Musk’s startup Neuralink streams paralysed man playing online chess
Al Jazeera
Video introduces 29-year-old quadriplegic as first patient to use start-up’s brain-chip technology.
Elon Musk’s brain-chip start-up, Neuralink, has livestreamed a patient appearing to play online chess using only his mind.
In a video posted on the X social media platform on Wednesday, Neuralink introduced Noland Arbaugh, 29, as the first human patient to be implanted with its brain-computer interface technology.
Arbaugh, who described becoming paralysed from the shoulders down in a diving accident, said that using Neuralink had become “intuitive” after practising imagining moving the cursor on the screen.
“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,” Arbaugh said, referring to the superpowers possessed by the Jedi in the Star Wars films.
“It’s crazy, it really is.”
