Slightly off-topic, but I've always thought that the first wave of HCI to hit the market and gain traction would be the integration of Affective sensing tech. products and API's into popular areas like music, social networks, and health care. I've always thought this would bring down the cost, increase investment in the HCI/BCI space, and speed up the adoption rates and lead to a much faster improvement of HCI technologies.
IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
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Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#42When talking about EEG-based "mind reading", there are three primary methods currently under study (when looking at locked-in patients at least):
1) P300 - This refers to a predictable change in the EEG signal that happens around 300 milliseconds after something you were expecting happens. For example, if I am looking for a particular letter to flash amongst a grid of letters all randomly flashing, a P300 will be triggered when the letter I want flashes.
2) SSVEP - This stands for steady state visually evoked potential. This approach uses EEG signals recorded from over the visual cortex, which responds to constantly flickering stimuli. Given a few seconds, the power of the frequency of the attended stimulus increases in the EEG, which can then be detected and used to make a decision.
3) SMR - This stands for sensorimotor rhythms, and is an approach that looks for changes in EEG activity over the motor cortex. Successful approaches have been able to identify when you imagine clenching your left or right fists, or pushing down on your foot. Unlike the other two, this does not require external stimuli.
SMR is the most like what we consider mind reading, as the user is initiating the signal while the other two infer what a person is looking at. It is limited to only 2-3 degrees of freedom at the moment, however, and is the hardest signal to work with. It is susceptible to external factors such as the current environment and mental state, and not everyone seems to be able to generate the needed signals. SSVEP, while lacking the wow factor of SMR, is much easier to work with and is a much more stable signal.
Disclosure: I work in this area. Here's a flashy NSF video highlighting our lab: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/brain...
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#43I've recently completed a masters thesis on EEG based mind reading, and I think I have a fairly good grasp on the state of the art in this field. I also have a copy of Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near by my bed, and I'm usually strongly optimistic about technology. But if IBM are talking about EEG based technology here, I would have to bet that they are flat out wrong on this one. I'll explain why. Something like m…
"who I would like to call can not be inferred from the electrical activity on my scalp" If I read the blog post correctly the claim is not passive mind reading. The claim is that the user has some training to issue the sorts of thought commands that can be reliably picked up. If I think "call mom" it doesn't do anything. But if I think "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right" maybe it can interpret that correctly as m…
I bet it's harder not to compulsively think "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right" than it is to dial a phone.
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#44I've recently completed a masters thesis on EEG based mind reading, and I think I have a fairly good grasp on the state of the art in this field. I also have a copy of Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near by my bed, and I'm usually strongly optimistic about technology. But if IBM are talking about EEG based technology here, I would have to bet that they are flat out wrong on this one. I'll explain why. Something like m…
"who I would like to call can not be inferred from the electrical activity on my scalp" If I read the blog post correctly the claim is not passive mind reading. The claim is that the user has some training to issue the sorts of thought commands that can be reliably picked up. If I think "call mom" it doesn't do anything. But if I think "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right" maybe it can interpret that correctly as m…
They're a little fuzzy, but the exact quote from the video is: "IBM scientists are researching how to link your devices, such as a computer or a smart phone. So you just need to think about calling someone, and it happens." From the context it is implied that this will happen in 5 years. In their in-depth blog post about the topic, they say: "...I could wonder what the traffic will be like on the way home and this information would pop up in front of me."
So I think they are actually describing a "call mom" scenario, and I strongly doubt that the information to detect that is at all present in an EEG signal.
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#45Previous "five in five" predictions from IBM can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibm_predictions_for_f...
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm easily willing to bet IBM money that who I would like to call can not be inferred from the electrical activity on my scalp. (Seriously IBM, let's go on longbets.org and do this.) Be more precise. If you can distinguish two classes, you can convey anything through EEG, however slowly (think 'bits'). With error, use error-correcting codes and you can get relatively high accuracy. Pedantics aside, I agree in senti…
Sure. Let's say a five second EEG segment, recorded from up to 200 electrodes. I bet that by 2017 we cannot accurately detect who a person would like to call out of phonebook of 50 people. Specifically, in a setting where each person is as likely to be called (equal prior probability), I bet the detection accuracy will not exceed 4% on average with a phone book of 50 people. I'm talking about the BCI understanding a…
Why would "call mom" be more difficult than "Left left up up"? I'm guessing left, right, up, down, would map to certain EEG patterns. Why would it be more difficult to map call and mom to their patterns?
It seems to me that if you can map patterns for four directions, you should also be able to map patterns for 50 different phone book entries and several verbs.
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#47I've recently completed a masters thesis on EEG based mind reading, and I think I have a fairly good grasp on the state of the art in this field. I also have a copy of Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near by my bed, and I'm usually strongly optimistic about technology. But if IBM are talking about EEG based technology here, I would have to bet that they are flat out wrong on this one. I'll explain why. Something like m…
Thanks for the interesting detailed information about EEG resolution, which I can attest is in accordance with what I have read about neuroelectrical interaction in other contexts.
But what is to me implausible about thinking "phone Mom" and having my computer do it for me is that this scenario envisions an unusually high degree of usability that no consumer-facing software writers have ever achieved. Right now, on a BRAND NEW computer system using mostly application programs recommended by Hacker News readers (for example, I am using Chrome to Web browse), I can't count on my computer doing what I want even if I have my hands on the keyboard or a hand on my mouse. User-interface design appears to be HARD--or at least, it is rarely done right--so I am very doubtful that in five years or even twenty-five years I'll be able to use a computer that really does what I think.
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#48lars's comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3371968) is right on target. I recently finished my PhD in biomedical engineering, and the hot field that everyone wants to go into is what we're calling BMI - Brain-Machine Interfaces. The trick is, there are very few types of signals than can be reliably determined from these brain-signal reading devices.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of tasks that can be easily accomplished; anything involving moving limbs, or simple, low degree of freedom tasks (like moving a computer cursor). After months and months of training, a person can be trained to manipulate numerous degrees with pretty good reliability (i.e., move a robotic arm, AND control the mechanical pincer at the end), but this type of work doesn't generalize to other types of thought. We're nowhere near being able to extract sentences or words or being able to determine what complex scene is being viewed simply using brain activity patterns.
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#49I've recently completed a masters thesis on EEG based mind reading, and I think I have a fairly good grasp on the state of the art in this field. I also have a copy of Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near by my bed, and I'm usually strongly optimistic about technology. But if IBM are talking about EEG based technology here, I would have to bet that they are flat out wrong on this one. I'll explain why. Something like m…
> I'm easily willing to bet IBM money that who I would like to call can not be inferred from the electrical activity on my scalp. (Seriously IBM, let's go on longbets.org and do this.) Be more precise. If you can distinguish two classes, you can convey anything through EEG, however slowly (think 'bits'). With error, use error-correcting codes and you can get relatively high accuracy. Pedantics aside, I agree in senti…
HA. Error correcting codes? You realize that means the person thinking in bits would have to do that themselves. A 7-bit parity would be harder to do than just dialing the damn thing. Even then all it'd be able to do is tell you that you messed up. Something that actually makes corrections on the fly (Hamming). No way. I couldn't do it and I know how Hamming works. I really doubt a consumer could do it or would want to.
Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.
#50Well I guess you could link brain patterns to thoughts, but how do you gonna read them without a 5 ton MRI machine?
Who's to say a MRI machine has to weigh 5 tons 5 years from now? I imagine people once said "Sure it's great to store your recipes in a computer, but who wants to do that on a room sized computer?"
Gauss and Maxwell say.