Neuralink's First Patient Controls Computers With His Mind — With Noland Arbaugh

0:00Noland Arbaugh is a 30 year old quadriplegic who can control a computer with nothing but his mind. Earlier this year, Arba allowed Elon Musk's Neuralink to drill a hole into his skull, insert more than 1 ,000 electrodes into his motor cortex, and translate his brain signals into cursor movement and clicks. I traveled to Arba's home in Yuma, Arizona to discuss his selection, the surgery, the miracle of being able to operate a computer after being confined to a chair, and whether he'd like to merge with AI someday. That's coming up on a special edition of Big Technology Podcast right after this.

0:43You're used to hearing my voice on the world bringing you interviews from around the globe. And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Buehler. And I'm Marco Werman. We're now with you hosting The World Together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound. Listen to The World on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts.

1:10Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Today, we come to you from the home of Noland Arbaugh, Neuralink's first patient, for a conversation about the technology that's allowed him to experience the digital world without restriction for the first time since being paralyzed eight years ago. Here's my conversation with Noland Arbaugh. Noland, welcome to the show. Thanks man, thanks for having me. So you're the first Neuralink patient. Just to introduce what that means, you have a device on the back of your head that has about 60 threads that have been implanted into your brain and you can control computers with your mind via the signals coming through that device.

1:57Is that the gist of it? Yeah, so the implant is on the top of my head in the implant in the motor cortex on the left side of my brain. So it's kind of like right on top, just off center to the left. There are 64 threads with 16 electrodes on each thread, totaling 1 ,024 electrodes in all. And they are implanted in the part of my motor cortex specifically correlated to right hand movement. And with those electrodes, they pick up neuron spikes, neuron signals. And through an app on a computer right now called the link app it translates to um cursor control yeah so that mouse moving around your computer yeah it's not about it's not the eyes it's not fingers it's legitimately you think it in one place and it goes yes amazing it's it's pretty cool for our audience we're going to get into that in a bit but i first want to get a chance for everybody to learn about you and to know you sure so let's just talk about the way that you ended up in this position your injury?

2:59Yeah. So when I was 22 years old, it was right after my senior year at Texas A &M. I was working at a summer camp in the Pocono Mountains called Island Lake Camp. It was our first day off and a group of us went to a man-made lake in Binghamton, New York. I think the lake is called Binghamton Lake. There is a beach that was built that goes into the water. For all of you who are wondering, it's a sectioned off, like cordoned off part of the water that's been there for probably decades. So there's nothing in the water. People always say like, oh, maybe there was a piece of a dock in the water in the lake, or there was something floating around.

3:34It's not the case. I didn't dive in and hit my head on the bottom of the lake or anything. I just ran into the water with a couple of guys. We all ran in together. We saw some girls in the water that were our friends who weren't really getting themselves wet. They had like glasses on and their hair was dry so we thought it would be hilarious to run in and pick them up and dunk them in the water. Three of us ran in together and I got hit in the side of the head at some point as we were getting into the water and right on the left side of my head it dislocated my C4C5, popped out of place and back into place.

4:13Two vertebrae. Yes, almost instantaneously and And I woke up face down in the water. And then what happened? Yeah, so I woke up and I realized I couldn't move. I tried to move and nothing happened. So immediately I realized, okay, well, I'm paralyzed. Held my breath, hoping that maybe someone would notice and come, like, pick me up, come flip me over, come rescue me in a way. And no one did. So I held my breath as long as I could. Maybe 15 seconds. It felt like forever. It might have been like 10, 15 seconds and I couldn't hold my breath any longer. So I decided I might as well take a big drink and whatever happens, happens.

4:55And then for the next hour, I was sort of in and out. In and out of? Consciousness. Really? Yes. I saw some things. Most of it was me just unconscious. Woke up when they pulled me out of the water on the beach. Woke up again when an ambulance came and I was talking to a paramedic. woke up again when they were transferring me to a helicopter and then woke up again in the hospital right before they took me into surgery with a girl I had brought from Texas A &M standing over me just bawling and I was trying to comfort her I was saying look everything's gonna be fine look I'm all right things like that I cracked some jokes I don't remember what I said trying to get her to laugh and stuff and I had a nurse standing next to me kind of telling me what was going on what they were about to do and she had called my mom and i was like don't tell my mom like it'll just stress her out let me go through surgery and then you guys can tell her what happened and that was it and then you woke up yeah i was kind of um out of it for a while they had me on like fentanyl three different ways and like some ativan and stuff i like to tell people it was awesome i never felt better uh i saw some crazy stuff um woke up uh just like randomly and just hallucinated crazy things in my room so that was a lot of fun i felt great um but then you know the next couple weeks were uh pretty rough lots of pain lots of nerve pain um just getting used to not being able to move it was uh it was not fun so what can you feel and what can't you i since i'm a c4 c5 anything below my shoulders maybe like a couple inches below my shoulders I can't feel or move.

