Technology

59402 readers

3121 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Neuralink looks to the public to solve a seemingly impossible problem (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 5 months ago by TheDudeV2@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] palordrolap@kbin.social 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Surprised they haven't tried to train a neural network to find a compression algorithm specifically for their sort of data.

There's a ridiculous irony in the fact they haven't, and it's still ironic even if they have and have thrown the idea out as a failure. Or a dystopian nightmare.

But if it is the latter, they might help save time and effort by telling "the public" what avenues have already failed, or that they don't want purely AI-generated solutions. Someone's bound to try it otherwise.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

They did, but then Elon insisted they add a virtual neuralink into it and now the neural network is braindead.