Elon Musk’s quest to wirelessly connect human brains with machines has run into a seemingly impossible obstacle, experts say. The company is now asking the public for help finding a solution.

Musk’s startup Neuralink, which is in the early stages of testing in human subjects, is pitched as a brain implant that will let people control computers and other devices using their thoughts. Some of Musk’s predictions for the technology include letting paralyzed people “walk again and use their arms normally.”

Turning brain signals into computer inputs means transmitting a lot of data very quickly. A problem for Neuralink is that the implant generates about 200 times more brain data per second than it can currently wirelessly transmit. Now, the company is seeking a new algorithm that can transmit this data in a smaller package — a process called compression — through a public challenge.

As a barebones web page announcing the Neuralink Compression Challenge posted on Thursday explains, “[greater than] 200x compression is needed.” The winning solution must also run in real time, and at low power.

  • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    1 month ago

    The problem isn’t “making the majority of it noise”,

    the problem is tossing-out the actual-noise, & compressing only the signal.

    Without knowing what the actual-signal is, & just trying to send all-the-noise-and-signal, they’re creating their problem, requiring 200x compression, through wrongly-framing the question.

    What they need to actually do, is to get a chip in before transmitting, which does the simplification/filtering.

    That is the right problem.

    That requires some immense understanding of the signal+noise that they’re trying to work on, though, and it may require much more processing-power than they’re committed to permitting on that side of the link.

    shrug

    Universe can’t care about one’s feelings: making-believing that reality is other than it actually-is may, with politial-stampeding, dent reality some, temporarily, but correction is implacable.

    In this case, there’s nothing they can do to escape the facts.

    EITHER they eradicate enough of the noise before transmission,

    XOR they transmit the noise, & hit an impossible compression problem.

    Tough cookies.

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