Fachammed line between innovation and marketing: a man with Sla manages to express himself on X thanks to the neuralink chip and an I developed by Elon Musk.
On April 28, 2025 Bradford G. Smith, 50 -year -old from Arizona suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, posted this message from his @Alsyborg profile on X: «I am the third person in the world to receive the @neuralink brain system. The first with Sla. The first non -verbal. I’m typing this message with my brain. It is my form of primary communication. Ask me anything! I will respond at least to all verified users! Thanks @elonmusk! ».
Write (and post) thanks to one BCI. Smith, who is completely paralyzed and depends on a respirator, is the third patient to receive and use a neuralink brain microchip, the company co-founded by Musk engaged in the development project of a brain-computer interface (Brain-Computer Interface, BCI) advanced. It is also the first human being a communicate publicly With a post generated thanks to this technology.
A chip as big as a large coin in Smith’s motor cortex understands the electrical activity of its neurons, filters the signal, amplifies it and transmits it via Bluetooth to a MacBook, which tries and uses it to move a cursor on the screen and write text strings.
The IA to communicate more quickly. In perfect consonance with the aim of Neuralink to create a sort of symbiosis between human beings and artificial intelligences, various IA systems are helping Smith to express themselves in a more natural and fast way. One of these, already used by patients with SLA without brain systems, has obtained a clone of his voice from old vocal recordings of when the man was healthy and uses it to read the messages written on the screen (he also used it to make the voice-over of the video posted on X, always mounted thanks to the brain-proper interface).
Another IA supports the patient in the formulation of responses on social media. It is Groka chatbot developed by Xai, the artificial intelligence startup founded by Elon Musk.
You ask, the chatbot replies. Grok is an ia assistant integrated to xdesigned to interact fluidly with users, analyze images, answer complex questions and to be updated in real time with the flow of content published on the social platform, adapting its responses accordingly. Other particular signs: being not necessarily correctly correct, like other chatbots, and the tendency to respond brilliantly simulating a sort of “sense of humor”.
A little help. In an response to an X user who declares himself a fan of Elon Musk (“Adrian Dittmann”), who asked to describe his experience with Neuralink, Smith used words and punctuation that pushed the most attentive to ask him if he had completed the phrase with artificial intelligence.
In a message to the website of the Mit Technology ReviewSmith confirmed to have used Grok to formulate the answersafter providing the chatbot some notes taken on his progress. “I asked Grok to use that text to give complete answers to the questions,” Smith wrote. “I am responsible for the content, but I used the IA to spread the draft.”
Some perplexities. In addition to the potential of the technology proposed by Neuralink in allowing paralyzed people to return to communicate, the synergy between social media, microchip and ia belonging to a single person raises perplexity between those who deal with neuroetics: how authentic Smith’s thoughts are, if the initial skeleton of his answers is processed by a Large Language Model – albeit trained on his notes? Where the personal world of a patient ends, necessarily slowed in his responses by the disease, and where the marketing of what the Mit Technology Review define Musk’s ecosystem?
Smith told the magazine of Mit to have a vision of a larger “personal” larger Language Model who trains on his past writings and responds with his opinions and style. The fusion between human brain and Ia begins to be already here. With not entirely reassuring implications.
