Watch the First Neuralink Patient Use a Brain Implant To Play Chess
The first-ever human user of Elon Musk’s Neuralink compared it to using “The Force” from ‘Star Wars.’
Footage of the first-ever human Neuralink user has emerged. Elon Musk‘s brain-computer interface company went live on X, showing footage of 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh using Neuralink’s brain implant to play a game of chess.
Arbaugh, who was paralyzed in a freak diving accident eight years ago, is seen controlling the cursor to move the pieces around the board. He’s also seen controlling the music playing from his laptop as well. “It’s all brain power,” Arbaugh laughs. He is joined by a Neuralink engineer named Bliss, who asks him to better explain how exactly he’s moving the cursor.
“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 attempted movements,” Arbaugh notes.
“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.”
Bliss asks Arbaugh what else he’s used Neuralink for – to which Arbaugh replies: “One of the first times y’all gave me complete control over this, I actually stayed up until like 6 a.m. playing Civilization 6.” In addition to playing the game for eight straight hours, he’s also currently reading and learning some new languages via Neuralink.
“It’s not perfect,” Arbaugh closes out. “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.”
Musk shared the video on X as well, calling it “telepathy.”
Watch the full video below.
— Neuralink (@neuralink) March 20, 2024
