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I have just been reading about Elon Musks new company Neuralink. He claims that it is possible to increase the communication speed between humans and computers by using direct brain interfaces which could help in exchanging large volumes of information in a short period of time. The speed with which humans generate written information is just a few bytes per second. But computers communicate with each other at a very fast rate.

So my doubts are,

  1. Is such a thing even possible? I have this question because I believe that our brain does not understand binary.

  2. It took me a few whole minutes for typing this question. It was not because of my inability to type fast. It was because I had to plan with precision, each sentence I type to avoid grammatical errors and to communicate my question well (and to ensure that my question does not get hit with a series of downvotes). So how does increasing the communication speed between my brain and the computer actually guaranty that I will type this question faster than I'm typing now?

  3. If such a thing is actually possible, can you explain (in brief) how will such a method work?

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    $\begingroup$ Some related questions: cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/8604/… ; cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/14132/11318 . In short, it is possible, yes. $\endgroup$ – Robin Kramer Jun 12 '17 at 11:34
  • $\begingroup$ I understand. So he was talking about communicating the images we see or imagine, and the sound we hear. So these forms of information will require a lot of bytes as we switch between numerous mental images or thoughts every second. But constructed solutions like the sentences we write are results of our brain's computation process. But if such an interface exists, we can communicate the process along with the result, and the information depicting the process is what takes more time and space. Thanks! $\endgroup$ – Sreram Jun 12 '17 at 12:44
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    $\begingroup$ I am not sure I agree that this is necessarily a duplicate as indicated by @mfloren. There is little information on Neuralink's website on what they are trying to achieve $\endgroup$ – Chris Rogers Jun 13 '17 at 17:01
  • $\begingroup$ Regarding " actually guaranty that I will type this question faster than I'm typing now?" It's not about guaranteeing anything. But I think it would be impressive and useful if this kind of communication would work for any practical cases. $\endgroup$ – Volker Siegel Sep 6 '20 at 3:36