On 28 January 2024, Neuralink, the brain-computer-interface company co-founded by Elon Musk, surgically implanted its device in a human being for the first time. The operation was performed at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, as part of a clinical trial the company calls the PRIME Study. Musk announced the implant the following day and reported the patient was recovering.
The recipient was Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old man who had been paralyzed below the shoulders by a diving accident. Neuralink’s implant, which it markets under the name Telepathy, is a coin-sized device placed in the skull whose fine electrode threads read activity from the motor cortex and transmit it wirelessly. In March 2024 the company showed Arbaugh using the implant to move a computer cursor, play online chess, and control a laptop by intention alone.
Neuralink was not first to let a paralyzed person control a computer from brain signals - academic groups such as BrainGate had demonstrated implanted cortical interfaces for two decades. What was new was the packaging: a fully wireless, cosmetically invisible device implanted by a purpose-built surgical robot, aimed at moving brain-computer interfaces from the lab toward a consumer-style product.
The link to AI is direct. Turning raw cortical spikes into smooth cursor movement or selected letters is a decoding problem solved with machine-learning models, the same statistical pattern-recognition that underlies the rest of the field. The interface reads the brain; learned models translate it into intent.