Attendees at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech convention final week witnessed an illustration of each technological innovation and human resilience when Noland Arbaugh, the primary human recipient of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface (BCI) chip, performed chess utilizing solely his ideas. Arbaugh additionally shared candid insights into his pioneering journey, together with his memorable first encounter with Neuralink’s cofounder and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
Arbaugh’s journey started with a diving accident at a summer season camp in 2016, which left the previous Texas A&M scholar paralyzed from the shoulders down and largely depending on his household. For years, Arbaugh lived what he describes as a severely restricted existence.
“I would stay up all hours of [the] night, just sleep in whenever, wake up whenever I wanted to because I didn’t really have anything planned, didn’t have anything going on in my life,” he instructed Fortune senior author Jessica Mathews throughout their dialog. Arbaugh mentioned he left his home solely a few instances per yr.
“Before Neuralink, I thought I would never travel again,” he mentioned. “[I] thought I would just stay in my room.”
Then got here an sudden telephone name that might change his life. A pal requested if he could be considering getting a chip implanted in his mind. Arbaugh mentioned he remembered his response that day: “I said, ‘Got nothing better to do.’”
Changing into the primary affected person—and assembly Elon Musk
Neuralink, cofounded by Elon Musk in 2016, had spent years growing and testing its expertise on animals earlier than receiving FDA approval for human trials in Could 2023. Arbaugh’s surgical process befell on January 28, 2024, on the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, about 2.5 hours from his dwelling in Yuma. The 2-hour surgical procedure concerned implanting a coin-sized chip beneath his cranium, linked to over 1,000 electrodes that may learn neural exercise and translate it into digital instructions.
Arbaugh mentioned he was launched from the hospital simply 24 hours after surgical procedure with a prescription for ache remedy, however insisted he by no means even wanted to take Tylenol: “It it didn’t hurt at all.”
“I like to joke and tell people that if I lost my memory and tomorrow you told me I had a chip in my brain, I wouldn’t believe you,” he mentioned. “I can’t feel it. Don’t even know it’s there.”
Throughout his dialog with Mathews, Arbaugh revealed a very memorable element: He met Elon Musk on the day of his surgical procedure, by way of FaceTime. Nonetheless considerably below the affect of anesthesia, Arbaugh’s main reminiscence from that first encounter was complimenting Musk’s bomber jacket. “I was like, his bomber jacket was so cool,” he recalled.
Arbaugh met Musk once more about six months later at Tesla’s Austin gigafactory, the place that they had what the 31-year-old implant affected person described as a extra substantive dialog. “He’s a cool dude,” Arbaugh mentioned, noting their dialog wasn’t restricted to Neuralink enterprise: He and Musk “just had some fun” and mentioned SpaceX and even a “bit of, like, alien talk.”
Arbaugh v. Cramling
After his Q&A with matthews, the Brainstorm Tech crowd acquired to witness firsthand what Arbaugh can accomplish together with his neural implant. Throughout a reside demonstration, he performed chess in opposition to internationally acknowledged chess grasp Anna Cramling, controlling the pc cursor solely by thought. The sport, streamed reside on Chess.com, confirmed Arbaugh transferring items and executing complicated methods utilizing solely his thoughts.
“I am just thinking about where I want the cursor to go,” Arbaugh defined to the viewers. “It is pretty simple. Not very difficult. I think people are going to be surprised at how intuitive the cursor control is.”
Arbaugh mentioned the expertise has fully remodeled his outlook for the higher. He says he has returned to high school to pursue a level in neuroscience, began his personal enterprise, and begun touring extensively—together with journeys to Paris and a number of U.S. cities. He now describes himself as “so busy all the time,” a stark distinction to his pre-Neuralink life.
As Arbaugh continues his function as an unofficial ambassador for brain-computer interface expertise. “My whole reason for doing it was just to help people from the beginning,” he instructed Mathews. “I knew that if it worked, if it didn’t, whatever the case may be, I would be helping someone, and [Neuralink] would have learned something.”
Watch Arbaugh’s total dialog Fortune Brainstorm Tech beneath.
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