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BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

iflscience.com

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Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#101

Post by karaterobot »

> While it’s not the first technology to be able to translate brain signals into language, it’s the only one so far to require neither brain implants nor access to a full-on MRI machine.

I wonder whether, in a decade or two, if the sensor technology has gotten good enough that they don't even need you to wear a cap, just there'll be people saying "obviously you don't have any reasonable expectation of not having your thoughts read in a public space, don't be ridiculous". What I mean is, we just tend to normalize surveillance technology, and I wonder if there's any practical limit to how far that can go.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#102

Post by thfuran »

Jensson wrote: post #98
giancarlostoro wrote: post #2

This is very impressive and useful, and horrifying all at once. I imagine it would help a stroke patient, I also imagine it would give out unfiltered thoughts, which might be troublesome.

Imagine putting these on presidential candidates as they debate or when they try to explain a bill, it could massively improve democracy and ensure the people know what they actually vote for.

Yes, imagine the glorious future of politicians who have no thoughts beyond the repeatedly coached answers to various talking points.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#103

Post by [deleted] »

PaulScotti wrote: post #88
joenot443 wrote: post #7

Ground Truth: Bob attended the University of Texas at Austin where he graduated, Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies in 1973, taking only two and a half years to complete his work, and obtaining generally excel- lent grades. Predict: was the University of California at Austin in where he studied in Beta Kappa in a degree of degree in history American Studies in 1975. and a one classes a…

Guys Figure 1 is not real results, it's an illustration of the "goal" of the paper. The real results are in Table 3. And are much worse.

[deleted]

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#104

Post by Jensson »

da_chicken wrote: post #46
giancarlostoro wrote: post #2

This is very impressive and useful, and horrifying all at once. I imagine it would help a stroke patient, I also imagine it would give out unfiltered thoughts, which might be troublesome.

Yeah I can imagine law enforcement and employers are going to love this. As much as this is an unimaginable positive benefit to people who are locked in, this is definitely one of those stories that makes me think "Stop inventing the Torment Nexus!"

> Yeah I can imagine law enforcement and employers are going to love this.

They will hate it, lies always benefits those with power more than those without since when the police lies against you then there isn't much you could do before, now you could demand they get their thoughts read.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#105

Post by Jensson »

ecolonsmak wrote: post #69

With half of individuals reportedly having no internal monologue, would this be useless with them? Or just render unintelligible results?

Given that LLMs can learn to translate between languages based on just having lots of related tokens without any explanations I'd bet they could translate those thoughts to words even if the person doesn't think of them as words.

Would probably take more to get data from such people though. From people with an inner monologue you could just make them read text, record that, and then you can follow their inner monologues.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#106

Post by im3w1l »

ctoth wrote: post #28

"Seriously, what were these researchers thinking? This 'BrainGPT' thing is a disaster waiting to happen. Ching-Ten Lin and his team of potential civilization destroyers at the University of Technology Sydney might be patting themselves on the back for this, but did they stop to think about the real-world implications? We're talking about reading thoughts—this isn't sci-fi, it's real, and it's terrifying. Where's the…

Thing is, it's not possible to stop it. Technology has advanced far enough, all the pieces are in place, so it's inevitable that someone will make this. What we should ask is rather how we can cope with its existence.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#107

Post by lamerose »

hyperific wrote: post #12

Reminds me of DARPA "Silent Talk" from 14 years ago. The objective was to "allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals" https://www.engadget.com/2009-05-14-darpa-working-on-silent-...

Subvocal speech recognition has been going just as long.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#108

Post by explaininjs »

PaulScotti wrote: post #88
joenot443 wrote: post #7

Ground Truth: Bob attended the University of Texas at Austin where he graduated, Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies in 1973, taking only two and a half years to complete his work, and obtaining generally excel- lent grades. Predict: was the University of California at Austin in where he studied in Beta Kappa in a degree of degree in history American Studies in 1975. and a one classes a…

Guys Figure 1 is not real results, it's an illustration of the "goal" of the paper. The real results are in Table 3. And are much worse.

