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BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

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Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#201

Post by WendyTheWillow »

jprete wrote: post #41
WendyTheWillow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not. Good lord…

There are already businesses tracking their employees' fitness for insurance purposes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/with-fitness... EDIT: There's also a national legislative proposal to mandate that all cars have a system to monitor their drivers and lock them out on signs of intoxication. https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1053847935/congress-cars-drun...

Neither of these things are even remotely related to what the person I replied to suggested, but nice equivocation.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#202

Post by kromem »

mikpanko wrote: post #136

I did a PhD in brain-computer interfaces, including EEG and implanted electrodes. BCI research to a big extent focuses on helping paralyzed individuals regain communication. Unfortunately, EEG doesn’t provide sufficient signal-to-noise ratio to support good communication speeds outside of the lab with Faraday cages and days/weeks of de-noising including removing eye-movement artifacts in the recordings. This is a phy…

While I believe you that the signal to noise is terrible, I have strong suspicions that given enough data we'll still be seeing surprising advancements in spite of that.

The ability of deep learning to tease back out signal from noise, such as reversing what's being typed from room audio with a keyboard in it, shouldn't be underestimated.

The biggest challenge may be that EEG data correlated with signals is relatively expensive to generate, so there's not going to be anything like millions of hours of people looking at or processing known things to throw into a model.

Whereas we're about to have massive increases in eye tracking data as it becomes a central component to new consumer hardware.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#203

Post by kromem »

karaterobot wrote: post #101

> 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…

Not with brain signals reading, but with aggregate dats processing most things about you will be known by any centralized processing.

Over a decade ago were the stories about how Target's loyalty program algorithm had discovered a teen was pregnant before she'd told her family, based on correlative purchase changes (like switching from scented to unscented candles).

If I could take your social media, face and eye tracking on CCTV, phone gyroscope data, purchase history, search history, and the same from all your associated contacts, with a broad enough comparative data set I could probably identify all kinds of skeletons from all kinds of closets.

It's a bit like the "my phone is listening to my conversations" freak out. It's not, but the thing you should be much more concerned about is that it has such an accurate picture of what you end up talking about without needing to be listening in the first place.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#204

Post by drdeca »

ctoth wrote: post #65
drdeca wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does “DWIM” mean in this context? My first thought is “do what I mean”, but I suspect that isn’t what you meant.

DWIM does in fact mean Do what I mean, a DWIM gun is basically like the Imperius curse. Can't remember if I got it from @cstross or Vinge.

Ohh, ok, a gun that inflicts “do what I mean” on another person. Yeah, that would be pretty bad, wouldn’t it.

When I read the previous comment, I had been imagining a gun (in the sense of a weapon that shoots a bullet from a barrel) which “does what the user intends for it to do”, which, I didn’t see how it would differ much from a usual gun, unless it just, had auto aim, or perhaps acted according to user’s impulses rather than deliberate decisions, which could be bad, but doesn’t seem like it would top the list of “things thou shalt not build”.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#205

Post by cantsingh »

wruza wrote: post #184
dexwiz wrote: post #53

Everyone is this thread immediately went to mind readers as interrogation. But what about introspection? Many forms of teaching and therapy exist because we are incapable of self analyzing in a completely objective way. Being able to analyze your thought patterns outside your own head could lead to all sorts of improvements. You could find which teaching techniques are actually the most effective. You could objective…

Automatic logs would be cool. It’s not only introspection itself that is hard but also that you have to remember to introspect and write down events for further analysis. Assuming you can trust the precision.

Ugh, exactly. I'd kill to get a stacktrace of the mind.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#206

Post by blharr »

southerntofu wrote: post #142
drzzhan wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it noise-to-signal ratio? Sorry I don't know much about the field but that sounds like something can shutdown ideas like "we can put eeg into transformer and it will work". So may I ask what reference papers that I need to know on this?

Not from that field, but "reading" the brain means electromagnetism. In real life, EM interference is everywhere from lights, electric devices, cellphone towers... EVERYWHERE. Parent meant brain waves are weak to detect compared to all surrounding interference, except when a lab faraday cage blocks outside interference then the brain becomes "loud" enough to be read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_rati…

I don't think electronic interference is the problem. Cellphone towers and electronics operate at GHz and MHz, which are different frequencies than brainwaves. Interference seems to typically be labeled by a "Signal to Interference" ratio rather than signal to noise. From my understanding, noise is still inherently present even in a faraday cage, through things like thermal noise and amplifier noise, which is why the poster mentioned you still have to perform signal processing over very long intervals to remove noise.

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#207

Post by burning_hamster »

yreg wrote: post #188
laserbeam wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my understanding, NeuraLink is just a research project thaf musk invested into and did some PR for. I wouldn't read into it more than that. Like any other similar BCI research project feel free to ignore it until papers are published. That is, unless you are involved in the field.

In my understanding it is a research project that has a lot more funding than others in the field and therefore it might be better positioned for a breakthrough. Am I mistaken?

Throwing a lot of money at one single approach doesn't validate that approach or make it magically successful. It gives one group of people the ability to try out more than just one idea (unlike typical grants that let you maybe work on 0.5-1.5 ideas at best). Sure, their second idea will be better than their first, but is their fourth idea still going to be better than their third?

Historically, throwing some money at a lot of approaches & different groups of people tends to yield better results in the long run (see cancer & AIDS research that have received a lot of funding in recent decades).

Re: BrainGPT turns thoughts into text

#208

Post by sebastiennight »

d-lisp wrote: post #131
empath-nirvana wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people not think of _anything_ while they're reading besides the text that they're reading? I think of all kinds of other stuff while I'm reading books.

Not reading a whole page, without noticing it, by effectively looking at it and letting your eyes run through its line while thinking about something completely different is peak literature.

LOL. Your comment made me realize I had been eye-scanning (without reading) down the thread for a while. I felt caught in the act!
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