After being paralyzed from the waist down in an accident, Noland Arbaugh had Neuralink implanted. He sees enormous potential – and danger – in shooters.
What is Neuralink? Founded in 2016 by Elon Musk along with other investors, the company developed a device of the same name. This device is used for communication between the human brain and computers. In early 2024, they implanted Neuralink for the first time in a human, the American Noland Arbaugh (via Tagesschau).
Arbaugh has been paralyzed from the shoulders down since a swimming accident in 2016. He suffers from quadriplegia and cannot use either his arms or legs. This makes him exactly the person whom Neuralink was looking for at the end of 2023 to test its chip, which is connected to the brain via 1,024 tiny electrodes – with success.
A passionate gamer on Joe Rogan
Since childhood, Noland Arbaugh has been an enthusiastic player of video games, as he recounts in the Joe Rogan podcast. After his accident, that became almost impossible. Although there were aids available before Neuralink, he couldn’t enjoy even calm games like Civilization 6.
What has changed? Since the surgery and implantation of Neuralink, he can play games on the PC again – at least some of them. He reports about a night spent playing Civilization straight through. When they start talking about Halo, it gets truly exciting.
Is he already able to play shooters like Destiny 2, Halo, or CoD? No, he hasn’t been able to try these games yet. But in the coming years, that will be possible – he is confident. Once that happens, he sees significant changes coming to eSports. The precision combined with speed that he achieves through Neuralink on the PC is incredible.
I have an aimbot in my head
Often, he feels like things happen on the computer before he actually wants them to. The thought just has to shoot through his mind, and the system executes commands.
What does he suspect for eSports? Noland Arbaugh believes that separate leagues will be needed, as no person can match the potential performance he can achieve using Neuralink with hands on a mouse and keyboard, let alone a controller.
In another article of ours, it’s about real high-tech cheating. However, the plan of this candidate turned out to be very disadvantageous for him in the long run: Because what a candidate attempted for a university career during a state exam in Turkey will likely follow him for life: His attempt to cheat with a camera, phone, and AI failed, but the police were quite impressed.