6:36So no sensation, no movement. I did gain back a little bit of movement in like my arm, my hand, just like a tiny bit just to do that, something like that, move like left and right. It's not much, but that's about it. It's a little bit of like bicep flex and that's about it. There's no feeling down there, no movement. Is it dumb or just non-existent? It just doesn't exist. Wow. Yeah. So being paralyzed is weird. Like I can see my body, I can feel myself trying to move and then I just watch nothing happen. So it's odd. It's something you have to get used to. It feels like phantom limbs sometimes where I feel if I close my eyes and start, you know, like trying to move my body, it seems like my body's moving and then I open my eyes and nothing's happening.

7:25Yeah. And I have no sensation. So I have to be very careful about like things that happen to my body or what position I'm in for how long, because I can get pressure sores and things very easily. And I can hurt myself very easily. So it's just a matter of taking care of my body. I think I've managed pretty well with the help of my family. Now you're controlling computers with your mind. So when did Neuralink come into the picture for you? A little over a year ago, my buddy called me up just randomly drunk on a Wednesday at 11 a.m. As one does. As one does. And he was like, hey, you want to get a chip in your brain?

8:06I was like, sure, why not? I got nothing going on. So he kind of - But you legitimately agreed to it on that first call? Yes. 100%. That's amazing. Within a couple of minutes. Your friend is persuasive. Yeah, my buddy - Or you're daring. Yeah, yeah. So my buddy, Greg Bain is like really big into the Elon sphere. He got drunk and was Googling SpaceX one day and the human trials popped up on his computer. And immediately he thought of me. He worked in a spinal cord lab after college. He's a bio major. And, um, I think part of it was because of me and my injury that he worked in that lab. And so he's always thinking about me.

8:44He's always been a huge help to me and my family so he called me up and said you know let's do this and i was like yeah sure like why not he like ran me through what neuralink was and i was like that sounds pretty cool no i love that your friend calls you and says elon musk wants to put a chip in your brain and you said yep yeah i mean why not like like the dude's done so many amazing things my thought had always been he's not going to put this in a human until it's ready i feel like he's very pro-humanity and he's not just gonna be you know shooting from the hip with this stuff and hurting people right um left and right just for progress i never thought he would do that so when i heard that human trials had opened up through my buddy bane i knew that he was ready and i had complete faith in the company um what they were doing and it sounded really cool so he applied um with me over the phone.

9:41It's kind of an interesting juxtaposition because I couldn't apply on my own before. Like it would have probably taken me an hour to apply online if it worked at all. Now I could probably do it in, you know, a few minutes with the Neuralink. It's pretty interesting. So he applied, helped apply with me over the phone. He would like ask questions and I would answer tell them what to put they were like like what do you want from neural link like what do you want to get from this and i was like an iron man suit um just kind of like joking around just yeah like i didn't think i was going to get this i thought that it was like the longest of shots because there was nothing really spectacular about me i feel like i didn't do anything with um my accident like i didn't accomplish anything in seven years it's like there's no way that they would pick someone like me.

10:35So I was kind of joking around on my application, not taking it very seriously. Then you got a phone call. Then I got an email that was like, like a day later, they said, Oh, we're inviting you to apply. They sent me a link with, you know, like 20 different time slots. And my first thought was, you know, I know I'm not very memorable. So the least I can do is select the very first time slot on everything they send me. And at least they will remember me for being the first being the first person to you know be interviewed and stuff and so what was the interview like um the initial one the very very first one was basically just a screening like hey what's your name how old are you like date of birth um are you paralyzed like are you are you actually paralyzed and stuff um just to make sure that i wasn't some like rando i guess just like applying like i'm just a normal guy actually i just really want the neural link um so that was the first interview the next interview started going into things like my medical history um you know like more in depth into my injury and how i lived now where i lived things like that and then it progressively kept becoming more detailed had like calls with surgeons had calls with psychiatrists to make sure i wasn't a crazy person and then eventually like consent forms like, okay, well, if you do the study, this is what you're consenting to and things like that.

