Elon Musk says Neuralink has implanted a brain chip into a second patient, Reuters reports.
The medical technology company owned by Musk, developed to help people with spinal cord injuries, quadriplegia, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), inserted its first implant into a human patient in January 2024. Notably, the implant wasn’t without issues, revealed by Neuralink in May.
On Friday, Musk took time away from picking grown man fights, promoting Donald Trump, and spreading political misinformation on the steaming bin fire that is X (formerly Twitter) to speak on an eight-hour (seriously) podcast with MIT research scientist Lex Fridman about Neuralink, in which he spoke of a second human test.
Neuralink’s first patient can play chess using only his mind
Reuters, who was valiant enough to listen to the whole thing while I was watching House of the Dragon‘s Season 2 finale, notes Musk gave very light details on the reported patient, whom the CEO says has a spinal cord injury similar to Arbaugh’s.
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“I don’t want to jinx it but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant,” Musk said, per the news outlet. “There’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It’s working very well.”
Fridman has previously interviewed Big Tech founders including Mark Zuckerberg, who was interviewed in the Metaverse. Nolan Arbaugh, Neuralink’s first test patient, was also interviewed on the podcast, along with the company’s COO and president DJ Seo, head neurosurgeon Matthew MacDougall, and brain interface software lead Bliss Chapman.
Thankfully, Fridman posted the topics and timestamps on X, if you want to skip the Ayahuasca chats.
If you want to watch the whole thing, it’s on Fridman’s YouTube Channel.