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Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

techcrunch.com

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Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#4

Post by modeless »

Neuralink sounds more ambitious and more interesting to me. I'm very skeptical of the non-invasive brain scanning Facebook is talking about. It seems unlikely to ever work well enough to be useful to anyone except people who are completely paralyzed. But they will be first in line for the invasive brain interface techniques that will work far better, so they won't need the non-invasive stuff either.

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#5

Post by germinalphrase »

Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen did an intriguing talk at the Long Now Foundation a while back on her work at Open Ocean. She presented a fascinating - if feasible - technology vision to not only ‘read’ what people are thinking for the purpose of controlling digital devices, but also ‘write’ to allow users to - for instance - experience the memories of others. Obvious abuse potential, but interesting.

https://www.openwater.cc/technology

http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/oct/29/toward-practical-te...

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#6

Post by defterGoose »

modeless wrote: post #4

Neuralink sounds more ambitious and more interesting to me. I'm very skeptical of the non-invasive brain scanning Facebook is talking about. It seems unlikely to ever work well enough to be useful to anyone except people who are completely paralyzed. But they will be first in line for the invasive brain interface techniques that will work far better, so they won't need the non-invasive stuff either.

Oh, infinitely. Neuralink's proposed techniques represent a complete paradigm shift in BCIs. If using cortical activity for data entry were truly feasible, I feel fairly confident in saying that there would already be a well-known product on the market. IME, you don't usually get a lot of dividends throwing more software at a problem, you actually have to plumb the depths of physical reality for that.

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#8

Post by codesushi42 »

modeless wrote: post #4

Neuralink sounds more ambitious and more interesting to me. I'm very skeptical of the non-invasive brain scanning Facebook is talking about. It seems unlikely to ever work well enough to be useful to anyone except people who are completely paralyzed. But they will be first in line for the invasive brain interface techniques that will work far better, so they won't need the non-invasive stuff either.

Absolutely. And they are building Neuralink to help the disabled first.

Meanwhile, Facebook's ambition is to create a videogame.

Too bad capable minds are even wasting their time there on such a petty cause. Welcome to the tech industry, where PhDs go to die at some ad clicking company.

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#9

Post by buboard »

This reads like Baghead from silicon valley speaking. The current technologies are still too invasive to suggest anything "promising", and their speculated tech is so far futuristic i m not sure if its to be taken seriously. Making an fMRI portable in one's head is .... no small task to put it mildly, especially if you 're going for the 5-7T that state of the art has. The visions are good to the ear but what puts me off about their article is they seem to be taking credit or for the vision and work that many other labs have been doing in the past 3 decades. In comparison, NeuraLinks presentation was more nuanced in presenting their incremental improvements, and they actually have a product.

I don't like that HN upvotes these articles, falling for FB's PR machine and billionaires circlejerking. I thought they could do better. There are very cool neuronal visualization and recording techniques being developed but you never read about them here.

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