He first learned of Neuralink's clinical trial through a friend who called him and asked: "Do you want to get a chip in your brain?"

"I said, 'Sure, why not?' Kind of jokingly, we applied and everything worked out," Arbaugh explained.

The chip is implanted in the motor cortex on the left side of his brain, where it regulates the movement of his right hand. It consists of 64 "threads" and 16 electrodes. This allows him to manipulate a cursor on a screen or his fingers in a specific direction by thinking about it.

"There's lots of machine learning involved," Arbaugh said. "I try something, the implant learns it, and over time, it just gets better and better."

Arbaugh stated that he met Elon Musk via FaceTime on the day of his surgery and has high expectations for the new technology.