Elon Musk’s startup company Neuralink showed in a live video how the first person with an implanted brain chip plays chess on a computer, controlling the pieces with his mind.
KEY FACTS
- The video is 9 minutes long.
- It shows 29-year-old Noland Arbo, paralyzed from the shoulders down after a diving accident, playing chess on his laptop and moving a cursor using the Neuralink chip in his brain.
- Arbo received the implant in January .
- However, the new technology is still not perfect. Arbo says he ran into some problems. Meanwhile, Kip Ludwig, former program director of neural engineering at the US National Institutes of Health, said that what Neuralink showed was not a «breakthrough» and the patient was still in a very early stage.
- However, the current development is a «good starting point», he argued.
- Later, Musk himself commented under the X video that «it is possible in the long term to transfer the signals from the motor cortex of the brain along the damaged part of the spine, so that people can walk again and use their arms normally».
IMPORTANT QUOTE
«The operation was extremely easy. I was literally discharged from the hospital a day later. I don’t have any cognitive disabilities,» Arbo said in a video posted on Musk’s X social media platform.
KEY STORY
Neuralink’s device, which is about the size of a pound coin, is inserted into the skull with microscopic wires that can read the activity of neurons and send a wireless signal to a receiving device.
In May 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Neuralink permission to test the chip on humans.
BIG NUMBER
As of June 2023, Neuralink was reportedly valued at around $5 billion, but since it is a private company, much of its financial information is kept secret. It’s also not entirely clear how much a Neuralink chip would cost, as the company has yet to announce a price. However, Bloomberg estimates the cost at $10,500 and suggests that insurance companies will end up paying $40,000 for the procedure in the US.
