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If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

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Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#11
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Hmm this leads me to recall a bunch of ancient pseudoscientific sounding beliefs and see whether or not they might be plausibly explained by this mechanism: * Is it possible for humans to get a vague impression of other humans' thoughts via this mechanism? Not via body language, but "telepathy" (it'd obviously only work over very short ranges). If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras…

> If it is possible, maybe it is what some people supposedly feel as "auras" I've always held two complementary beliefs regarding auras and similar senses: 1. It's plausible that some humans can sense subtle information about things like emotional states or reactions in other humans using non standard sensing mechanisms (so maybe electric fields rather than sight, for example). 2. I'm very certain that for overwhelmi…

Yeah, synesthesia combined with being attuned to body language and emotions could account for lot. I even remember there was some anecdote of a famous physicist (Feynman?) who investigated this soviet mind reader and found that he was picking up on subtle bodily clues.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#12

This reminds me of the study about dog poop being aligned to magnetic north/south.[0] It seems a bit silly, but I suspect that more of our life may be effected by biomagnetism than we yet realize. [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1742-9994-10-80

This is cited

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#14
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cause hallucinations in dead salmon? I find that hard to believe.

Loss of consciousness seems equally unlikely.

True, though an easier mistake to make, I imagine.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#15
This feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true, right? If you've seen conspiracy-theory debunks, the resemblance is rather strong.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#16

This reminds me of the study about dog poop being aligned to magnetic north/south.[0] It seems a bit silly, but I suspect that more of our life may be effected by biomagnetism than we yet realize. [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1742-9994-10-80

>may be effected by biomagnetism

Bioelectricity too, which is just now starting to get properly researched (see Michael Levin's stuff).

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#18
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cause hallucinations in dead salmon? I find that hard to believe.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/scicurious-brain/ign...

I'm not 100% sure I'd call that a hallucination, but it's close enough and interesting enough that I'm happy to stand corrected.

Re: If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn't the brain?

#19

This feels just north of conspiracy theory logic. It's proven that humans can just barely sense large-scale magnetic fields, so how about if they can also sense extremely finely detailed fields in a way that solves long-standing philosophical and medical problems? Here are some supporting coincidences that have any number of alternate explanations, but it would sure be cool if this whole tower of conjecture was true,…

This paper starts to go downhill around "The easier-than-expected problem of consciousness".

The Meta paper [1] is much more useful. They claim to be reading out what someone is seeing, in a rather approximate way. The sensing is improving. One project was able to sense magnetic fields at 13 points at 1KHZ using a custom helmet fitted with sensors.[2] The technology is still in the early stages, but they got rid of the high vacuum and cyrogenics needed for SQUID sensors. Progress.

This currently has fewer data points than functional MRI, but more bandwith. fMRI, after all, is measuring blood flow. It's like trying to figure out what an IC is doing by watching its infra-red heat emissions. "Look, the FPU is working hard now."

That paper is a few years old. What's been going on since?

[1] https://ai.meta.com/blog/brain-ai-image-decoding-meg-magneto...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6063354/

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