Machine Learning Contest Aims to Improve Speech BCIs
For the next five months, machine learning gurus can try to best predict the speech of a brain-computer interface (BCI) user who lost the ability to speak due to a neurodegenerative disease. Competitors will design algorithms that predict words from the patient’s brain data. The individual or team whose algorithm makes the fewest errors between predicted sentences and actual attempted sentences will win a $5,000 prize. In practice, the best brain-computer interface algorithms, Konrad Kording said, are “usually not really driving from a deep knowledge of how brains work. They’re driving from a deep understanding of how machine learning works.”
