Although Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has weathered its fair share of criticism, his other ventures seem to bask in the spotlight of positive acclaim as evidenced by the recent strides made by his brain-computer interface company, Neuralink. This week, the controversial business mogul took to X (formerly Twitter) to share real-life footage of a patient who’s willingly agreed to have the chip implanted into his brain while presenting all of its latest progress.
In a live stream, followers of the South African entrepreneur were introduced to 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, whose life took a bleak turn eight-years-ago following a debilitating diving accident that left him disabled, as he effortlessly makes use of the Neuralink device to play chess with all the ease in the world.
— Neuralink (@neuralink) March 20, 2024
The sequence, which was subsequently posted as a video online afterward, shows the young man maneuvering pieces across the board with the sole help of his mind. In a display of unparalleled dexterity — that our parents would quickly label as some sort of black magic — Arbaugh also manages to complete other tasks from afar such as pausing the music playing from his desktop; something that was impossible for him to do merely months ago.
Reflecting on his journey, Arbaugh remarks that he wasn’t able to do much these last few years. “I have used mouth sticks and stuff, but now it’s all being done from my brain,” he said. Paralyzed and devoid of sensation from the shoulders down, Arbaugh is accompanied by a Neuralink engineer named Bliss, who asks him to share his experience with the implant so far.
“We started out trying out a few different things. We basically differentiated between ‘imagined’ movements and ‘attempted’ movements. So a lot of what we’d started out with was attempting to move,” Arbaugh claimed. “I’d attempt to move my left hand in different directions and from there it just became intuitive for me to start imagining the cursor moving. It was basically like using ‘The Force’ on the cursor. I could get it to move wherever I want. I’d just stare anywhere on the screen and it’d move wherever I wanted it to, which was such a wild experience. It’s so cool, I’m so freaking lucky to be a part of this,” he enthusiastically shared.
Now able to geek, read, and even learn new languages, it seems as if the future is already here though some issues are still in the way before Musk can consider rolling his latest invention out to the public in all safety. “It’s not perfect,” we hear Arbaugh say. “We have run into some issues. I don’t want people to think this is the end of the journey. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but this has already changed my life.”
