Elon Musk announced in January that his Neuralink company had implanted its brain chip in a human for the first time.
Arbaugh said he was surprised how fast Neuralink moved, saying it took about five months from when he applied to when he got the surgery.
“Brain surgery was easy,” he quipped. “I was expecting a much longer recovery time, and they kicked me out of the hospital like a day later.”
Arbaugh also said he played a joke on his mom. When she walked in after the surgery, he pretended not to know her for a couple seconds. “She was not happy,” he said.
The presentation showed video clips of Arbaugh from the month after his surgery. One clip, for example, showed him and his dad playing “Mario Kart.”
A Neuralink employee said during the video that he had been spending long days at Arbaugh’s home working with him.
Moving a computer cursor isn’t a major technical leap for brain-computer interfaces. An older brain chip first implanted in a human in 2004 also helped a paralyzed person move a cursor with only their thoughts. But the older chip must be attached to a device on the outside of the brain to transmit data, requiring wires protruding through the skin. Neuralink’s device transmits data wirelessly.