Neuralink brain-chip patient plays chess

A 29-year-old paralysed man has used a brain-chip made by Elon Musk’s startup, Neuralink, to play online chess. In a video streamed from the company’s X account (also controlled by Musk), Noland Arbaugh, who was paralysed from below the shoulders in a diving accident eight years ago, seemed to use the implant – inserted in January – to move a cursor on screen and play chess on a laptop. In October 2023 Neuralink started recruiting people with quadriplegia or ALS to have a wireless implant inserted into their brains by a surgical robot for human trials. Last month, Reuters reported that US Food and Drug Administration inspectors had found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments, less than a month before Neuralink was cleared to test implants in humans. Arbaugh said the technology was “not perfect” but had changed his life.