Interesting ploy. Present far-better-than-achieved results right on the front page with no text to explain their origin^, but make them poor enough quality to make it seem as if they might be real.

^ "Overall illustration of translate EEG waves into text through quantised encoding." doesn't count.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#109

Post by Aerbil313 »

alentred wrote: post #78
ctoth wrote: post #28

"Seriously, what were these researchers thinking? This 'BrainGPT' thing is a disaster waiting to happen. Ching-Ten Lin and his team of potential civilization destroyers at the University of Technology Sydney might be patting themselves on the back for this, but did they stop to think about the real-world implications? We're talking about reading thoughts—this isn't sci-fi, it's real, and it's terrifying. Where's the…

What is the alternative? Hide the research papers in a cabinet and never talk about it? How long would it be before another team achieves the same result? Trying to keep it under wraps would only increase the chance of this technology being abused, but now unbeknownst to the general public. Basically, are you proposing to ban some fields of research because the result can be abused? Anything can be abused. From the s…

The alternative was to never pursue and invent organization-dependent[1,2] technology in the first place. The dynamics of the macro-system of {human biology + technology + societal dynamics} are so predictable and deterministic that it's argued[3] if there were any entity that is intelligent, replicating and has a self-preservation instinct instead of humans (aliens, intelligent Von Neumann probes, doesn't matter) the path of technological progress which humanity is currently experiencing wouldn't change. That is, the increasing restrictions on the autonomy of individuals and invasion of privacy with the increasing convenience of life and a more efficient civilization.

Ted Kaczynski pretty much predicted the current state of affairs all the way back at 1970s. [1]

Thankfully the world is not infinite so humankind cannot continue this situation for too long. The first Earth Overshoot Day was 31 December 1971, it was August 2 this year.[4] The effects of the nearing population collapse can be easily seen today in the increasing worldwide inflation, interest rates and hostility as the era of abundance comes to an end and resources get scarcer and scarcer. It's important to note that the technological prowess of humanity was only due to having access to basically unlimited energy for decades, not due to some perceived human ingenuity, which can save humankind from extinction-level threats. In fact, humans are pretty incapable of understanding world-scale events and processes and acting accordingly[5], which is another primary reason to not have left the simple non-technological world which the still non-evolved primate-like human brain could intuitively understand.

1: Refer to the manifesto "Industrial Revolution and Its Consequences".

2: Organization-dependent technology: Technology which requires organized effort, as opposed to small scale technology which a single person can produce himself with correct knowledge.

3: By Kaczynski, in the book Anti-Tech Revolution. Freely available online.

4: Biological overshoot occurs when demands placed on an ecosystem by a species exceeds the carrying capacity. Earth Overshoot Day is the day when humanity's demand on nature exceeds Earth's biocapacity. Humanity was able to continue its survival due to phantom carrying capacity.

5: Just take a look at the collective response of humanity to climate change.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#110

Post by zamadatix »

ctoth wrote: post #64
digdigdag wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? There are perfectly legitimate uses for this kind of technology. This would be a godsend for those suffering from paralysis and nervous system disorders, allowing them to communicate with their loved ones. Yes, the CIA, DARPA, et. al. will be all over this (surprisingly if not already), but this is a sacrifice worth making for this kind of technology.

How many people in the whole world are paralyzed or locked in? Ten thousand? Less? How many people in the whole world are tinpot authoritarian despots just looking for an excuse who would just love to be able to look inside your mind? Somehow, I imagine the first number is dramatically dwarfed by the second number. This is a technology that, once it is invented, will find more and more and more and more uses. We need…

All this choice guarantees is new technology will always be used for bad things first. It holds no sway on whether someone will do something bad with technology, after all it's not just "good people" capable of advancing it. See the atomic bomb vs the atomic power plant.

What's important is how we prepare for and handle inevitable change. Hoping no negative change comes about if we just stay the same is a far worse game.

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