Neuralink's first patient can play chess using only his mind

The first human patient with Neuralink's brain chip implant can play chess using his mind alone.

The company shared a video of 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh sharing his experience with the chip. In the nine-minute video, Arbaugh – paralyzed below the shoulders after a diving accident – said he can now complete tasks that were near-impossible before, such as playing video games.

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Arbaugh also said the chip implantation surgery was "super easy," with "no cognitive impairments."

"I literally was released from the hospital a day later," he said.

As for the benefits he got from implanting the Neuralink chip, these include enabling Arbaugh to move the mouse cursor with his brain. In the video, we see Arbaugh moving the cursor around on a laptop during a game of chess.

"One of the first times you gave me complete control over this, I actually stayed up until (...) 6 a.m. playing Civilization VI...it was worth it. It was awesome. I basically had given up playing that game (...) and y'all gave me the ability to do that again," said Arbaugh.

Neuralink founder Elon Musk commented below the video that "long-term, it is possible to shunt the signals from the brain motor cortex past the damaged part of the spine to enable people to walk again and use their arms normally."

It's not all great, though. Arbaugh said that he has run into "some issues" and that the chip is "not perfect," without going into too many details. "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 this has changed my life."

Neuralink announced it implanted its brain chip into a human for the first time in January, after getting the green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May 2023. The company first tested the chip on monkeys, some of whom reportedly had to be euthanized after the trials (contrary to Musk's claims).