Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

news.cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 94 posts

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#51

Post by nishantmodak »

lars wrote: post #27

I'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…

Could not agree more!

If you go and look back http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibm_predictions_for_f...

IBM has predicted these since 2006.

And in 2006 - they said

Our mobile phones will start to read our minds

.. so you know what to make of this one!

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#53

Post by lars »

grannyg00se wrote: post #46
lars wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not being clear, I don't think that thinking the words "left left up up" would be detectable through EEG.

When I say detecting movement, I mean things like imagining moving a hand, a foot or a tongue. These movements use distinct areas of the brain so you can distinguish between them by looking at where on the scalp the change occurred. This is done in ways that are known to be close to perfect.

However, you probably couldn't use scalp location if you wanted to distinguish "call mom" from "call John", as they would presumably activate the same area of the brain. There are of course other things one could look at, and I obviously can't prove that it can't be done. But at the same time I have never seen any kind of positive result for an EEG classification task at this level of detail.

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#54

Post by swombat »

tokenadult wrote: post #47
lars wrote: post #27

I'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…

Hate to be that guy, but Siri is getting pretty close to this.. "Phone Mom" will work with an iPhone 4S.

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#55

Post by tree_of_item »

derekp7 wrote: post #34
tree_of_item wrote: post #8

"ATM machine" in an IBM video? I'm slightly disappointed.

Would you rather them call it an AT machine? I guess it could be "@machine" in that case. Point being -- if you can't choose which to leave out, then you have only half redundancy -- which is acceptable, if not optimal.

What's wrong with "ATM"?

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#56

Post by reissbaker »

lars wrote: post #53
grannyg00se wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not being clear, I don't think that thinking the words "left left up up" would be detectable through EEG. When I say detecting movement, I mean things like imagining moving a hand, a foot or a tongue. These movements use distinct areas of the brain so you can distinguish between them by looking at where on the scalp the change occurred. This is done in ways that are known to be close to perfect. However, you prob…

Rather than thinking "call mom," could you think "imagine moving your arm in that direction and pushing something"? Instead of literal mind-reading, have essentially a touchscreen without physical touch?

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#57

Post by grannyg00se »

lars wrote: post #53
grannyg00se wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not being clear, I don't think that thinking the words "left left up up" would be detectable through EEG. When I say detecting movement, I mean things like imagining moving a hand, a foot or a tongue. These movements use distinct areas of the brain so you can distinguish between them by looking at where on the scalp the change occurred. This is done in ways that are known to be close to perfect. However, you prob…

Well all you would really need are some easily detectable signals. So if move hand, move foot, move eyes, etc are all easily detectable then you have the basis for an interface. After that it's just a matter of building the interface around those limitations. It wouldn't be mind reading (not even close), but it seems like you should be able to get a reasonably good UI going.

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#59

Post by zacharycohn »

lars wrote: post #53
grannyg00se wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not being clear, I don't think that thinking the words "left left up up" would be detectable through EEG. When I say detecting movement, I mean things like imagining moving a hand, a foot or a tongue. These movements use distinct areas of the brain so you can distinguish between them by looking at where on the scalp the change occurred. This is done in ways that are known to be close to perfect. However, you prob…

Would it (now, or in the reasonably realistic future) be able to detect me imagining my fingers typing "call mom" on a keyboard?

Re: IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real.

#60

Post by rimantas »

tree_of_item wrote: post #55
derekp7 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather them call it an AT machine? I guess it could be "@machine" in that case. Point being -- if you can't choose which to leave out, then you have only half redundancy -- which is acceptable, if not optimal.

What's wrong with "ATM"?

It does not work without PIN number :(
Post reply on HN