Thursday, March 21, 2024 – The first human to have Elon Musk's Neuralink computer chip surgically implanted in his brain demonstrated how he uses his thoughts to move a computer cursor around a screen to play online chess and toggle on and off a music stream.
Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old man who is paralyzed from the
shoulders down due to a diving accident eight years ago, joined a live stream
alongside a Neuralink engineer on X to show the public how the brain-computer
interface tech works.
“It’s all being done with my
brain. If y’all can see the cursor moving around the screen, that’s all me,
y’all,” he said while the live stream showed his cursor moving across an online
chess game. “It’s pretty cool, huh?”
The chip contains 1,000 electrodes programmed to gather data
about the brain’s neural activity and movement intention and then send that
data to a Neuralink computer for decoding to transform the thoughts into
action.
The brief 9-minute video stream posted on Neuralink’s X account is the closest look the human tech startup formed by Elon Musk has shared with the public. The company, founded in 2016, has mostly kept information about its technology and human trials under wraps prompting calls for greater transparency.
Arbaugh explained that he simply imagines the cursor moving
where he wants it to go and it does.
“Basically, it was like using
the Force on the cursor and I could get it to move wherever I wanted. Just
stare somewhere on the screen and it would move where I wanted it to, which was
such a wild experience the first time it happened,” he said, referencing “Star
Wars.”
The quadriplegic became the first human test subject of the
chip developed by the Elon Musk-owned company when a robot surgeon plugged the
implant into his brain at the end of January.
He said the surgery was “super easy” and he was released
from the hospital a day later with no cognitive impairments since.
“It’s crazy, it really is.
It’s so cool. I’m so friggen lucky to be a part of this,” he said. “Every day
it seems like we’re learning new stuff and I just can’t describe how cool it is
to be able to do this.”
Before receiving the chip, Arbaugh would need another
person’s help to play online chess and video games like “Civilization VI.”
“Now I can literally just lie
in bed and play to my heart’s content,” he said at least until the battery of
his rechargeable chip dies.
The US Food and Drug Administration permitted human trials of the brain chip last year after the company did hundreds of tests on animals and faced backlash from animal rights groups in the process.
Neuralink has not disclosed how many people will be enrolled
in the six-year trial or where the trials will be held. It also has not
registered its study on a government website logging medical trials involving
human test subjects, according to Wired.
Arbaugh said he signed on to try the implant because he
“wanted to be a part of something that I feel like it’s going to change the
world.”
But he admitted being the first-ever human to get the chip
implanted in his brain has not come without its challenges, without
elaborating.
“It’s not perfect. I would
say that we have run into some issues,” he told those watching the live stream.
“I don’t want people to think that this is the end of the journey. There’s a
lot of work to be done. But it has already changed my life.”
Watch the video via this link>>>
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