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Lossless compression is apparently equivalent to general intelligence: http://mattmahoney.net/dc/rationale.html http://mattmahoney.net/dc/rationale.html

• selfhoster11 5y ago
  FLAC isn't turning into Skynet that soon. Besides, humans are lossy. We forget, make mistakes, think via heuristic.
• pornel 5y ago
  Yes, but the compression process can be split into two components: 1. modelling (you convert data to symbols and predict probabilities of seeing each symbol) 2. entropy coding (convert symbols + probabilities to minimum number of bits) The second stage is relatively simple, and basically solved. We went from Huffman's approximation to Arithmetic Coding which is theoretically ideal, and now got ANS which is close to ideal and pretty fast too. The modelling part is indeed a completely open problem, and at this point as much art as science.
  • Jasper_ 5y ago
    Most compression codecs these days have stopped using ANS because the benefits aren't worth the tradeoffs. Turns out a good arith coder is much faster.
    • hexxagone 5y ago
      "Turns out a good arith coder is much faster". Citation needed.