Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink is pitched as a brain implant that will let people control computers and other devices using their thoughts. Turning brain signals into computer inputs means transmitting a lot of data very quickly. Now, the company is seeking a new algorithm that can transmit that data in a smaller package through a public challenge.
Observers on social media immediately branded the task "impossible," even speculating that Neuralink staff launched the challenge as a way of convincing the infamously incalcitrant Musk that it couldn't be done.The skepticism is well-founded, said Karl Martin, chief technology officer of data science company Integrate.ai. Martin's PhD thesis at the University of Toronto focused on data compression and security.
Key to Neuralink's pitch is wireless data transfer. Earlier versions of brain implants required bulky wires to protrude from the patient's head to communicate with an external device that read the neural signals and translated them into instructions. The problem, said Roy van Rijn, director of software consultancy OpenValue Rotterdam, is that the files appear very noisy. In other words, they contain many unique data points without common patterns. "If there aren't enough 'patterns' in the data, it is mathematically impossible to compress something further," he said in an email.
Source: News Formal (newsformal.com)
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