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Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

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Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#11

Post by ohduran »

Facebook, like a true attention merchant, keeps pushing the envelop. It seems to me that we'll see more on privacy vs connecting the world for years, because that's where the two biggest tech business models, Apple/Netflix's and Google/Facebook's, clash.

I've put together some notes on The Attention Merchants, by Tim Wu, that specifically approaches this reality in a very interesting way. You can find them here: http://alvaroduran.com/attention-merchants

Any feedback is much appreciated!

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#12

Post by darepublic »

I would like a more frictionless interfacing for sending and receiving data between my brain and a computer. I disdain apps like Ritual for the fact that I have to pull out the damn phone and tap on this relatively small screen. I would rather wait an extra 10 in in the take out line at the restaurant.

However even if one of these existed, and I was confident my brain wasn't being monitored by a big corporation, I would become paranoid that I would accidentally think the wrong thing -- what if I accidentally thought-typed something that I wanted to hide from the world?

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#15

Post by azinman2 »

> "Neuroethical design is one of our program’s key pillars — we want to be transparent about what we’re working on so that people can tell us their concerns about this technology."

And what will they do with said concerns? Ultimately it's not some researcher that will call the shots when everyone cries foul... Zuckerberg will green light and that's it. It's not like FB actually ever pays attention to criticism from an ethics perspective, only MAU and revenue metrics.

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#17

Post by etrautmann »

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.

Yes - as someone who works in the field (on the academic side), Neuralink has an approach that will in theory work once the engineering is all in place.

Facebook's approach of "quasibalistic photon imaging" is attempting to be a higher resolution signal like FNIRs, but struggles from the reality of physics and the challenges of imaging through a LOT of opaque dura / skull / skin / hair. They have a goal of decoding 100 words per minutes of speech, but that's going to be incredibly challenging with a noninvasive approach.

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#19

Post by sidr »

buboard wrote: post #9

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…

I partly agree with you that this article is getting buzz because FB, but this is not low quality research by any means (especially given the constraints of obtaining such data). There are, as you point out, a bunch of similar ECoG "brain decoding" papers out there that don't get upvoted to the top of HN.

Also, minor point - I don't think FB is trying to make a portable MRI. The physical limitations alone would make that a completely silly endeavor, even for SV billionaires.

Re: Facebook is exploring brain control for AR wearables

#20

Post by buboard »

sidr wrote: post #19
buboard wrote: post #9

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…

I partly agree with you that this article is getting buzz because FB, but this is not low quality research by any means (especially given the constraints of obtaining such data). There are, as you point out, a bunch of similar ECoG "brain decoding" papers out there that don't get upvoted to the top of HN. Also, minor point - I don't think FB is trying to make a portable MRI. The physical limitations alone would make…

> this is not low quality research

I was referring to the press release which is only partially (and kinda misleadingly - the paper is ecog recordings) related to the nature paper , which is of course great

> completely silly endeavor

haha true, they re talking about some pulse oximeter/noninvasive device, though that s just as sciencefictiony as anything.

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