The way I read the output here is that a much larger network attached to something with much better resolution will absolutely work. I wonder if fMRI will ever really have enough resolution to get usable information back; the images from the ‘simple’ pictures seems to indicate yes. Presuming this was done inside a giant tube, it’s not a very appealing idea unless someone has severe disabilities.

Overall I guess this paper makes me bullish on Neuralink. I eagerly await the answer to the question of whether we all see colors the same way or not.

Also, somewhat randomly, the photos of the DVD hardware made me think about whether different brains will process them differently. My wife has no interest in DVD players, and I believe from our twenty years together that her brain spends almost no time visually assessing them. I would be very interested to compare outputs of our two brains on different topics and see which ones we each have better specificity on.