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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

#41

Post by T-A »

LadyCailin wrote: post #21
savant_penguin wrote: post #13

> (Don't think this nurse is hot! Don't think this nurse is hot! Holy shit she's hot.) > (You can do this) > (OMG, is it on already?) > (You can do this) > (What a nice bottom) > (Don't think bottom you idiot) > (She's entering the room, think something else, now, fast, bunny bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny, you got this)

I was just thinking about how, once this technology is perfected, at how easy it will be to interrogate high value prisoners. Just pop one of these in their head, and tell them not to think about the top secret or incriminating stuff.

Check out the interrogation scene in "Ghost Fleet" (2015).

It's excerpted here if you don't want to read the whole book:

https://gizmodo.com/how-ghost-fleet-nails-the-perfect-vision...

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

#42

Post by breakfastduck »

bawana wrote: post #33

This too will be weaponized. How? Capture a North Korean official, put one of these in his brain and siphon off all the juicy intel. Capture a narco trafficker. ditto. Capture a terrorist. ditto. Have we made the world better? It seems that whenever we develop ANY device for improved information processing, it disrupts the world we live in and displaces the uniquely human style of information processing-rendering hum…

I think you are overestimating the power this kind of stuff has.

Quite a big leap from being able to identify a letter someone is thinking of REALLY HARD with the express purpose of making the software recognize it to randomly implanting something in someones brain and being able to browse through their thoughts.

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

#43

Post by Frost1x »

funnyflamigo wrote: post #8
jonplackett wrote: post #5

The next truly massive tech revolution will have to be something even we tech peeps reject. And I think bodily embedded stuff would do the trick. It could be amazingly effective though if this is where we’re at already. Imagine the speed and enjoyment increase for anything from typing to gaming to driving a car. You’d get completely left behind if you rejected it.

> In tests, the man was able to achieve writing speeds of 90 characters per minute (about 18 words per minute), with approximately 94 percent accuracy (and up to 99 percent accuracy with autocorrect enabled). Don't get me wrong I'm sure there will be advances. But this current tech is based off reading nerve data meant to be movement data - the user needs to mentally trace each letter. So I don't see this form of the…

>this current tech is based off reading nerve data meant to be movement data - the user needs to mentally trace each letter.

I just thought about tracing out a letter as to how I might write it and it took me a second or so per letter, around the speed I actually write I'd guesstimate, and I can't write anywhere near 90 characters in in minute, probably because my brain has adapted to sync with my hand speed. I'm curious whats actually meant by "tracing" for movement signals because I'm either slow at this or it means something a bit different. I can easily type 90 characters a min but in a lot of cases its rote memorized patterns for words I'm thinking of in sequence (I'm not really thinking of individual letters in words, just words as a known pattern of keystrokes), at least I think that's how I think.

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

#44

Post by ceejayoz »

clircle wrote: post #36

How do you measure accuracy? Is there another way the man can communicate? edit: The researchers compared the BCI output to a prompt that T5 was supposed to restate. I was thinking that T5 was communicating without prompts in the experiment. This isn't my idea of translation accuracy, but you've got to have some baseline.

"A man paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury" typically can still talk.

If not, there's blinking/mouth controls like Stephen Hawking.

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

#45

Post by IggleSniggle »

funnyflamigo wrote: post #14
EGreg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple ... how about mentally tracing over a keyboard like Swype?

Question to anyone that knows - I know that actively "imagining" movements/activities is neurologically _very_ similar in many ways, which is why it works here for BCI. Do these "imagined" thoughts develop muscle memory? Anyway, assuming they do, I'm not sure if it'd be a real advantage over physically swyping with your finger (for those that can obviously) - it seems like they'd be roughly equivalent? Actually that'…

From the research that I recall from a decade ago when I was much more into BCI, I'm not sure there's a significant difference. And just like with a swipe-keyboard, accuracy will be hit or miss but be partially dependent on trained feedback mechanisms to hone towards a set of patterns.