12:04And that all culminated with a in-person day of testing at a hospital where they did body scans, brain scans, blood tests, urine tests, a real psych evaluation, a memory evaluation, all sorts of things, eight hours of testing up in Phoenix at Barrow Neurological Institute, which went pretty well. And at this point, is it dawning on you that, oh there's a real chance that i might get brain surgery to implant a digital device in there yeah you know i kept my expectations extremely level through this whole process uh they told me constantly that if anything about my injury about you know my medical history didn't line up with exactly what they were looking for with their criteria then they would say okay thank you but we're going to go in a different direction sort of thing they were always telling me that like every interview like okay this is going to be a two-hour interview if at any point what you say doesn't line up with what we want then we'll say sorry i was like yeah that's fine so i kept my expectations extremely level everyone around me didn't um my buddy bane called every day he's like holy you know like yeah like you made it through another one you got another interview you got another interview it was starting to feel real yeah i i think the day i went up and got all the testing in phoenix was when it all became like very very real to me so they said okay you're in and then gave you some options about when exactly you might be able to do this so after my day of testing it was still another month before they told me i was even selected as one of the participants and then another month after that when they told me I was the first.

13:58Yeah, because here's the thing. Like, I don't know if I'd want to be the early adopter on this. Like, let somebody else get it in their brain, see if it works, maybe get the more improved device. So, I mean, you're the only person the world knows about that's gotten this. There have been more people that have gotten it since you. But you're the first. What made you say, okay, you know, let's make this work? A couple things. It's always cool to be the first at anything. I mean, I think that's, like, pretty obvious. I think anyone given that opportunity would probably do it. And the next was I knew that I would feel absolutely terrible and I would never forgive myself if I passed it up and someone else was hurt or injured or had to go through something terrible because I decided to pass it up.

14:41I knew that I wouldn't ever want to do that. So I decided that if they gave me the opportunity, I would be number one. And I did. So what was surgery like? What did they do to you exactly in surgery? Yeah, that's a great question. Who knows what they did? I was asleep. You're like, all right, full trust in this process. Yeah, they put me under anesthesia. The surgery was supposed to last between three to six hours. It lasted under two. Everything went so perfectly. You can look up stuff about the needles and the cartridge for the R1 robot. Which is the surgical robot that actually took over from the human surgeon.

15:22to insert the electrodes into your brain yep um we call it tiny dancer i like the name but yeah so the surgeon uh made the incision drilled the hole in my skull and then let the surgical robot tiny dancer take over they had taken brain scans um when i had done all of my testing and they had mapped out where each thread was going to go and they said that when they took off the piece of my skull. They were just hoping and praying that everything looked the same, that everything lined up. And they said it was absolutely perfect, that they didn't have to make any adjustments. That tiny dancer went straight to work and they brought like 20 needles to replace the needles because they didn't know if it would be able to survive the whole surgery or if it would like break or anything of that sort.

16:13One needle did it. So it was incredible. They said that like Everything went just about as perfectly as it possibly could have. They closed me up in like an hour and 54 minutes or something. We should talk a little bit about what this device that they implanted in your brain actually is. They take a piece of your skull out, if I've read correctly. The robot puts these 64 threads into your mortal cortex. Each of them has a set of electrodes on it. You have a thousand plus electrodes that are sensors that read the firing neurons in your brain. and then they effectively plug it up with the device and then put the skin back over.

16:50Yes. And I think the amazing thing about this is that everything we do in our body is electric. So the electricity that's running through your brain, which is the signals that your brain is sending to do things, that's picked up by the device. Yes. Each of the 16 electrodes on the 64 threads is placed near neurons in my brain. they tried to get the electrodes near a certain depth in my brain which is where all of the movements occur really so they put the electrodes up and down the thread just to make sure that at least one or a couple of the electrodes were close to the depth that they needed it to be and they were picking up neurons firing in my brain that control motor movement specifically to my right hand.

