The first patient of Neuralink has been able to move a computer mouse with their thoughts, says Elon Musk

Elon Musk stated during an X Spaces event on Monday that the first person to get a Neuralink brain chip implanted may operate a computer mouse with their thoughts. Musk claims that the unidentified patient, who had a Neuralink chip placed in their brain a few weeks ago, has totally recovered.

In an interview on X on Monday night, Musk stated, “Progress is good, patient seems to have made a full recovery… and is able to control the mouse, move the mouse around the screen just by thinking.”

According to Musk, Neuralink is collaborating with the patient to obtain as many “button presses” as possible by pure thought. These include the patient using their brain alone to move a mouse, click, and drag a cursor. These claims should be treated with a grain of salt because there is no supporting data beyond what Musk is revealing in snippets on X. If accurate, though, Neuralink’s innovations would represent a significant technological advance.

Musk tweeted on X towards the end of January to announce that the first human patient had received a Nueralink implant. During the experimental procedure, a microchip is implanted into the patient’s skull. Musk didn’t say much more about who the original patient was.

According to Musk, Neuralink’s first product is named “Telepathy,” and it’s intended primarily for those who have lost the use of their limbs. It seems that Musk’s description of the cursor movement is the first advancement in Neuralink’s telepathy.

Musk tweeted, “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer.” “That’s the objective.”

The Hastings Center criticized Musk last week for his brief “two-sentence report” on a human test subject. Experts observed that cutting-edge human research should not to take place in secret and proposed that Neuralink has not complied with fundamental ethical norms.

The Center stated that implanting a device into the brain of a living person-especially one who has significant medical issues-deserves more consideration than a brief analysis of what is essentially a private social media site that lacks credibility.

The Hastings Center pointed out that Neuralink has neither disclosed to the public its backup strategies in the event of an error, nor the results of its animal experimentation that served as justification for the experiment in the first place.

We still don’t know a lot about this human experiment, despite its originality from Musk and Neuralink. The business still only releases pieces of material via Musk’s X account, which is quite unusual for the scientific world but typical of Musk.