Musk’s Neuralink shows first brain-chip patient playing online chess

Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup Neuralink livestreamed on Wednesday its first patient implanted with a chip playing online chess.
Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralyzed below the shoulder after a diving accident, was playing chess on his laptop and moving the cursor using the Neuralink device.
Musk said last month, he had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts.
Arbaugh said in the video streamed on Musk’s social media platform X, “The surgery was super easy,” referring to the implant procedure. “I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments.
Arbaugh said, “I had basically given up playing that game,” referring to the game Civilization VI, “you all (Neuralink) gave me the ability to do that again and played for 8 hours straight.”
Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said what Neuralink showed was not a “breakthrough.”