[HN Gopher] Gabe Newell on brain-computer interface technology
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Gabe Newell on brain-computer interface technology
        
       Author : sp3n
       Score  : 116 points
       Date   : 2021-01-25 15:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tvnz.co.nz)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tvnz.co.nz)
        
       | johnnybaptist wrote:
       | big fan of his point that the technology is moving so fast that
       | it doesn't make sense to lock-in and go mass market yet
        
         | VikingCoder wrote:
         | This sounds like the spaceship problem. Whenever you build a
         | spaceship to take people to another planet, it will be passed
         | by a later ship which was built to go faster.
        
           | skocznymroczny wrote:
           | Reminds me of my games of Civilization. Should I spend few
           | more turns to build additional engines to my spaceship, or
           | should I launch it now and risk being overtaken by a faster
           | ship.
        
             | ghostbrainalpha wrote:
             | In real life its so much more complicated than that.
             | Because choosing to "send ship now" will result in huge
             | amounts of progress in overcoming obstacles you could not
             | have known about until you actual began the project.
             | 
             | It seems like the answer is always send out a test ship as
             | fast as possible, knowing that it will absolutely be
             | overtaken by a ship with more engines AND the knowledge
             | gain from the first ship.
        
         | LeifCarrotson wrote:
         | I don't think that's quite right - it's more that they're a lab
         | and not a product manufacturer, so they _can 't_ decide to go
         | mass-market.
         | 
         | Even if they decided that they want to go public with a virtual
         | keyboard/mouse/controller and virtual heads-up display that you
         | use by wearing an electrode net, the current team would not be
         | able to make that pivot. End users won't be debugging Labview
         | sketches, spending weeks training a neural network to recognize
         | virtual keystrokes, or shaving spots on their scalp.
         | 
         | Personally, I expect that the V1 product here is approximately
         | just that: a game controller. A few buttons, a pointer, maybe a
         | little haptic feedback. It would be great for me if it
         | supported text input and output faster than a keyboard and
         | terminal, but I don't think that's likely to happen in an early
         | version.
         | 
         | Even less likely is that we're going to jump straight to The
         | Matrix. Valve needs to admit that, and be happy with a limited
         | version, instead of letting it fizzle out in the lab.
        
       | nabla9 wrote:
       | It will be horrible when you suddenly can't afford to subscribe
       | your brain extensions. It will be like severe brain damage.
       | 
       | Imagine living only half-life.
        
         | pugworthy wrote:
         | Reduced to a life of just using a crowbar and not talking t
         | anyone.
         | 
         | But all jokes aside, it could be brain damage, but drug
         | addiction might be a better analogy. It could be something that
         | takes time for neuroplasticity to repair or correct.
        
         | redwall_hp wrote:
         | That's a recurring thing in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Outside
         | of the protagonist, most people need a costly antirejection
         | drug for the augmentations that they're societally pressured to
         | have. Because they're otherwise uncompetitive in their work.
        
       | gnramires wrote:
       | One of the things I wish the most technologically is simply being
       | able to record my thoughts. Sometimes in the middle of a stream
       | of thought going back and putting it on paper, taking notes
       | disrupts the process somewhat. Also obviously translating visual
       | imagination and recollection is more difficult (more for someone
       | that wasn't trained artistically). My memory is imperfect too and
       | I've forgotten a few ideas I thought were amazing because I
       | didn't write them down at the right time.
       | 
       | I, for one, welcome the mind-reading devices.
       | 
       | I'm sure it'll be limited by physical contact so I'm not much
       | worried about some science fiction scenarios. However, the
       | implications for police are indeed worrisome, enough it should
       | warrant specific legislation as soon as possible (i.e. non-
       | consent mind reading should be made a grave crime, and a war
       | crime, as soon as the technology is available)
        
       | 5440 wrote:
       | I do a significant amount of breakthrough device fda/eu
       | regulatory work in the BCI area. For those interested, its worth
       | reading the FDA guidance: https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-
       | information/search-fda-guidan....
        
         | 5440 wrote:
         | Regarding security, I think people would be really freaked out
         | by the scope of attacks. One infusion pump I worked on this
         | year was succesfully attacked over 200 times.
        
           | throwsaways212a wrote:
           | That sounds interesting, is this a case of 200
           | vulnerabilities being found or 200 documented cases of
           | attacks against (production?) devices?
        
