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Neuralink’s first brain implant patient says playing chess with his mind is like ‘using the Force’
Neuralink Corp. streamed a live video today of its first brain implant patient, showing the impressive results of the operation earlier this year.
In January, Neuralink founder Elon Musk announced that the company had, for the first time, realized its goal of implanting a brain-computer interface, or BCI, in a patient after years of toil and a little bit of controversy. Musk didn’t name the patient at the time but wrote on X that the technology “enables control of your phone or computer and through them almost any device, just by thinking.”
Now we know exactly what he meant. The patient is 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, an American man who was paralyzed from the neck down after what he has said was a “freak diving accident” eight years ago. In the video, he can be seen playing chess with his mind; what he says is like having “telepathic abilities.”
— Neuralink (@neuralink) March 20, 2024
“I wasn’t able to really do much for the last few years,” explained Arbaugh, who said his only way of really getting things done was with a mouth stick. He added, “Y’all see the cursor moving around the screen? That’s me. It’s pretty cool, huh?”
BCI systems decipher brain signals, which then translate into commands that can be attached to external technologies. Arbaugh said it took some time to get used to it. He had to practice focusing his mind on what he wanted to happen on the screen, which he compared to “using the force” and said was a “wild experience.” He said he stayed awake until 6 a.m. playing the game “Civilization” with his mind, with the only “impediment” being that he had to “wait for the implant to charge” once the battery had run down.
As groundbreaking as it sounds, other companies have created BCI systems, with Utah-based Peter Thiel-backed Blackrock Neurotech and the Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos-backed Synchron already having developed technology similar – but not the same – as Neuralink’s BCI. The impressive thing about Neuralink is it got there in much less time, despite Musk earlier saying testing on actual humans would be an “agonizingly slow” process.
Image: Milad Fakurian/Unsplash
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