I’m Neuralink’s patient zero – why I chose to get Elon Musk’s brain chip even though it could be hacked

A trip to a Pennsylvania lake ended in tragedy for a man who was left paralyzed after running into the water to swim.

Noland Arbaugh, 29, remembers being hit on the side of the head by someone else. He couldn’t move his body from his shoulders to the ground when he woke up facedown in the lake.

The 2016 accident made him Neuralink’s patient zero this year, with a brain implant that allowed him to control computers and other devices.

‘I was a little afraid it wouldn’t work because [that could happen] “I was the first to do something, but I wanted to be the first to test it all,” he said in an interview on The Kim Komando Show.

‘If someone had to go through it and experience the disadvantages of it, I wanted to take on as much of it as possible to help the people after me.’

While Elon Musk’s company has enabled Arbaugh to communicate with the world, the technology is not without risks. Cybercriminals could hack the device and take over his computer.

It is possible [the brain chip could be hacked]’, Arbaugh said. ‘You wouldn’t get much out of it. You could read my neurons firing.’

He further explained that if someone were to hack the brain implant, they would be able to take over the computer.

‘When I am connected to [a computer] and you’re close enough, you could hack [the chip]’, Arbaugh explained.

Connect

First point of interest: Why did Arbaugh decide to sign up for a Neuralink implant in the first place?

It all started with a tragic accident shortly after his senior year of college in 2016.

While working at Island Lake Camp in Starrucca, Pennsylvania, Arbaugh went swimming in a man-made lake.

As he ran into the water, he was accidentally hit on the side of the head by another person.

He woke up face down in the water and knew immediately that something was seriously wrong.

“I tried to move, but I knew I couldn’t,” Arbaugh said. “I held my breath and thought, ‘What am I going to do now?'”

‘And that’s kind of how I’ve been the whole time with my accident. Just… How do I move on? What can I do to make my life better?’

He suffered a serious spinal cord injury, resulting in quadriplegia, paralysis from the shoulders to the knees.

That eventually led him to apply for the Neuralink program. A college friend worked in the spinal cord field and was following Elon Musk. After Googling Neuralink’s human trials, he rushed to tell Arbaugh.

“He texted me and said, ‘Hey, do you want a chip in your brain?’ And I joked, I might as well do that.”

The photo shows Arbaugh before the 2016 accident that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down.

However, Arbaugh was told that one of the risks was that the chip could be hacked, allowing cybercriminals to take over his devices. Neuralink’s Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) allows direct communication between the brain and external devices, such as a computer or smartphone

Arbaugh had signed up for three or four trials the year before and had gotten no response from any of them. When he signed up for Neuralink, he expected the same thing.

“So I made a joke on my application. I told him I wanted an Ironman suit,” Arbaugh said.

To his surprise, he heard back within a day or two. He had brain scans and a full body test within a month, and surgery a few months after that.

The Neuralink Experience

Arbaugh’s surgery was fairly quick. He was originally told it would take between three and six hours.

Everything went perfectly and the doctors completed the surgery in less than two hours.

The procedure is minimally invasive and the implant is placed by a specially designed robot.

Neuralink’s Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) enables direct communication between the brain and external devices, such as a computer or smartphone.

Everything happens wirelessly, so in practice the chip allows Arbaugh to control devices with his thoughts

It works through a small chip, called the ‘Link’, which is implanted in the brain.

The chip is connected to over 1,024 electrodes, each thinner than a human hair.

In Arbaugh’s case, the electrodes are placed in his motor cortex on the left side of his brain.

The wires and electrodes are placed near neurons, and when they fire, it registers whatever intentions Arbaugh has.

Suppose he tries to move his hand, the neurons activate the signals and they are picked up by the electrodes.

The signals are then sent to an application that Neuralink has created and uploaded to a computer.

Everything happens wirelessly, so in practice the chip allows Arbaugh to control devices with his thoughts.

“It’s almost like calibrating a cursor on a computer screen. It tells you to move the cursor to the right, so you push to the right,” he said.

“It tells you to go left, you push left. I do that with the Neuralink, and over time it learns what I want to do.”

Life is already better

Arbaugh has had the device for a little over five months now, and it’s getting better every day. One of the biggest benefits, he said, is how quickly he can text.

The procedure is minimally invasive and the implant is placed by a specially designed robot

With Siri, it used to take forever to get even one answer right. “Now I can send a text message in seconds. It’s super easy,” Arbaugh explained.

Arbaugh has a virtual keyboard that he controls with his cursor and a dictation aid made especially for him by Neuralink.

Nolan uses the same cursor technology to play chess and Mario Kart. Awesome.

What the future holds

At this time, Neuralink cannot yet help Arbaugh move his hands and legs, but he believes it will happen.

The goal, he said, is to implant one Neuralink in the brain and another below the lesion in the spinal cord.

“Then the two Neuralinks would simply communicate with each other and bypass that part of the spinal cord, allowing you to move again,” Arbaugh said.

Arbaugh took a huge risk and he hopes it can help other people in situations like the one he found himself in years ago.

“I imagine a world where someone has a spinal cord injury, goes to the hospital, has surgery, and a day or two later they’re out of there — no muscle atrophy, no negative side effects at all,” he explained.

“I think it’s absolutely doable. And even if I can never walk again, it’s absolutely worth it to me.”

Neuralink hasn’t disclosed how much it paid for the development, research and testing of the technology, but Musk has said that the long-term goal is to bring the final cost of the procedure down to a few thousand dollars.

In Arbaugh’s case, the chip allows him to regain the range of motion he lost after a spinal injury.

In other cases, Neuralink’s BCI can help someone regain the ability to communicate or aid in the treatment of conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

Arbaugh knows that many people have ethical concerns about technologies like Neuralink.

His focus? Helping others.

“It’s changed my life so much. It’s made me more independent. It’s helped me feel like I have a purpose and that I can accomplish so much more than I could before,” Arbaugh said.