I don't think playing to Neuralink's PR orchestra helps readers when you state "the patient... played chess using his mind after being implanted with the company's brain-computer interface..." The patient could play chess before the implant operation - and, yes, he'd definitely have to use his mind. The implant only estimated where his visual attention was with respect to a fixed screen image, and then an external computer directed a cursor to that point. This only achieves the same effect as non-invasive eyeball tracking. There is an immense amount of work still to do - and proper multi-patient trials over several years - to gather enough evidence to convince regulators and achieve mainstream medical acceptance. Successful health outcomes relate to patient mobility, occupational and self-care improvement, not how cool the tech is from exaggeration and distortion of coarse neural correlates.
I don't think playing to Neuralink's PR orchestra helps readers when you state "the patient... played chess using his mind after being implanted with the company's brain-computer interface..." The patient could play chess before the implant operation - and, yes, he'd definitely have to use his mind. The implant only estimated where his visual attention was with respect to a fixed screen image, and then an external computer directed a cursor to that point. This only achieves the same effect as non-invasive eyeball tracking. There is an immense amount of work still to do - and proper multi-patient trials over several years - to gather enough evidence to convince regulators and achieve mainstream medical acceptance. Successful health outcomes relate to patient mobility, occupational and self-care improvement, not how cool the tech is from exaggeration and distortion of coarse neural correlates.