       | m463 wrote:
       | This is the kind of technology that needs ironclad opt-in
       | privacy.
       | 
       | Valve collects lots of data - that you can't turn off - and
       | doesn't let you opt out.
       | 
       | (see if you can ask them to stop collecting time played in games
       | or "achievements" or whatever)
        
       | pizza wrote:
       | It's pretty funny to me that the photo of Mr. Ambinder is now the
       | best evidence I know that Valve is still working on TF2
        
       | bullen wrote:
       | I think VR could use non-fresnel lenses and better ways to adapt
       | your vision in the headset, ironically the DK1&2 had lenscups
       | which now are found in zero headsets.
       | 
       | I keep my old glasses that are smaller to be able to fit them in
       | my vive, but that makes development inconcievable: Remove
       | terminal/monitor glasses and put on old glasses and then the
       | headset every time I need to test something in VR. Nope I'm not
       | doing that.
       | 
       | Also why are the media business still adding fake laughter and
       | annoying background music to everything they touch?
        
         | gen3 wrote:
         | I found out last week that there are prescription inserts for
         | headsets. I've yet to get mine, but as someone who wears
         | glasses the concept sounds awesome.
         | https://vroptician.com/prescription-lens-inserts/valve-index...
        
       | marmalar wrote:
       | this is a very appropriate thing for Valve to be working on
       | considering their logo
        
         | ghostbrainalpha wrote:
         | The logo may not be a coincidence, but more an expression of
         | Gabe Newell's life focus.
        
       | bwood wrote:
       | All the talk of implants makes me wonder what's possible without
       | a direct physical link to the brain. Like using an EEG to measure
       | brain signals and transform them into instructions, images, etc.
       | Here's some research where they use the EEG to train a model that
       | reconstructs what people are seeing in their visual cortex [0]
       | 
       | All the reconstructions are super low resolution, but I wonder
       | how much better they can get? I'd be much more open to brain-
       | computer interfaces if it didn't involve drilling through my
       | skull.
       | 
       | [0] https://scitechdaily.com/image-reconstruction-from-human-
       | bra...
        
         | yters wrote:
         | I have an OpenBCI headset that I have been messing with. Signal
         | is definitely noisy, but they've been able to get a degree of
         | mind control working, like flying little helicopters.
        
         | PH01 wrote:
         | Doesn't reconstruction like this rely on the decoding mechanism
         | being trained on the original images? This doesn't scale to
         | reconstructing any visual image, only to differentiating
         | between those the decoder has already seen.
         | 
         | It doubt very much that it reconstructs from the visual
         | cortext. That is a non-trivial task with fMRI which has a much
         | higher SNR than EEG.
        
           | mattkrause wrote:
           | Here's their preprint.
           | 
           | It's basically using a pretrained VGG network as a latent
           | space, which lets them synthesize images.
           | 
           | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/787101v3
        
         | malwarebytess wrote:
         | Tangentially related, but I wanted to post an article and a
         | paper.
         | 
         | I remember hearing way back around 2010 that Valve was messing
         | around with BCI's. Valve has as recently as 2019 talked about
         | EEG's and gaming [0]. Also recall reading about similar
         | concepts over a decade ago. [1]
         | 
         | [0] https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/24/valve-psychologist-
         | explor...
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://vpa.sabanciuniv.edu/phpBB2/vpa_views.php?s=4&serial=...
        
         | bognition wrote:
         | Most if not all of the very interesting signals are in the
         | 100hz - 10Khz range. These signals are also very low voltage
         | so. Add in that the skulls acts as a low pass filter and you
         | end up in a situation where you just will not be able to
         | recover the information needed to decode what the brain is
         | doing at the required resolution.
         | 
         | You can use ECoG which is like EEG but placed on under dura-
         | mater (a protective bag around the brain) but this is also
         | highly invasive. Also the spatial resolution is pretty bad. You
         | can get a hundred or so sensors in a few square centimeters.
        
           | PH01 wrote:
           | What signals do you mean? Brain waves measured in EEG
           | typically range from 0.5 Hz and above.
        
             | bognition wrote:
             | The signals you pick up between 0.5 Hz and 40Hz are mostly
             | likely "population" level signals or put another way the
             | average activity of millions of neurons spread across large
             | swaths of the brain. A good analogy re: trying to decode
             | the brain from EEG would be akin to trying to decode what
             | is going on in a soccer match but only using the noise of
             | the crowds.
        
               | PH01 wrote:
               | How are signals up to 10Khz generated? I thought the
               | absolute refractory period of a neuronal action potential
               | limits the rate at which they can fire.
        
