threads into the cortex in about 15 minutes, steering past blood vessels with micron-level accuracy, according to the company's hardware blog and earlier public demos.​ The robot is now part of the PRIME human trial testing the N1 wireless implant in patients with paralysis.​ Musk's timeline lands as autonomous systems notch real-world wins. Johns Hopkins' Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot recently stitched pig intestines with leak-free precision that matched or beat experienced s...