rassibassi

If I understand you correctly, you basically mean some interpolation of knowledge within Z, that was not known to humans before, but can be synthesized by recombination of information within Z.

Yet, that still means, knowledge of O cannot be synthesized.

The upper bound is still the Shannon limit. The experiment does a lot of multiplexing: spatial multi-core fiber, spectral multi channel multiplexing across wavelength, dual polarization.

Each of the multiplexed channels are individually limited by the Shannon limit, and with higher power the fiber's Kerr effect creates interference which creates a sweet spot for the optimal optical launch power.

the novelty here is that the spectral channels are all generated from a single laser source rather than a laser per channel

Not practical yet, the novelty is the frequency comb which allows +200 channels across wavelength with only a single laser, where before one required 200 lasers.

In an experiment like this, only the initial light source is modulated and therefore all channels carry the same data. The equipment for the transmitter and receiver chain is so expensive that university labs can barely afford one of each.

They also multiplex across +200 channels across wavelength (wavelength division multiplexing).

Not sure what the baud rate of a single channel was in their experiment but probably between 32-80Gb which is common for the lab equipment at Universities. The industry is knocking on 100-400Gb where for the actual decoding and signal processing there is massive parallelism applied to reduce the rate even more

Correction: the auto encoder is pre-trained :)

Don't be so hard on yourself, and don't compare yourself to a computer science prodigy. You can teach yourself to become a decent web developer in 1 year and take it from there, your life is far from being wasted in any sense.