Machine translation of cortical activity to text with encoder–decoder framework • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by BickNowstrom » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

comex wrote: post #88

BickNowstrom wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you are splitting hairs here. Lie detection is necessarily a part of interrogation. The references say they can do this, and have been interested in doing it, so why wouldn't they be using it? The nature of intelligence agencies demands a certain degree of secrecy/anonymity and conjecture. One author of the fourth paper, though never directly researching military or government applications, moved from the U.S.…

> The references say they can do this, and have been interested in doing it, so why wouldn't they be using it? I'm not trying to split hairs. It is possible that, despite the interest, the technology isn't at a state where it would actually be useful in practice. However, your new citation is stronger.

The errors and bias in these systems add to the ethical concerns. While it is arguably a good thing to substitute torture with brain image interrogation, there is a risk of putting too much trust in these systems, subjecting innocents to days of leading investigation, just because the computer said there is something to be found there.

Israeli airport security (arguably the best in the world) deploys derivatives of these systems, that look at micro-gestures, elevation of heart rates, pupil dilation, and temperature changes, to see if passengers respond with familiarity to terrorist imagery flashed on a screen as they walk by it. If that already works in practice, imagine the same, but being strapped with hundreds of sensors.

See also the 2010 research on image reconstruction from brain activity, and extrapolate that 10 years in the future and applied to military interrogation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsjDnYxJ0bo

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

#92

Post by mattkrause » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

BickNowstrom wrote: post #87

comex wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of your references say that anyone has used fMRI for interrogation, let alone for decades. At most, your first two links say that the CIA and DoD respectively are interested in using fMRI for lie detection, but that's not necessarily the same as interrogation (both agencies currently use polygraphs extensively on their own employees, a case where the subject would be cooperative), and they don't say the agencies…

I feel you are splitting hairs here. Lie detection is necessarily a part of interrogation. The references say they can do this, and have been interested in doing it, so why wouldn't they be using it? The nature of intelligence agencies demands a certain degree of secrecy/anonymity and conjecture. One author of the fourth paper, though never directly researching military or government applications, moved from the U.S.…

On purely technical grounds, I'm a little suspicious of that quote.

CT scans don't tell you anything about brain function (they're structural), nor do the sort of MRIs that do tell you about brain function tend not to use contrast agents. People have used iron oxide to measure changes in cerebral blood volume, but it swamps the BOLD signal that's usually used to read out task-related activity.

On the other hand, I can imagine that you could figure out if a non-cooperative subject knew the word "SEMTEX" was actually a word with an oddball paradigm. Not sure how much that really helps but...

Also, the source you're quoting actually seems decidedly skeptical about whether any of this works. Here's Mark's paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1005479

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

#93

Post by BickNowstrom » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #92

BickNowstrom wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you are splitting hairs here. Lie detection is necessarily a part of interrogation. The references say they can do this, and have been interested in doing it, so why wouldn't they be using it? The nature of intelligence agencies demands a certain degree of secrecy/anonymity and conjecture. One author of the fourth paper, though never directly researching military or government applications, moved from the U.S.…

On purely technical grounds, I'm a little suspicious of that quote. CT scans don't tell you anything about brain function (they're structural), nor do the sort of MRIs that do tell you about brain function tend not to use contrast agents. People have used iron oxide to measure changes in cerebral blood volume, but it swamps the BOLD signal that's usually used to read out task-related activity. On the other hand, I ca…

Heh, this conversation moved the goalpost so far that it ended up at the beginning. A needless detour. You are right about being skeptical if any of this decade underway technology actually works and this causing ethical problems. Good day.