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Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

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Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#71

Post by kensai »

hughw wrote: post #34
bognition wrote: post #10

Really cool to see progress made here but this won't be available for public use any time soon (likely decades). One of the biggest challenges with decoding brain signals is getting a large number sensors that detect voltages from a very localized region of the brain. This study was done with ECoG (Eletro-Cortico-Gram) which involves implanting small electrodes directly on the surface of the brain. Nearly all consume…

Seismologist here. The problems you describe sound reminiscent of those in seismic imaging. Ideally you'd bury geophones below the weathered layer (typically 3 m) at the surface, to get ideal coupling. In practice that's not economic at scale, and so you plant them on the surface, and account for the non-linear wave transmission through the weathered layer by clever math and by collecting more samples. There's been a…

Neurologist here. There is an inherent problem of physics. The skull acts as a low-pass filter of the brain's activity. You lose a lot of information if you don't go under the skull.

I don't think EEGs can really give the spatial and temporal resolution we really need to extract the necessary information for thought decoding (or encoding).

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#72

Post by mattkrause »

BickNowstrom wrote: post #51
Ajedi32 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the limiting factor here isn't the implant technology. [...] The issue is there are ethical implications for performing such an invasive brain surgery on a healthy person. That sounds like a limitation of the implant technology to me. The reason there are ethical problems with performing invasive brain surgery on a healthy person is because the risks and downsides of currently available implant technology…

There are quite a few ethical problems. On the reading side, there is interrogation (of suspected spies or terrorists), which is already decades underway with fMRI, and brainjacking (a keylogger for your thoughts). As for deep brain stimulation, this is researched to create fearless soldiers, change sexuality, extremely painful torture, radio control movements, and alter emotional states. Even for patients who suffer…

Got some references for "decades" of fMRI interrogation (or, really, anything else)?

As far as I know, decoding is challenging with totally cooperative subjects doing simple tasks. Wiggling just a few mm is enough to completely destroy a run.

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#73

Post by youareostriches »

kensai wrote: post #71
hughw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seismologist here. The problems you describe sound reminiscent of those in seismic imaging. Ideally you'd bury geophones below the weathered layer (typically 3 m) at the surface, to get ideal coupling. In practice that's not economic at scale, and so you plant them on the surface, and account for the non-linear wave transmission through the weathered layer by clever math and by collecting more samples. There's been a…

Neurologist here. There is an inherent problem of physics. The skull acts as a low-pass filter of the brain's activity. You lose a lot of information if you don't go under the skull. I don't think EEGs can really give the spatial and temporal resolution we really need to extract the necessary information for thought decoding (or encoding).

I’m curious of your opinion on Openwater: https://www.openwater.cc/technology

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#74

Post by Ajedi32 »

BickNowstrom wrote: post #51
Ajedi32 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the limiting factor here isn't the implant technology. [...] The issue is there are ethical implications for performing such an invasive brain surgery on a healthy person. That sounds like a limitation of the implant technology to me. The reason there are ethical problems with performing invasive brain surgery on a healthy person is because the risks and downsides of currently available implant technology…

There are quite a few ethical problems. On the reading side, there is interrogation (of suspected spies or terrorists), which is already decades underway with fMRI, and brainjacking (a keylogger for your thoughts). As for deep brain stimulation, this is researched to create fearless soldiers, change sexuality, extremely painful torture, radio control movements, and alter emotional states. Even for patients who suffer…

I would consider those to be ethical problems with specific applications of brain-machine interface technology, not with the implantation process itself.

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#76

Post by IdiocyInAction »

salawat wrote: post #69
stainforth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you continue about your opposition to it existing?

It's a social crisis waiting to happen, especially if you can end up decoding more than just what someone uses their speech centers to articulate. This is invasive to the extreme, and seems to open the door for violations of people's intimate thoughts down the road. You may not think about it much now, but if you pay any attention to things like intrusive thoughts, or even have to deal with carefully maintaining a pu…

> Before anyone points out that the same moral outrage probably occurred with the printing press; there is a big damn difference between changing someone's mind through pamphlets, and having a direct link to the limbic system to tickle on a whim.

I've recently read a short story from Ted Chiang likened the development of writing to a fundamental cybernetic enhancement of the brain. I found it to be quite enlightening, as I never thought of how writing changes how we see ourselves and the environment. Our memories are imperfect and inaccurate and amplify biases we have, while writing loses much less information.

> just look at how destructive targeted advertising has been

Can you elaborate? Targeted advertising doesn't even make my top 100 of destructive technologies.

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#77

Post by Ajedi32 »

jawns wrote: post #43
Ajedi32 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the limiting factor here isn't the implant technology. [...] The issue is there are ethical implications for performing such an invasive brain surgery on a healthy person. That sounds like a limitation of the implant technology to me. The reason there are ethical problems with performing invasive brain surgery on a healthy person is because the risks and downsides of currently available implant technology…

> If getting a brain implant were as cheap, easy, and safe as getting a tattoo, the ethical problem would be largely solved. But how realistic is that? Your brain is a vital organ. It's encased in a hard skull. There is very little margin for error. It just doesn't strike me as the sort of procedure that could ever be made as cheap, easy, and safe as getting a tattoo -- at least not in our lifetime.