               | mattkrause wrote:
               | From start to finish, an individual action potential
               | lasts about 1ms, followed by a few millisecond refractory
               | period. There is probably not much biologically-relevant
               | activity happening at faster timescales.
               | 
               | However, one often wants to "sort" spikes so that those
               | arising from individual neurons are grouped together. To
               | do so, you need to sample fast enough to capture the
               | shape of the action potential, not just the fact that it
               | happened. This usually requires sampling rates in the 10s
               | of kHz. (~30 kHz would be good).
        
               | PH01 wrote:
               | So, to be clear, the signal of interest does not go above
               | 1kHz.
               | 
               | Obviously if you want to sample a signal you have to use
               | a higher frqeuency.
        
               | mattkrause wrote:
               | Eh, it depends on what you're calling "the signal of
               | interest."
               | 
               | A spike train, the output of a neuron, can reasonably be
               | represented as a binary signal (1=spike, 0=no spike) at 1
               | kHz. In fact, I'd say this is nearly standard.
               | 
               | The neuron's membrane potential, a combination of its
               | current inputs, intrinsic properties, and recent history,
               | changes on faster timescales. Whatever processing the
               | brain does probably does not use this information itself,
               | but one probably wants access to it anyway for
               | experimental and practical reasons.
               | 
               | The signal that an extracellular electrode picks up isn't
               | that 1 kHz spike train. It's many of them mixed together
               | and you'll need finer features to tell them apart. In
               | other words, you can't just invoke Nyquist, sample at 2
               | kHz, and call it a day.
        
               | PH01 wrote:
               | Quite a lot simpler to seperate the mixed signals using a
               | modern multi-electrode array.
        
       | meee wrote:
       | The link below shows up on occasion and is a good reminder that
       | not only do we need to keep up with physical/practical trust but
       | philosophical as well.
       | 
       | https://marshallbrain.com/manna
       | 
       | (It explores implants and using them vs. being used by them.)
        
       | offtop5 wrote:
       | This scares me a bit.
       | 
       | Let's say you have certain nero indicators which indicate person
       | X may do Y .
       | 
       | Do you we then minority report lock up people.
       | 
       | At the same time , it's going to be amazing for people in a coma
       | or unable to communicate. We could have a fantastic amazing
       | world, where we effectively live forever via some type of matrix
       | like interface.
        
         | cambalache wrote:
         | Yes, they will do. People are claiming for other people to be
         | fired, disbarred or imprisoned for stupid tweets. Can you
         | imagine the cancel brigade and the big social media companies
         | in charge of this technology and its consequences?
        
         | px43 wrote:
         | Eh, we'll have software for detecting and correcting criminal
         | intent before the government gets its act together enough to
         | start arresting people preemptively.
        
         | swalsh wrote:
         | Worse yet, while the government may be banned from looking at
         | this data intrusively. We're likely to freely give it away to a
         | few large tech companies. Without limits on their use, their
         | power will only continue to grow.
         | 
         | To me the primary issue of our day at this moment, is we have
         | no users bill of rights. We are forced to use the services of
         | large tech companies to participate in modern life yet there
         | are few restrictions on their powers.
         | 
         | It's bad enough when it's our written thoughts. But the idea
         | that it can be my unwritten thoughts too... that scares the
         | heck out of me.
        
           | offtop5 wrote:
           | You have to just be careful who gets your data.
           | 
           | The less you use social media the happier you'll generally
           | be. No matter what you say the context around it can change
           | and your life destroyed with it.
           | 
           | Breaking out of the social media matrix has been one of my
           | best decisions, I was able to really live in 2019. Made tons
           | of friends as well as a few partners. All of this happened in
           | this place called reality.
        
           | Rastonbury wrote:
           | Imagine targeting advertising based on a certain state of
           | mind yikes
        
         | VRay wrote:
         | We're already there on foreign soil with Palantir's monitoring
         | software. You don't need to read people's brains to invasively
         | spy on them and arrest them without traditional probable cause
        
       | pugworthy wrote:
       | HP is getting into basic (compared to GabeN's ideas) work in this
       | area with the Omnicept VR headset. It looks like eye tracking,
       | pupillometry sensor, heart rate, and a face camera. Not direct
       | neurotechnology but none the less using data to better understand
       | and adapt to the user's response to VR.
       | 
       | https://www8.hp.com/us/en/vr/reverb-g2-vr-headset-omnicept-e...
        
