Mindhunter. Mind reading is now a reality

Researchers at the University of California said they had succeeded in inventing the mind-reading machine, the British newspaper Daily Mail reported, citing a study published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. According to scientific trials, the superior temporal gyrus and the surrounding areas of the brain play a key role in speech analysis. In their work, scientists describe neural speech recognition, on which the technology is based. Let’s figure out how real it is.

How does the miracle machine work?

Through the neural activity of the human brain, the machine is able to translate thoughts and display them in text form in real-time. In this way, the device receives neural signals and recovers speech information from brain activity. The mind-reading process happens instantly. As the authors say, the invention interprets the consonant and vowel combinations that we use to construct sentences in our brains with an accuracy rate of over 90%.

What results did the device show?

Study leader David Moses emphasized that to date, no study has shown such results. The machine has demonstrated how to construct sentences using neural signals. He added that the performance shown by the machine in the study showed that the invention did indeed have the potential to become a platform for the proposed speech prosthetic device.

Why does humanity need a mind-reading machine?

The main idea of ??this technology is to help people with disabilities “find a voice”. Scientists believe the device will help people with disabilities who are unable to speak or move. Researchers claim that a mind-reading machine is capable of registering and analyzing even words that were previously unfamiliar to it.

Should you trust such a loud technology?

On the one hand, the invention will make a splash in the medical field and will help people who cannot speak. The presented device will become their voice. However, the machine also has a dubious side: the control of the issued information, or rather its absence. Critics of this technology were apprehensive: like all people, the dumb have thoughts that they would not want to cover. That is, they may lose the right to secrecy.

Do not forget about the possible disastrous consequences of the invention. Take Alfred Nobel and his mining dynamite, for example. It was intended for industrial purposes. The scientist did not take into account the destructive possibilities of the invention. Nobel believed that it was this property that would prevent its violent use. But thousands of people have been torn apart by “industrial” technology.

It is possible that the same can happen with the mind-reading machine: it was created for humanity and will be used against us. The developers of the machine, like Nobel in the distant 1866, pursue noble goals, but it is not known what such technology could turn out to be. Experts fear that the device will be used by intruders. Experts do not exclude the possibility that the technology will be adopted by the special services in order to expose secret information. The prospects for the invention are very daunting.

Will our thoughts be readable really soon?

The scientists themselves argue that the work presents only the initial efforts to create a system of neural speech recognition, although the result is very successful. The research itself is still an important prerequisite, a starting point in the creation of an integral system.

Scientists also emphasize the fact that the presented recognition methods can be successfully used in decoding speech from neural signals in the near future. But so far there is not enough evidence to claim the absolute success of the machine. It is reckless to refer to just one study, and besides, we have not yet seen the machine itself.

Is this the only development in mind reading?

There is one similar device that was shown to us. A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on the AlterEgo device. The device looks like a hearing aid but has a more attractive design. It attaches to the jaw and reads neuromuscular signals from the face through built-in electrodes. The hardware, MIT claims, is capable of reading “words in the head.”

According to Arnav Kapoor, one of the developers, the idea of the device is to create a unique platform that can expand the boundaries of human consciousness by uniting humans and machines. Unlike the invention of Californian scientists, it will be possible to enter into dialogue with AlterEgo: it will be able to respond using Siri or Google.

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