In what could be a breakthrough for disabled people, a quadriplegic man was able to livestream himself playing digital chess on Wednesday - using only his mind to control the computer.
In January, Noland Arbaugh became the first human to have Elon Musk's Neuralink chip implanted into his brain - allowing him to move a computer cursor using his thoughts.
"Basically, it was like using 'the Force' on the cursor, and I could get it to move wherever I wanted," said Arbaugh, according to Al Jazeera. "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 that the chip implantation was relatively straightforward and that he left the hospital within 24 hours of the surgery, with no cognitive impairments.
The 29-year-old, who was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a diving accident, said that he had given up on playing his favorite video game, Civilization VI, ever again.
"[Neuralink] gave me the ability to do that again and [I] played for 8 hours straight," he said, according to Reuters.
Arbaugh cautioned that the chip implantation would not be the "end of the journey," a warning that was echoed by experts in the field. Neuralink is also not the first brain chip implant - the Australian company Synchron performed a similar but less invasive procedure in 2022.
There's still a lot of work to be done, but it has already changed my life," Arbaugh said, according to Al Jazeera.
Neural engineering expert Kip Ludwig said that while the chip implantation was positive, it was not a "breakthrough."
"It is still in the very early days post-implantation, and there is a lot of learning on both the Neuralink side and the subject's side to maximize the amount of information for control that can be achieved," he told Reuters. "It's certainly a good starting point."
