Musk’s Neuralink brain chip allows paralysed patient to play chess

Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink has demonstrated the power of its brain-chip implant by livestreaming its first patient using only his mind to play online chess.

Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old patient who was paralysed below the shoulder after a diving accident, played chess on his laptop and moved the cursor with his brain using the Neuralink device implanted in January. The implant seeks to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts.

“The surgery was super easy,” Arbaugh said in the video streamed on Musk’s social media platform X, referring to the implant procedure. “I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments.

“I had basically given up playing that game,” Arbaugh said, referring to the game Civilisation VI, “you all [Neuralink] gave me the ability to do that again and played for 8 hours straight.”

Elaborating on his experience with the new technology, Arbaugh said it was “not perfect” and they “have run into some issues”.

“I don’t want people to think that this is the end of the journey, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but it has already changed my life,” he added.

Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the US National Institutes of Health, said what Neuralink showed was not a breakthrough.