TL;DR
For people who have lost the ability to speak, the gap between thinking a sentence and hearing it said aloud may be closing. Neuralink says a man with ALS, the disease that slowly takes away movement and speech, reached 75 words a minute through its brain implant in his first week, with about 1 word in 17 wrong. Ordinary conversation runs about 160 words a minute, so that is a bit under half the pace of normal talk, and well ahead of the 62 words a minute, with nearly 1 word in 4 wrong, that a Stanford-led study managed in 2023. If that holds up in more people, an implant could move from slowly spelling out messages to something closer to joining a conversation. For now it is a company claim from one man, with no paper behind it, and no brain implant has U.S. approval. But the speed is climbing and trials are opening to more of the country.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 5 milestones, starting with "A brain implant that restores speech to people with paralysis wins U.S. approval by 2031"; our labeled speculation on what it adds up to; and every source.