On Wednesday, Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-chip business, livestreamed its first implanted patient using a chip to play online chess.
After a diving accident left him paralyzed below the shoulder, 29-year-old patient Noland Arbaugh used the Neuralink device to move the cursor while playing chess on his laptop. The goal of the implant is to allow users to use only their thoughts to control a computer’s keyboard or cursor.
According to Musk’s statement from last month, Arbaugh was able to operate a computer mouse with his thoughts after receiving an implant from the business in January.
Regarding the implant operation, Arbaugh remarked, “The surgery was super easy,” in the video that was live on Musk’s social media platform X. “I was discharged from the hospital the very next day. I’m not cognitively impaired.
Arbaugh added, “I had basically given up playing that game,” alluding to the video game Civilization VI. “You guys (Neuralink) gave me the ability to do that again and played for 8 hours straight.”
Arbaugh elaborated on his experiences with the new technology, stating that they “have run into some issues” and that it is “not perfect.”
Although there is still much work to be done, I don’t want people to believe that this is the end of the adventure. It has already altered my life,” he continued.
Neuralink’s findings, according to Kip Ludwig, the former program director for brain engineering at the National Institutes of Health in the United States, were not a “breakthrough.”
“It is still in the very early days post-implantation, and there is a lot of learning on both the Neuralink side and the subject’s side to maximize the amount of information for control that can be achieved,” he stated.
Ludwig stated that despite the implant, the patient has benefited by being able to communicate with a computer in a manner that was not possible for them to do before. “It’s certainly a good starting point,” he stated.
Less than a month after the business announced it was allowed to test its brain implants on humans, Reuters revealed last month that U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors discovered issues with record keeping and quality controls for animal studies at Elon Musk’s Neuralink. When questioned then with the FDA inspection, Neuralink remained silent.