17:42All those signals are picked up in some way and it's sent back to the app, to the link app, and you can do some pretty cool things with them. So you wake up from surgery and the first thing you do is play a prank on your mother. Yeah, this is everyone's favorite part of the story. I think it's one of my favorite parts. Mia, do you want to come in here for this? All right, we're going to bring in Nolan's mom. Oh, she loves it. She loves being a part of this. Hey everyone. This is my mom, Mia. She's been my mom for 30 years. Hi Alex. Hi everybody. Yeah. She's great. She's the only reason that I've been able to make it this far.

18:21She does everything with me, goes everywhere with me. She's my like full-time caregiver, basically full-time nurse. She's also a little like gullible. and so my my buddy Bain and I he was staying uh with us for like you know a couple weeks before my surgery to help out and we were just joking around like man it would be so funny to do something out of surgery like come out of uh come out of surgery and wake up from anesthesia and like just play a little prank on people um I woke up from surgery and everyone's standing around me and my mom looked at me she was like hey honey like how are you doing i just looked at her and i was like who are you and she freaked out like tears started flowing i didn't freak out what i did was i was kind of a quiet like freaking out because i was i just started like tears welled up in my eyes and i didn't really know what to do my first thought was i first looked at um his stepdad david and i was like and then i wanted to call a doctor like um excuse me someone needs to get in here like he does not know who i am and what's going on what did you guys do that's kind of the reaction and that's what i did and then after i'm looking around looking for help i look at him and his face and he was like i'm just just kidding he smirked like mom i'm just kidding i know right and then i saw him smile and i was like i just had this look and then he goes i'm just kidding i'm like wait you know who i am and he was like yes so no what did neural link do to my son you're like that is my son i saw it took it took like three seconds and i saw like the panic in her eyes yeah i was like i can't i can't let this go on much longer like it was a mean prank to begin with but i could have kept it going for a while and like watched the freak out unfold but i was like oh that's too mean i would have probably done some not very nice things to the actors and it's probably why you didn't yeah it went exactly to the place it should have been and not for there i think so yeah and look i just wanted to bring this story in because i think people should know how amazing this family is and you know it's one story but i think it gives you a sense well it's our competitiveness i'm Yes.

20:39Super competitive. And I think my kids have always through the years wanted to get me somehow. You know, I play right back. So for parents out there, you know, listening. Yeah, it wasn't very nice at the time, but it is really funny because he knew how to just bring calm to me and be like, Mom, I'm OK. Everything's good. This is who I am. Yeah. And, you know, hindsight, I was upset first, but then thinking about it, it was pretty funny. The whole reason is just to show her and everyone around me that I was the same. That nothing had changed. And that's the best way to do it. Thank you, Mia. Thank you for coming in.

21:20Thanks, Mom. I love you. You guys are awesome. So, I woke up out of surgery. But you were the same person because you had a Neuralink implanted. Yeah, I mean... Did anything feel different? No, I've never felt different this whole time. I just feel like the same person, but pulled a little prank on my mom. Thought it was hilarious. Can't believe I remembered it because I was so drugged up on anesthesia. I was like, there's no way I remember to do this, but it worked out perfectly. okay um and after that it was you know elon musk came in into the recovery room into my hospital room um like after i was like recovering a bit i think he came in probably like a couple hours maybe after my surgery and i was still a little groggy and he came in it was like hey good job finally made it here it's good to see you good to meet you things like how do you feel how's it going things of that nature and i don't remember much but what i do remember very vividly is how cool his bomber jacket was.

