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Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

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Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#191

Post by dr_dshiv »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #130
andrem wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well here is one other random sample who has to turn the inner voice on when necessary :) Instead of a voice I have a constant song playing in my head when I am not focused. The song changes multiple times per week but if I am on idle I have a song. When I speak the song turns off, but no voice comes on, unless I consciously prepare my words. Now when typing this comment, I have a voice (which is my own voice) say th…

I also have a song playing in my head most of the time (even while reading but not writing , like you). I’m a hobbyist musician; maybe that’s part of it. But I also have an inner voice . I think the music stops when the voice starts, not sure. For the last week I’ve had “right down the line” by Gerry Raferty (70s pop song) playing.

This is the best thread on HN. Thank you everyone for being so goddamn interesting.

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#192

Post by striking »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #168
striking wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that > electrodes implanted in his motor cortex recorded signals of his brain activity so I'm assuming other thoughts and interactions had little to no effect.

This makes me wonder if "thinking about writing letters" is really an accurate description of what's happening. Was the subject merely thinking about writing letters, or was he actually trying to write them, such that if he weren't paralyzed his muscles would be moving to perform that task?

The subject was instructed to actually try and write the letters; the AI they trained on the electrode outputs attempted to return pen stroke velocities.

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#194

Post by marviel »

rdevsrex wrote: post #193

Total dystopian thought, but I wonder if this could ever be used to extract info people unwillingly, as in some interrogation scenario. I mean, you have a lot more control over what you say than what you think.

Perhaps someday. It seems the way this experiment worked was by "imagining writing the words by hand", which would indicate that this kind of transmission was dependent on an explicit act of will.

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#195

Post by Raidion »

rdevsrex wrote: post #193

Total dystopian thought, but I wonder if this could ever be used to extract info people unwillingly, as in some interrogation scenario. I mean, you have a lot more control over what you say than what you think.

If you read the article it's clear that the researchers aren't pulling out the information from the guy's thoughts, they're reading the nerve signals from him "imagining" he's writing a letter, and using ML to map that to pen strokes which get mapped to words.

So if James Bond gets captured, all he has to do is to not imagine writing the information, he can think it all he wants.

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#196

Post by capableweb »

rdevsrex wrote: post #193

Total dystopian thought, but I wonder if this could ever be used to extract info people unwillingly, as in some interrogation scenario. I mean, you have a lot more control over what you say than what you think.

Most likely the brain implement is working against/with a persons consciousness. This "information extraction" device you talk about, would need to work against/with the sub-consciousness, otherwise you can just think "WALL WALL WALL WALL WALL" and the device would only be able to extract that.

Not to say that this device was probably trained on the person a lot before they could reach that accuracy. A "information extraction" device would have to be trained on it's victim first, but why would they play along with the training?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people have control over what they consciously think, at least it works like that for me.

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#197

Post by gonehome »

wpietri wrote: post #137
gonehome wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s different - there was an old post by an early FB employee who has no ability to visualize images after a head injury and has to adapt as a result for that. Thinking of images is also different than thinking of words (since all of us speak the language). I’m not saying it’s impossible, but that I suspect its more likely a lack of introspection - I’d need to be persuaded empirically somehow and don’t know…

My introspection is quite good on this; I've been doing meditation on and off for decades. Sorry, but I don't have an internal narrator. Instead, the meditative interruptions that come with words are generally imagined discussions with other people or things to write about. Like you, I had a hard time believing people were different in this. The whole idea of an internal narrator seemed absurd to me. Why would anybod…

Imagined discussion is what I'm talking about. It's not narration like "I'm picking up the coffee mug now, I'm clicking the button now" - it's silent speech with oneself. Often it's trying to predict what will happen or thinking about things with language. It's not that every action must be stated by some narrator, but that a narrator exists to discuss things with oneself.

Without language and semantic meaning tied to ideas, what does 'thinking' mean at all?

My point is more that there are always thoughts (typically in the form of words, but sometimes images) flowing through your mind all of the time. Meditation and 'mindfulness' is focused on recognizing them as they happen and getting control of that kind of thing (at least enough to reduce thought loops, rumination, unwanted emotional response, etc.).

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#198

Post by dang »

KhoomeiK wrote: post #89

Previous threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27134049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27157369

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Neural implant lets paralyzed person type by imagining writing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27134049 - May 2021 (183 comments)

Brain-Computer Interface User Types 90 Characters per Minute with Mind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27157369 - May 2021 (40 comments)

This is pretty similar but I guess it's different work:

Human use of high-bandwidth wireless brain-computer interface - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690126 - April 2021 (210 comments)

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#199

Post by LocalH »

gonehome wrote: post #149
psyc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How or where did you acquire such specific beliefs about what minds can or cannot do?

My skepticism probably comes in part from an anti-religion, anti-mystic reflex. There’s a lot of woo around this stuff so it often puts me on guard. Obviously nobody is claiming psychic powers here, but I wouldn’t expect brains to operate that differently - so it’s surprising to me.

>but I wouldn’t expect brains to operate that differently

Everyone's neurotransmitter balance is different. Of course that will cause brains to sometimes operate wildly differently.

Re: Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with 94% accuracy

#200

Post by dnautics »

cs702 wrote: post #160
dnautics wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeesh it's an RNN and not even something like a transformer

...which means that even a modestly sized transformer model could do significantly better.

with a big heap of "maybe". Signal could be a limiting factor, but also come on, more than 99% correct? That's above the level of a non-professional human transcriber in most situations. I'm not sure that typing I get more than 99% correct, I've made at least six errors typing this sentence alone (though it's quick to fix).

The real improvement, it seems would be to speed and latency, looking at the diagram, the sampling is over the course of 3 seconds, which is butt-slow. A good NN would be able to compressed patterns in the data stream and blat out more than one letter, or contextually learn letters in the word, or learn whole words, etc. But that is not, it appears, supported by the model.

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