The first man to get a Neuralink brain chip has explained to Joe Rogan how the tech could change the face of competitive gaming.
Noland Arbaugh, a long-time gamer who suffered injuries during a diving accident, that paralysed him from the shoulders down, became the first person to use Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip back in January.
Months later a video went viral, in which Arbaugh admitted to staying up all night playing Civilisation 6 when he finally had full control of the brain chip.
Arbaugh was the guest on the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he said the chip is like having ‘an aim bot in my head’ and that they’ll have to create leagues just for people like him in the future.
At the moment, the brain chip only works with games where everything can be controlled with the mouse, but apparently that could change soon:
‘The last eight years I’ve watched all of my friends play games that I’ve wanted to play. […] Some of them are still too far out of reach for the Neuralink at this point, but not for much longer.
‘In the next few years I think I’ll be able to play anything anyone else plays.’
Arbaugh is referring to the ‘next gen version’ of Neuralink, that would also allow his other brain hemisphere to interact with a computer, like having a mouse and a keyboard instead of just the mouse.
Rogan and Arbaugh mentioned Halo and Call Of Duty as examples of games he might be able to play in the future but, if the day comes, others should be warned:
‘I basically have an aim bot in my head. They’ll probably have different league for people like me, because it’s just not fair,’ Arbaugh said.
Rogan asked if the brain chip was really that accurate, which Arbaugh confirmed and explained that the chip moving a mouse cursor is much faster than a human brain sending a signal to your hand, which then moves the mouse.
‘I saw that with the Neuralink, where it was moving the cursor before I was actually moving my hand.
‘So with video games, and stuff like that, you just have to think for it to move somewhere and it is that accurate, and it’s quicker than you can even think. No one else is going to be able to keep up with it.’
The two then joked about how Arbaugh could enter tournaments and just not tell anyone he has Neuralink.
That’s probably a good idea as games are already suffering from too many cheaters. But you probably won’t have to worry about there being too many Neuralink players for a while yet.
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