22:17It was a sweet bomber jacket. But it worked out okay. Got to meet him kind of sort of. And then a little bit later, the Neuralink team came in and they watched it kind of work for the first time. Okay. So when you say they watched it work, talk a little bit about how your brain signal started showing up through the device. Yeah. So the first thing they did was came in and woke the device up. And when they heard like the first ding for the first time of it waking up everyone was so happy like there were just like sighs of relief like exclamations like oh my gosh you know it's amazing sort of thing everyone was just so happy and then they connected it to a tablet to show some brain signals real time and they held the brain signals in front of mine uh in front of me and I was looking at like eight different channels what I mean my channel is eight different electrodes that were picking up neuron signals and I got to see real time my brain signals my neuron spikes if you've seen the Neuralink symbol the Neuralink logo it's a neuron spike basically it's what they look like it's almost like a heartbeat monitor like a heartbeat sensor it's just a little bit different a little bit more erratic and so they showed me like eight different channels and I still remember so vividly like the third box over on the top row because it was four and four um i was immediately you know when i saw the signals i was like can i manipulate this at all so i started like wiggling my fingers and my toes and trying to move and i saw a very specific yellow spike when i moved like my right index finger and this is doing it physically or just thinking about it physically trying to move my finger i'm like attempting to move my finger and i saw this big yellow spike every time and i was like oh that's cool and everyone's like what like what are you doing and i told them i was like look at the third box on the top right now and now and now i was like that's my index finger and everyone freaked out because that that meant the device could read what was going on in your brain and then eventually translate that into something on the computer real time um incredibly effective honestly for a few hours after my surgery and so how do you how do you go from having that experience of like okay i'm gonna try to move my finger it's gonna show up in one of these eight channels to then being able to move things around on a computer just thinking about them it's it's calibration when you calibrate anything calibrate a mouse calibrate a controller a TV, you have to basically train it to do what you want it to do.

24:59So with a cursor, they will show a visualization, like an animation of a cursor moving like right, left, up, down, like diagonally and stuff. And all I have to do is follow it with an attempted movement with my hand in some way. I can like reach for it. I can like move my wrist in that direction. I can move my hand in that direction. I can use my whole arm. I could use my feet or anything, just any body part. I use my right hand because that's where the strongest signals come from. And you just follow the cursor. And then eventually all of those times that you follow the cursor, all of those times that you've followed kind of the white rabbit, if you will, the link app, the algorithm, the machine learning is taking those brain signals and teaching this algorithm to associate those movements with the neurons that are firing when it's happening.

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27:10You're used to hearing my voice on the world bringing you interviews from around the globe. And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Beeler. And I'm Marco Werman. We're now with you hosting The World Together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound. Listen to The World on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts.

27:37and so how long did it take you to start being able to control computers using that type of brain so for the first 10 days they weren't allowed to charge my implant because of safety regulations they had to make sure that it was safe in my brain first that it kind of stabilized that the temperature range was okay and so they weren't allowed to charge at all because charging like raises the temperature and this is a safety study first so they needed to make sure that everything was good so every day for the first 10 days some Neuralink guys would come over in the Vrbo that we were staying at first near the hospital they'd come over just two of them bliss and near and they would wake it up and we would work for an hour tops and they would say okay we used 11 that's it for today and we would do different tasks we would do what we call body mapping, which is an animation of a hand, like moving different fingers in different ways, moving across the screen like a full hand, like shrugging shoulders, just all sorts of different movements that they wanted me to replicate, to follow.

28:42And it gets kind of wild because I think that when you're using a mouse or when you're moving, you have to first think and then move. But the way you're working with the Neuralink, the Neuralink can track your intent even before you even realize that it's happening. There's a lot about the implant that I find absolutely fascinating. So first off, let's go through like a couple terms. You have attempted movement and imagined movement. Attempted movement is literally me attempting to move my hand. Pretty self-explanatory. You know, if the cursor is going left, I might try to move my hand to the left.

29:24That's me physically attempting to move it. Even though nothing's happening here, all the signals still work in my brain. There's just a disconnect in my spinal cord so they don't get through. But the Neuralink is picking up those signals. So that's attempted movement. I'm physically trying to move my hand, my fingers, my legs, whatever it is, in whatever direction, in whatever motion, to place that in some sort of, you know, keystroke, like map it to a keystroke, map it to a directional control of a cursor, something of that nature. So that's attempted movement. And then we have imagined movement.

30:04Imagined movement is basically the same except you don't physically try to move a body part you just think about either moving the body part or you just think of moving a cursor or doing an action that you want the cursor to perform so you just think like cursor move to the right left up down you think cursor left click cursor right click click and you do these things all just by thinking and so there's a difference this has been like bci brain computer interface terminology for a while this is not something that we've come up with. So you take those things and eventually you get, you know, some really, really interesting outcomes with the algorithm and the implant learning your intention.