       | Justsignedup wrote:
       | Heh. Remember back in the day when pacemakers were being hacked
       | remotely because admin passwords weren't even changed from the
       | default, on top of outdated wireless protocols? Oh right that's
       | today!
       | 
       | Hardware makers often aren't good at software, not to mention
       | software updates. And even that gets wonky, like when Microsoft
       | update got hijacked.
       | 
       | Point is, if we can't get IoT 100% right, or even 90% right, how
       | can we trust IoT with physical interfaces into our bodies? That's
       | the problem. And then what happens if the company who made your
       | implant goes out of business? What do you do when those updates
       | stop? Look at cellphones, supporting a cellphone for 2 years is
       | too much for most hardware makers, they rather never update it.
       | 
       | Point is, even if the tech is 100% possible, we're way too far
       | from business setups that allow for this to happen.
        
         | criddell wrote:
         | I don't recall where I first heard this, but I think it's true:
         | 
         | The theme of CES for the past decade has been _making products
         | worse through software_.
        
         | a_wild_dandan wrote:
         | These are all valid worries, but they all have the same
         | fundamental solutions as current products.
         | 
         | > if we can't get IoT 100% right, or even 90% right, how can we
         | trust IoT with physical interfaces into our bodies?
         | 
         | Trust is a risk-reward calculus for any product, whether it's
         | BCI, the microcontrollers in your car, or the (hopefully
         | uninfected) produce in your supermarket. Many folks will find
         | the BCI value outweighs the risks for some feature set that
         | matters to them.
         | 
         | > And then what happens if the company who made your implant
         | goes out of business? What do you do when those updates stop?
         | 
         | Certain applications will have to be designed and evaluated
         | with longevity or long-term support in mind. You don't need
         | that when talking about cellphones. You do for today's
         | pacemakers.
        
         | silicon2401 wrote:
         | Even worse, what if you have artificial eyes and one day the
         | manufacturer blocks your vision functionality because you did
         | something they disagree with politically? It used to be your
         | account would get banned, now with cancel culture you can be
         | banned from participating in media and society altogether,
         | tomorrow maybe your ability to participate in your own body's
         | functionality may be subject to the whims of the censors and
         | the morality police
        
           | kbenson wrote:
           | That seems stretch. People are getting accounts cancelled on
           | online services they use, where the companies feel they may
           | be morally or legally complicit in the message, or their
           | employees, who decide they don't want to employ that person.
           | I don't think most "cancelled" people are worried about their
           | grocery stores not accepting them, or any number of other
           | services where they aren't a platform used to further the
           | behavior people are upset about.
           | 
           | If you got eyes that required the internet to function you
           | made a poor and dangerous choice regardless of whether the
           | public or some company wants to punish you for some perceived
           | public behavior. If you got eyes that required some company
           | on the internet's continued acceptance of you as a client,
           | you made an even worse choice.
        
           | markdown wrote:
           | Anyone who signs away to a corporation their right to see
           | deserves whatever results from such an arrangement.
        
         | corysama wrote:
         | So, everyone needs to go back and watch the _Ghost in the
         | Shell: Stand Alone Complex_ series. In that world, pretty much
         | everyone has a few enhancements, visual and audio overlay
         | options are pretty much universal. Having your equipment hacked
         | is a super rare, state-actor-level event. But, the story is
         | focused on people who deal with events of that magnitude, so it
         | happens all the time in the plotline.
        
         | brundolf wrote:
         | And that's not even getting into the privacy aspect. I, for
         | one, reserve no excitement whatsoever for a world where we can
         | interface directly with computers. I'm just hoping that unlike
         | smartphones, it remains viably optional.
        
         | matz1 wrote:
         | The trick is I never expect anything to be 100% right, or even
         | 90% right. Even if they promise to be 100% right.
         | 
         | Either accept that it can broke or always have a backup plan.
         | 
         | >then what happens if the company who made your implant goes
         | out of business?
         | 
         | The company goes out of business doesn't always mean the
         | product stop working anymore.
         | 
         | If the product stop working then I'll look for
         | removal/replacement.
        
         | Balgair wrote:
         | > not to mention software updates.
         | 
         | Updates of any sort to the SW are generally very difficult to
         | do. The certification process for any medical device is hard
         | enough, let alone for implants, let alone for life-critical
         | implants, let alone the recertification process for an already
         | implanted life-critical device. This is why you'll see sonogram
         | machines running XP still, completely disconnected from the
         | larger internet [0].
         | 
         | The questions listed are mostly already considered and have
         | many mitigation strategies per the regulatory agency in charge.
         | There are _many_ other questions that people like the FDA
         | demand answers to.
         | 
         | One thing about the business side is that risk/reward ratio. In
         | medical development, FDA authorization typically occurs at the
         | 10-12 year mark for a product (though it varies widely).
         | Meaning that your start-up only gets the go-ahead to make money
         | after about a decade of investment. That said, once you get to
         | sell, you have an effective monopoly on the market. Hence the
         | costs of new drugs and devices being so insanely high; it's
         | that risk/reward imbalance on the business side.
         | 
         | [0] Another reason why IoT medicine is very difficult, among
         | _many_.
        