Those that train on a BCI from an early age will "type" significantly faster and more naturally (as if at the speed of thought) than those that do not. There's a natural limit to idea-formation => symbol-formation => symbol-expression. Those that have trained on keyboards are able for this to fly from their fingers with only a slight delay; those that speak at something like "auction-speed" are mostly executing verbal macros: ie, it's just a single thought/action, highly trained so that it can manifest at high speed.

I can retype the entirety of the text above with just a few actions: cmd-A, cmd-C, ->, cmd-P. Performing a novel action, however, moves at a different speed entirely.

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

#46

Post by jerf »

LadyCailin wrote: post #21
savant_penguin wrote: post #13

> (Don't think this nurse is hot! Don't think this nurse is hot! Holy shit she's hot.) > (You can do this) > (OMG, is it on already?) > (You can do this) > (What a nice bottom) > (Don't think bottom you idiot) > (She's entering the room, think something else, now, fast, bunny bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny, you got this)

I was just thinking about how, once this technology is perfected, at how easy it will be to interrogate high value prisoners. Just pop one of these in their head, and tell them not to think about the top secret or incriminating stuff.

I'm not going to pay for the article, but note there's a big difference between sticking this device on a guy and him having to learn how to use it deliberately, versus sticking something on your head and reading your internal monologue. This is almost certainly something the man had to do with great deliberation and effort, not something that was magically reading his mind.

I'm not convinced a device to read your internal monologue from the outside is even possible, or if it is, it may be very, very large. A device that sees you're conducting one, perhaps, but reading out the contents externally? I'm not sure it could gather enough information and training data to ever decode it. (That is, my point is more information theoretic than technological.)

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

#47

Post by Levitz »

ceejayoz wrote: post #44
clircle wrote: post #36

How do you measure accuracy? Is there another way the man can communicate? edit: The researchers compared the BCI output to a prompt that T5 was supposed to restate. I was thinking that T5 was communicating without prompts in the experiment. This isn't my idea of translation accuracy, but you've got to have some baseline.

"A man paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury" typically can still talk. If not, there's blinking/mouth controls like Stephen Hawking.

It would also be easy enough to make him memorize some text and attempt to replicate it, would it not?

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

#48

Post by melling »

savant_penguin wrote: post #13

> (Don't think this nurse is hot! Don't think this nurse is hot! Holy shit she's hot.) > (You can do this) > (OMG, is it on already?) > (You can do this) > (What a nice bottom) > (Don't think bottom you idiot) > (She's entering the room, think something else, now, fast, bunny bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny, you got this)

“ translates his imagined handwriting into actual text.”

Not sure why people love to skip any interesting conversation and immediately run into the weeds.

Imagine if we worked as hard at solving the actual problem rather than discussing all the things that could go wrong.

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

#49

Post by mimimi31 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #17
savant_penguin wrote: post #13

> (Don't think this nurse is hot! Don't think this nurse is hot! Holy shit she's hot.) > (You can do this) > (OMG, is it on already?) > (You can do this) > (What a nice bottom) > (Don't think bottom you idiot) > (She's entering the room, think something else, now, fast, bunny bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny, you got this)

I feel like if we got a perfect transcript of our internal monologue, we’d all be shocked at how much we think but instantly forget.

Interestingly there are people like myself who don't have an inner monologue (some people supposedly even have a constant dialogue with themselves) at all. The only time I experience something like an inner voice is when reading. My normal thoughts are more abstract I guess, I'm just sort of aware of what I want to do, how I feel etc. It's hard to describe.

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

#50

Post by asimovfan »

Waterluvian wrote: post #17
savant_penguin wrote: post #13

> (Don't think this nurse is hot! Don't think this nurse is hot! Holy shit she's hot.) > (You can do this) > (OMG, is it on already?) > (You can do this) > (What a nice bottom) > (Don't think bottom you idiot) > (She's entering the room, think something else, now, fast, bunny bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny) > (Bunny, you got this)

I feel like if we got a perfect transcript of our internal monologue, we’d all be shocked at how much we think but instantly forget.

you can try meditation to have a go at just watching more closely.
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