Neuralink Shows First Brain-Chip Patient Playing Online Chess Using His Mind 52
Neuralink, the brain-chip startup founded by Elon Musk, showed its first patient using his mind to play online chess. Reuters reports: Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralyzed below the shoulder after a diving accident, played chess on his laptop and moved the cursor using the Neuralink device. The implant seeks to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts. Arbaugh had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month.
"The surgery was super easy," Arbaugh said in the video streamed on Musk's social media platform X, referring to the implant procedure. "I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments. I had basically given up playing that game," Arbaugh said, referring to the game Civilization VI, "you all (Neuralink) gave me the ability to do that again and played for 8 hours straight."
Elaborating on his experience with the new technology, Arbaugh said that it is "not perfect" and they "have run into some issues." "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 it has already changed my life," he added.
"The surgery was super easy," Arbaugh said in the video streamed on Musk's social media platform X, referring to the implant procedure. "I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments. I had basically given up playing that game," Arbaugh said, referring to the game Civilization VI, "you all (Neuralink) gave me the ability to do that again and played for 8 hours straight."
Elaborating on his experience with the new technology, Arbaugh said that it is "not perfect" and they "have run into some issues." "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 it has already changed my life," he added.
Bain chip? (Score:1)
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I thought I read that too...
A bit much for a mouse pointer (Score:2, Informative)
This guy has control over his head and neck. He can look around and talk. If he wasn't able to play a game like Civilization, a lot of people let him down.
Re:A bit much for a mouse pointer (Score:4, Informative)
As it says in the summary, these are very early days. With the monkey that Neuralink trained to play pong with his mind, they first trained him to play using a joystick, while they recorded his brainwaves, and that data was then used to determine the monkey's intentions when the physical joystick was removed from the equation. This guy however was already paralysed when he got his implant, so they can't use the same approach, he can't use a joystick. They don't have any implants fitted to anyone who isn't paralysed either, so they don't even have brainwaves from another human. That might not help anyway, who knows what your motor cortex starts doing once you've been paralysed for a while. So I imagine it will take a lot longer for this guy to get to the point of playing pong smoothly with his mind like the monkey could, but the fact that he's got as far as he has this early says to me that they'll probably get there eventually.
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I wonder what happened to the monkey :(
He'll be starring in a new Netflix series about how he eventually became the top player in the video game they taught him. They're going to call it "King Pong".
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thats not true, they used the same approach. during training the guy "tried to move his hands left and right" per the video
That's a real stretch.... (Score:1)
Somehow, using your brain to play chess sounds less challenging than every other game. Suddenly, Pong and Donkey Kong will require a lot more brain power to win.
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He's only had the implant a few weeks, and he's the first human to have one. I imagine they will be collecting and analysing data for many months before they can fully dial it in. The fact that he can do anything at all with it at this point is hugely impressive.
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Wasn't this already in the COVID 19 vaccines, the neuro-link part? /ducking
Re:This is not groundbreaking (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is not groundbreaking (Score:5, Informative)
Who broke ground before again? (Score:2)
Neuralink was established in 2016. So not quite sure how other start-ups are playing “catch-up” here.
And if others have in fact already done this, where exactly are the “breakthrough” headlines and success stories? One would think Gates and Bezos would have been standing on their own custom-built mountain screaming about those successes, if they actually were something to brag about.
"These breakthroughs get announced time and time again and don't seem to be getting any further along,"
Guess not.
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Dude, companies like Synchron, which already has implants in humans, were founded in 2012: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/1... [cnbc.com].
You don't have google or something to do basic fact checking before spewing stuff?
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A quick Internet search is in order here for you. There have been many examples of implanting electrodes into brains.
That said, if this research focuses on those in need with minimal impact on innocent lab animals, it is commendable. If the end goal is to turn healthy humans into cyborgs, there have been many fictional explorations on how that can go wrong...
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No one else to date has implanted over 1000 electrodes into a (live) human brain, and no one has managed to do it with bio-compatible materials that won't eventually have to be removed or be covered with scar tissue that blocks their utility. Yes, it's incremental progress, not something revolutionary or previously unexplored, but it is a HUGE step forward.
The lab animals which were experimented on were all scheduled for euthanasia, having been used in previous experiments, before Neuralink bought them.
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What are you talking about? There are literally no other people in the world capable of doing this.
Using implants? Sure. But don't let the power of Musk's reality distortion field convince you that playing a game with your brain alone is new. You could do it with a Next Mind headset. I did have a go with a demo at an event and it worked. Then they got bought by Snapchat of all people and now they're not available for sale any more.
If all you can do is play chess, then it's about on the level of the state of
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Actually a simple google shows there are multiple companies that have BCI implant tech. For example: https://www.cnn.com/videos/bus... [cnn.com]
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Neuralink isn't the only BCI company to have implants that let people control computers. One example: https://www.cnn.com/videos/bus... [cnn.com]
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There literally are. For example: https://www.guinnessworldrecor... [guinnessworldrecords.com]
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There are a lot of other companies and systems for brain-computer interfacing, and some of them work better and are less invasive.
Maybe if you had one of those other models you'd have seen that mentioned in the fucking article instead of jumping to defend your Shitty Sheriff spaceman moron.
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It always pays to be super skeptical of "ground breaking" It takes a lot of follow up with independant researchers and peers to make sure everything is above board and reasonable and that there is nothing magical going on to make it look better. Just because Musk's name is on it doesn't make it infallible.
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No he's not the first to have this kind of implant -- see my other comments for links. By the way the record for BCI texting is 78 words per minute.
Different kind of implant. (Score:2)
A lot of things to catch up on with this newly acquired freedom.
Well, that’s a slightly different kind of implant, but Elon is aware of it. ;-)
https://youtube.com/shorts/h4h... [youtube.com]
Chess? Wrong question... (Score:3)
Surely the question (in the tech world) would be: Can he play Doom with it?
Wrong Generation (Score:3)
Surely the question (in the tech world) would be: Can he play Doom with it?
Surely we need to realize not many 29-year olds know what you’re talking about.
When you were playing Doom, they were still in the womb.
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Cyberpunk 2077 or Deus Ex might be more fitting.
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Yep. Nice. How long does the implant work? (Score:3)
Because the main show-stopper is that so far all these implants had to be removed after a few months again, making this pretty far removed from practical usefulness.
That little, all-critical detail seems to be very loudly absent from all press-releases and descriptions I have seen.
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The N1 Implant is powered by a small battery charged wirelessly from the outside [neuralink.com]
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It is not a power issue. It is a rejection / inflammation issue and these quickly get lethal with anything in the brain.
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This implant uses a new bio-compatible fiber that in animals shows no sign of rejection or scarring after being in place for over a year.
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Well, that is better than anything we had before. It still in no way implies "permanent". We will see.
So how, exactly... (Score:2)
...do you play chess *without* using your mind?
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I heard this one guy used anal beads...
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Magnus, we investigated that already. Time to move on.
Is it (Score:2)
Other Chess Computers: What's with the poorly-programmed processor?
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Lack of fine detail in the signal. They want the Neuralink implant to eventually be an actual Brain/Computer Interface, not just a tool to move a cursor around, and actual contact with the neurons seems to be necessary for that level of control.
Without using their mind (Score:2)
Neuralink should connect to the wiki for Notch (Score:1)
He might want to find a new shirt if he wants advertising $s from Firaxis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]