[modeless]

Neuralink sounds more ambitious and more interesting to me. I'm very skeptical of the non-invasive brain scanning Facebook is talking about. It seems unlikely to ever work well enough to be useful to anyone except people who are completely paralyzed. But they will be first in line for the invasive brain interface techniques that will work far better, so they won't need the non-invasive stuff either.

[defterGoose]

Oh, infinitely. Neuralink's proposed techniques represent a complete paradigm shift in BCIs. If using cortical activity for data entry were truly feasible, I feel fairly confident in saying that there would already be a well-known product on the market. IME, you don't usually get a lot of dividends throwing more software at a problem, you actually have to plumb the depths of physical reality for that.

[etrautmann]

Yes - as someone who works in the field (on the academic side), Neuralink has an approach that will in theory work once the engineering is all in place.

Facebook's approach of "quasibalistic photon imaging" is attempting to be a higher resolution signal like FNIRs, but struggles from the reality of physics and the challenges of imaging through a LOT of opaque dura / skull / skin / hair. They have a goal of decoding 100 words per minutes of speech, but that's going to be incredibly challenging with a noninvasive approach.

[codesushi42]

Absolutely. And they are building Neuralink to help the disabled first.

Meanwhile, Facebook's ambition is to create a videogame.

Too bad capable minds are even wasting their time there on such a petty cause. Welcome to the tech industry, where PhDs go to die at some ad clicking company.