30:53When you go to move, you don't think, you know, move hand here. You just move your hand wherever you want it to go. You don't think grab this. You just do it and you grab. Before you physically move, the signal from your brain has to go all the way down and all the way back up. It shoots down to your hand saying move hand this way all the way back up to your brain and then the action happens. The same goes for me as I'm trying to attempt to move or I'm imagining moving and so the implant, the algorithm, can anticipate what you're doing just like your body is firing that signal before you even move so sometimes when i want to say click or i want to move the implant will understand my intent and move before i even decide to move basically it's uh pretty incredible that's crazy uh it is it is crazy it really is and so i think that the implant is much more capable than a lot of people understand.

32:03It really, really is fascinating. And, you know, I'm thinking about video games, and if you're playing video games, that's all coming through your hands. But if you're able to move things on your computer first, you could probably just destroy anybody in any game with this. It's a superpower. Yeah, when I think of where this technology will go, it's pretty incredible. I don't believe it will be allowed in like certain gaming platforms and things for like major league gaming I think they're going to have to separate it either everyone's going to have to have one or you're going to have to understand that other people have one and just accept that maybe it's better or you're better maybe assume like oh well the Neuralink doesn't add any sort of advantage so I'll play against it I don't believe that's true I think they're going to have to separate them to their own league or like ban them in leagues or everyone's going to have to have them um in order to be fair because they really are like you said a superpower when it comes to video games um it's their aim bots like you you turn around a corner in a first person shooter and there's someone there your brain has to send the signal to your hands and come all the way back up in order for you to move the joysticks, click buttons on the controller.

33:24It doesn't have to do that with a Neuralink. It's all happening sort of instantaneously, like pre-instantaneously, if it's learning your intent in your mind and it's sending that signal to a computer and back. I'm not sure what the latency is, but I have a feeling it's less than whatever you're doing with your hands with a controller. So it's going to be, you know, a few milliseconds um are life or death in these sorts of games right so you're on the life side yes yeah so um it's not there yet but i know that when this technology like really lands you're gonna start demolishing people yeah it's there there's no there's no doubt in my mind that people will want it in order to surpass you know what regulars are capable of i love that you're just referring to folks as regulars because it really is yeah it's amazing what you're able to do so let me just ask you this question it's a simple question but i'm curious to hear your answer i mean what does it feel like to not be able to move your hand but to see that movement expressed on a screen when you think about it you know what's interesting is for seven years seven and a half years, I was trying to move my hand and my body to create new neural pathways to hopefully regain some movement.

34:51I never knew if it was working because there's no feedback. There's no like feedback loop. I try to move my hand. I try to move my feet. I try to move my legs, my body in any way, But I don't know if it's working, if what I'm trying to do is actually being propagated in my brain, really. I don't know if trying to move my hand is, you know, the signals are actually firing in my brain. When I was able to see my neurons firing for the first time, it really made me kind of emotional thinking that, you know, when I move my index finger, there are still like neuron spikes, neurons firing in my brain.

35:41It's really just my spinal cord. And I think that should give a lot of people hope, honestly, because like everything's still working. You just got to keep trying, keep trying and keep forcing your body with brute force to relearn how to move. Yeah. I mean, even though you don't have that sensation back, you do have it back in some way. It's weird. It's a weird like leap, psychological leap, sort of physical leap. it's weird to be able to move without moving, be able to move something without moving. So you use the Neuralink app and that allows you to control your cursor on the screen. So once you got past the point of saying, okay, I can do this, what has that enabled you to do that you couldn't do before?

36:26I mean, so much. It's little things that add up to really big things. being able to, like I said earlier, fill out an application online. It's given me a lot of hope and, you know, purpose and future prospect, like, ideas and ability. Like, I might be able to get a job. I might be able to go to school. I can you know we were just talking about doing like video editing if I want to do I can just interact with a computer at a much much higher level play video games just enjoy surfing the web without having to go through the headache of like the mac os navigation and things and you know it adds up to a lot being able to send a text in a few seconds instead of a text taking 5, 10, 15 minutes sometimes to craft because of how bad dictation is.

37:27I mean, it's terrible. There's so much that I'm able to accomplish with a computer now that I was never able to do before, or that would have taken way too long. If you think about, if it takes five minutes to send a text message to one person, imagine trying to keep up a conversation with 10 people in a night and sending 50 to 100 texts to each person. It's just not possible with macOS dictation if everything takes that long. With the Neuralink, it's way better. I feel like I've reconnected with my friends, with my family, with the world in general, being able to communicate with people online through social media.