I intentionally picked an extreme example to illustrate my point, which is that most of the ethical concerns with giving people brain implants are function of the drawbacks of currently available implantation technology; not fundamental issues with the concept itself.

Obviously we won't be getting things quite to the level of cost and safety as tattoos anytime in the near future. Even Elon Musk's goal with Neuralink is somewhat less ambitious; he only wants it to be as safe and convenient as LASIK.

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#78

Post by BickNowstrom »

mattkrause wrote: post #72
BickNowstrom wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few ethical problems. On the reading side, there is interrogation (of suspected spies or terrorists), which is already decades underway with fMRI, and brainjacking (a keylogger for your thoughts). As for deep brain stimulation, this is researched to create fearless soldiers, change sexuality, extremely painful torture, radio control movements, and alter emotional states. Even for patients who suffer…

Got some references for "decades" of fMRI interrogation (or, really, anything else)? As far as I know, decoding is challenging with totally cooperative subjects doing simple tasks. Wiggling just a few mm is enough to completely destroy a run.

The brain can't lie (2003)

> Brain scans can reveal how you think and feel, and even how you might behave. No wonder the CIA and big business are interested.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/nov/20/neuroscience...

Technology vs. Torture (2004)

> Indeed, a Pentagon agency is already funding Functional MRI research for such purposes.

https://slate.com/culture/2004/08/how-technology-will-elimin...

The Legality of the Use of Psychiatric Neuroimaging in Intelligence Interrogation (2005)

> For example, an interrogator could present a detainee with pictures of suspected terrorists, or of potential terrorist targets, which would generate certain neural responses if the detainee were familiar with the subjects pictured. U.S. intelligence agencies have been interested in deploying fMRI technology in interrogation for years. It now appears that they can.

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

Zero-Shot Learning with Semantic Output Codes (2009)

> As a case study, we build a SOC classifier for a neural decoding task and show that it can often predict words that people are thinking about from functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) of their neural activity, even without training examples for those words.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/theo-73/www/papers/zer...

Anecdotal hearsay: I first heard of a brain reading helmet able to successfully reconstruct a numerical password on subjects where the helmet was not trained on (but who consciously had to think about the keycode) in 2001. I also heard this technology was used extensively in Guantanamo Bay and black sites, possibly as a cheap trick to intimidate prisoners into speaking the truth / making them visibly anxious to lie, such tricks dating back to the world wars where they used sedatives and/or uppers disguised as "truth serums", and even the threat of administering these caused subjects to crack.

As for unethical deep brain stimulation research see:

- Assessment of Soviet Electrical Brain Stimulation Research and Applications (1975) https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792...

- Robert Galbraith Heath (1953+) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath

> Dr Heath's work on mind-control at Tulane was partly funded by the US military and the CIA. Dr Heath's subjects were African Americans. In the words of Heath's collaborator Australian psychiatrist Harry Bailey, this was "because they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals". Following the discovery by Olds and Milner of the "pleasure centres" of the brain [James Olds and Peter Milner, "Positive Reinforcement Produced by Electrical Stimulation of the Septal Area and Other Regions of the Rat Brain," Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47 (1954): 419-28.], Dr Heath was the main speaker at a seminar conducted by the Army Chemical Corps at its Edgewood Arsenal medical laboratories. Dr Heath's topic was "Some Aspects of Electrical Stimulation and Recording in the Brain of Man." Details of Dr Heath's own involvement in the MK-ULTRA project remain unclear; but Tulane University continues to enjoy close ties with the CIA. Dr Heath also conducted numerous experiments with mescaline, LSD and cannabis.

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#79

Post by 2008guy »

erohead wrote: post #48
2008guy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon musk said on stage that they had put it in a monkey and had the monkey move a cursor with it. I’ve been following musk very closely since 2010 and he’s never blatantly lied so I think this will not be the first time. He has made errors about timelines and etc but never, ever blatantly lied about something so concrete. And it’s plausible to boot.

> never blatantly lied. Funding secured

It wasn’t a lie...

Re: Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework

#80

Post by 2008guy »

stainforth wrote: post #57
2008guy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inflammation and damage is seen in traditional arrays that are large and rigid. A thread with low enough moment of inertia will likely not cause as much damage. And the damage is only important if you put the electrodes in an important place... we currently screw two giant lag screws into people’s heads and call it “deep brain stimulation” so I feel optimistic about the long game. But you’d still be right to be w…

Can you continue about your opposition to it existing?

The human brain doesn’t change on a human timescale. Where there is variability there is natural selection. Do you think the world will select for friendliness?
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