AI That Can Read Minds

Imagine that you would never need to type or speak into your computer.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco developed an AI that reads your brain activity and turns it into text on a computer. Not only this could be a breakthrough in improving the lives of people are cannot speak or write – for example, patients with the Locked-in Syndrome) it could one day be the key to revolutionizing how we use electronics.

Reading Minds Is No Longer Sci-Fi

Four participants were included in the study that was published in the Nature Neuroscience journal. These patients already had electrodes implanted in their brains because they are suffering from epilepsy. The scientists then asked them to loudly repeat fifty different sentences and while they were doing that the scientists were monitoring their brain activity.

The data that were gathered were then processed using machine learning algorithms. These converted the data into a number sequence and compared them to the audio recording. After a short period of learning the system was capable of converting the number sequences into English sentences.

At first, these sentences were total gibberish but as the algorithms learned from the recordings they began to learn and get better. While the results got better, the system is still far from perfect – for example, it took the sentence “Those musicians harmonize marvelously.” and translated it as “The spinach was a famous singer.” So, obviously, the system does need more work.

Far From Perfect

While the given example may lead you to think that the AI is quite bad at its translations of brain activity into text but the scientists are quite satisfied with the results. The error rate was around three percent – significantly lower than in previous similar experiments.

Another thing that needs to be solved is the fact that the study focused on brain activity that comes in with speaking. This will not help those who suffer from Locked-in Syndrome or those who never spoke in their lives – for these people we will need to analyze the response of the brain to thoughts alone.

But by far the biggest deficiency of this solution is the need to use brain implants. It is still a large surgery and many or even most of the potential users will not deem that acceptable. Thus, scientists will continue working on their technology to make it more usable in the real world.

Sources:

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0608-8.epdf

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