Questions that BCI raises today
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 6:44 am
For the BCI to work correctly, the user must control their thoughts and emotions.
How to make the interface suitable for everyone and take into account the psychological characteristics of each? Users may have different patterns as a source of data. Someone thinks about moving namibia whatsapp phone number the cursor, someone has formulated the task inaccurately and accidentally thought about moving the hand, and someone is too emotional or anxious, and the level of "noise" will be so high that the cursor movement will be inaccurate.
To use BCI, the user must be calm, focused, and emotionally stable. Are you arguing with your girlfriend and want to write an emotional response "with the power of thought"? Sorry, calm down first. Maybe that's not a bad thing. However, ideally, it is the system that adapts to the user, and not the user to it.
How to transmit large amounts of data over the air quickly? The implant only reads raw data, and the more complex and faster the brain activity, the more data needs to be transmitted. All the processing, noise filtering, and application of a model trained on the user's patterns happens outside the implant.
Neuralink has already announced a public-to-solve request, where a wide range of experts are invited to solve the problem. Neuralink wants to be able to transmit lossless data about brain activity with 200 times compression.
Many experts have already spoken out on this matter and believe that it contradicts the laws of physics and is impossible in principle. The boldest assumptions: compression of 5 or 6 to 1 (Neuralink has now achieved compression of 2 to 1).
How can implantation be made the least invasive, and therefore safest? The answer is no way. Currently, it is prohibited to perform brain surgeries to integrate a BCI unless another surgery is planned for an indication due to the statistical risk of brain surgeries. It is prohibited for a reason: any medical procedure must have adequate medical indications. If a person has options for communicating with the outside world (such as speech), then surgery to install a BCI is optional and risky.
How do you ensure that an implant will work reliably for 10 years without needing to be replaced? It’s hard to say how the implant will behave even after a year. That’s a bad answer because modern medicine doesn’t work that way. Before the device gets FDA certification in the US, it must undergo a lot of testing, including checking how the implant behaves over time. Neuralink, Synchron and other big players will likely put pressure on the FDA, and it’s safe to assume that they’ll limit themselves to three-year studies.
How to make the interface suitable for everyone and take into account the psychological characteristics of each? Users may have different patterns as a source of data. Someone thinks about moving namibia whatsapp phone number the cursor, someone has formulated the task inaccurately and accidentally thought about moving the hand, and someone is too emotional or anxious, and the level of "noise" will be so high that the cursor movement will be inaccurate.
To use BCI, the user must be calm, focused, and emotionally stable. Are you arguing with your girlfriend and want to write an emotional response "with the power of thought"? Sorry, calm down first. Maybe that's not a bad thing. However, ideally, it is the system that adapts to the user, and not the user to it.
How to transmit large amounts of data over the air quickly? The implant only reads raw data, and the more complex and faster the brain activity, the more data needs to be transmitted. All the processing, noise filtering, and application of a model trained on the user's patterns happens outside the implant.
Neuralink has already announced a public-to-solve request, where a wide range of experts are invited to solve the problem. Neuralink wants to be able to transmit lossless data about brain activity with 200 times compression.
Many experts have already spoken out on this matter and believe that it contradicts the laws of physics and is impossible in principle. The boldest assumptions: compression of 5 or 6 to 1 (Neuralink has now achieved compression of 2 to 1).
How can implantation be made the least invasive, and therefore safest? The answer is no way. Currently, it is prohibited to perform brain surgeries to integrate a BCI unless another surgery is planned for an indication due to the statistical risk of brain surgeries. It is prohibited for a reason: any medical procedure must have adequate medical indications. If a person has options for communicating with the outside world (such as speech), then surgery to install a BCI is optional and risky.
How do you ensure that an implant will work reliably for 10 years without needing to be replaced? It’s hard to say how the implant will behave even after a year. That’s a bad answer because modern medicine doesn’t work that way. Before the device gets FDA certification in the US, it must undergo a lot of testing, including checking how the implant behaves over time. Neuralink, Synchron and other big players will likely put pressure on the FDA, and it’s safe to assume that they’ll limit themselves to three-year studies.