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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

#61

> 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). I'd be interested in knowing how this metric changes over time as the user gains more experience with the BCI device. The article mentions that researchers recorded his neural activity while he was thinking abou…

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.

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m pretty skeptical of people that make this claim. It’s just surprising to me that a base level feature would work so differently. I’d expect some variation in models (like that old Feynman video about counting), but if you can speak and use language it’s hard for me to accept literally no internal voice is going on. I’ve always kinda suspected people making this claim are lacking introspection to such an extreme e…

A few thoughts:

- Maybe!

- Don't accidentally get caught in the fallacy of "how I experience existence must be how everyone does

- Is it possibly just a semantic distinction at that point? If you are completely consciously unaware of an internal voice that speaks your language, does it matter if it's there or not?

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

#65

> 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). I'd be interested in knowing how this metric changes over time as the user gains more experience with the BCI device. The article mentions that researchers recorded his neural activity while he was thinking abou…

My hypothesis would be yes.

You need to establish the initial feedback loop somehow and imagining writing is a good way to do it. But once you have it I’d suspect you could get faster doing what you’re describing.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m pretty skeptical of people that make this claim. It’s just surprising to me that a base level feature would work so differently. I’d expect some variation in models (like that old Feynman video about counting), but if you can speak and use language it’s hard for me to accept literally no internal voice is going on. I’ve always kinda suspected people making this claim are lacking introspection to such an extreme e…

I truly believe this can be quite different between people. Personally I don't have "a" inner voice, but a quorum of three, all of which together form "my" thoughts

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It sounds peaceful. Do you experience it that way?

I’m curious about this too. I definitely experience my endless inner monologue as “compulsive thinking.” Even when I have nothing interesting to think about my mind keeps chattering on endlessly and I find my thoughts in that state tend to be more anxious in nature.

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

#68
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work like this. Braingate (and all brain implants of this nature) require very active effort/cooperation in order to produce output. Here's what it feels like: - Imagine, very hard, the act of moving your arm to write a message. - Do everything that you would do to speak a word, except the actual act of articulating a word. Get as close as you can while stopping the actual muscles involved from firing. T…

Really wouldn't surprise me if they figured out a way to do this in an unsupervised way though. (We might be decades from that though who knows.)

Maybe you could even do supervised by force-feeding known stimuli a la Clockwork Orange.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m pretty skeptical of people that make this claim. It’s just surprising to me that a base level feature would work so differently. I’d expect some variation in models (like that old Feynman video about counting), but if you can speak and use language it’s hard for me to accept literally no internal voice is going on. I’ve always kinda suspected people making this claim are lacking introspection to such an extreme e…

Is it that much different from aphantasia? My sister cannot "see" anything in her mind at all, whereas for me mental images are so strong that I sometimes stop seeing the world in front of my eyes in favor of the one in my head. That's a pretty radical difference in a "base level" feature.

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

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty skeptical of people that make this claim. It’s just surprising to me that a base level feature would work so differently. I’d expect some variation in models (like that old Feynman video about counting), but if you can speak and use language it’s hard for me to accept literally no internal voice is going on. I’ve always kinda suspected people making this claim are lacking introspection to such an extreme e…

A few thoughts: - Maybe! - Don't accidentally get caught in the fallacy of "how I experience existence must be how everyone does - Is it possibly just a semantic distinction at that point? If you are completely consciously unaware of an internal voice that speaks your language, does it matter if it's there or not?

I’m with you on 2, but it doesn’t seem like just me - it seems like vast majority except the occasional person claiming it’s different for them.

It’s not a semantic distinction to me, since the mechanism underlying it would then be the same and it’d just be their recognition of it that varied which is way less surprising.

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