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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.

#71

Post by kevinalexbrown »

lars wrote: post #40
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #33

Earlier 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…

My point was more about precision when making a bet, but yeah like I said I agree in sentiment. That being said, two-bit encoding is exactly what Stephen Hawking uses with his thumb, so it's not inconceivable to use it on a neural level as a last resort, however impractical. And in some cases, it is: often paralyzed individuals use their tongue to manipulate a cursor, but this can cause all sorts of problems like abnormally large tongues due to muscle growth.

And I work in a lab that does BMI work, and we couldn't do the "call mom" command in the sentiment of lars, even though we use more spatially precise recordings (multi-electrode chronically implanted arrays). So I'm with that. OTOH we can do some cool things like control a computer cursor or tv remote with motor commands like "left-up" etc. Subjects reported that after a while they would cease to "translate" thoughts from movement commands into "BMI" commands like "change channel". It stands to reason they might be able to do the phone-book thing in that case.

Of course, few people find it worthwhile to get chronically implanted electrodes placed in their motor cortex, soooo.

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

#72

Post by JoachimSchipper »

itmag wrote: post #66

Does anyone ever feel that neuroscience is getting more and more lovecraftian and challenging basic assumptions of what it means to be human? It sometimes feels like we're at a point in history where all the basic tenets of existence are being torn down by science and replaced with... nothing. Am I the only one who gets existential crisises from this kind of stuff? :p It doesn't help, of course, that I'm currently re…

I'm not sure who is right, but note that transhumanists have a very different view on such developments.

Also, if the "basic tenets of existence" (whatever you consider those to be) can be torn down by looking at them critically, shouldn't they be? (Perhaps.)

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

#74

Post by itmag »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #72
itmag wrote: post #66

Does anyone ever feel that neuroscience is getting more and more lovecraftian and challenging basic assumptions of what it means to be human? It sometimes feels like we're at a point in history where all the basic tenets of existence are being torn down by science and replaced with... nothing. Am I the only one who gets existential crisises from this kind of stuff? :p It doesn't help, of course, that I'm currently re…

I'm not sure who is right, but note that transhumanists have a very different view on such developments. Also, if the "basic tenets of existence" (whatever you consider those to be) can be torn down by looking at them critically, shouldn't they be? (Perhaps.)

Also, if the "basic tenets of existence" (whatever you consider those to be) can be torn down by looking at them critically, shouldn't they be? (Perhaps.)

Should we look at Cthulhu just because we can? :p

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

#75

Post by itmag »

wladimir wrote: post #69
itmag wrote: post #66

Does anyone ever feel that neuroscience is getting more and more lovecraftian and challenging basic assumptions of what it means to be human? It sometimes feels like we're at a point in history where all the basic tenets of existence are being torn down by science and replaced with... nothing. Am I the only one who gets existential crisises from this kind of stuff? :p It doesn't help, of course, that I'm currently re…

I wonder too... There have been other times in history that scientists had the idea that science was almost complete, that there were just a few things left to sort out and we'd understand it all (such as around 1900 with mathematics). We may think we are very near and then discover something new and then find out a lot of new questions around the mind and consciousness. I don't think we're quite there yet. However I…

BTW: Thanks for the pointer. That book looks very interesting.

I'm actually not so happy about posting that link. For me, it states things that I had already mostly figured out on my own previously. For others, it might zap a lot of Sanity Points.

I would say Ligotti is a very unique writer, in that he's deeply immersed in existentialist philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, AND lovecraftian horror. It makes for a very... disturbing cocktail.

Of course, everyone on HN is seemingly a Nietzschean overman who can take these kinds of things in stride. Me, not so much :p

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

#77

Post by sireat »

bgalbraith wrote: post #35
blhack wrote: post #7

Linkbaity headline, there. "Mind reading" already exists kindof sortof maybe good enough to cnet to write an article about. This is at the top of my Christmas list: http://emotiv.com/ In fact, here is a comparison of consumer Brain Computer Interfaces: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_consumer_brain%E2...

As a current PhD student working in this area, I caution you about getting too excited about the Emotiv EPOC. We've got one in the lab we've started to work with as a potential low-cost EEG system. The out-of-the-box software is kinda hokey, so you may end up with an expensive novelty you use once or twice. On the technical side, it does seem to be the best current option for consumer EEG, though most of these device…

A friend of mine bought the developer-prerelease version a year ago(it has extra 2 electrodes), it is very hard to train, he got some success, but basically it is a novelty, can't really use it as a practical device.

Also there was a rather restrictive licence on the out-of-the-box software, which is not very productive for a hardware company.

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

#78

Post by csomar »

itmag wrote: post #66

Does anyone ever feel that neuroscience is getting more and more lovecraftian and challenging basic assumptions of what it means to be human? It sometimes feels like we're at a point in history where all the basic tenets of existence are being torn down by science and replaced with... nothing. Am I the only one who gets existential crisises from this kind of stuff? :p It doesn't help, of course, that I'm currently re…

I think this problem will become apparent when we are able to create real human minds, and put them in real interactive environment that stimulates our world. Who is the god?

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

#79

Post by patrickk »

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…

James May (of BBC's Top Gear) trying to control a wheelchair with his mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyrd0uOuyms

Even giving directions via thought is tricky.

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

#80

Post by zerostar07 »

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…

Even with very invasive techniques (chronic implants), the reading of motion signals for example is very problematic. One of the first devices to do that is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainGate . It requires substantial training and retraining because of brain plasticity. Still, these are major breakthroughs, and hopefully we will be able to find a reliable and usable signal, but i agree, EEG is too bulky for that purpose.
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