         | psyc wrote:
         | Like everything else, it will be imperfect, there will be
         | scandals, the occasional lawsuit, and we'll muddle through.
        
           | Ygg2 wrote:
           | Software scandals don't end up with people dead or extorted
           | at gun point. Yet.
        
             | headcanon wrote:
             | Technically that has happened:
             | https://www.bugsnag.com/blog/bug-day-race-condition-
             | therac-2...
             | 
             | But you're right, software bugs don't generally result in
             | lives lost, at least directly.
        
       | tartoran wrote:
       | > the experiences that you will have are things that you will be
       | created and edited for you [..] > sleep will now become an app
       | that you will run where you say I need this much sleep, I need
       | this much REM
       | 
       | I find this to go in a bizarre awkward direction. We as humans
       | have self regulating capabilities that are to be tapped with some
       | "self work". Is that a bad thing? Why are we trying to change
       | that and create an app to control bodily functions? Our brain is
       | perfectly capable of handling that and has been for millions of
       | years in our ancestors
        
         | rowanG077 wrote:
         | Please tell me in great detail how I can go to sleep within 15
         | minuten of laying in bed. I'm very open to self work.
        
           | tartoran wrote:
           | You need to learn to wind down. You can't expect to use your
           | brain intensely and then shut off. But you can start by
           | lowering the light, relaxing, stop using electronic devices,
           | etc. (though listening to something unexciting does induce
           | sleep). I also induce sleep by forced repeated yawing. Every
           | couple of forced yawns trigger a real one, and with that some
           | sleepiness. Another exercise I do is to imagine I lift my
           | arms/legs up and let them fall by my side, helps me to relax
           | my nervous system. I've done some meditation in the past and
           | it helped as well but I don't actively do it before bed but
           | you can absolutely try. Another thing that may or may not
           | work for you is white/pink/brown noise. I prefer quiet if I
           | could get it, sometimes that is impossible, e.g. having a
           | window facing car traffic so in that case white noise can
           | reduce the intensity of sudden sounds. So there is no formula
           | but a bunch of habits really do help.
        
           | ghostbrainalpha wrote:
           | My wife has sever insomnia and is having more success with
           | this than she did with prescription sleep aids.
           | 
           | https://choosemuse.com/
           | 
           | Being able to run "sleep" like its an app on your phone and
           | directly control your brain would be life changing for us. I
           | really hope it happens in our lifetime.
        
       | Geee wrote:
       | Imagine getting a cookie popup every time you look at something.
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Adbug
         | 
         | "While technically hostile, Adbugs do not directly attack Vault
         | Hunters. Instead, they follow their targeted Vault Hunter
         | around and beam a semi-transparent advertisement at them, which
         | is placed in a random position on the field of vision,
         | obscuring part of the field of view."
        
       | spike021 wrote:
       | I'm not a huge anime person, but there's one I've watched that
       | seems a bit relevant. In _Accel World_, they wear this thing on
       | their neck called a "Neurolink" and basically are able to connect
       | to things like the Internet or private networks (school, home,
       | hospital) wirelessly with it. I believe it takes over signals
       | coming to and from the brain. But they also have a wired
       | connection mode so they can do that or do a special direct, wired
       | connection with someone they are close to.
       | 
       | The ramifications of access like that are described surprisingly
       | well in the show.
       | 
       | For instance, two close friends (they're in a relationship but
       | young enough I'd just consider them close friends) use the direct
       | wired connection feature because they feel comfortable enough
       | doing so. But at some point one of them decides to use that
       | private access to plant a virus of sorts. While the purpose is
       | irrelevant here, it does show how brain connections, especially
       | between people, can become increasingly vulnerable.
       | 
       | The main plot point of the anime though, is this game application
       | that can be installed to the Neurolink, and basically it has the
       | ability to also wipe away or hide memories.
       | 
       | While what Newell is talking about is still a ways away, it's
       | interesting to consider exactly what we may need to be worried
       | about when the time comes.
        
         | accounted wrote:
         | There's a better version of that in Ghost in the Shell SAC. You
         | could have a cyber brain and connect to networks which could
         | include websites, devices, other people, and even have a direct
         | wired connection too.
        
       | Seanambers wrote:
       | Whoever added that background soundtrack should be shot.
        
         | tpoacher wrote:
         | Yeah I thought it was interfering with the interview too.
        
       | Minor49er wrote:
       | I thought that it was interesting that Gabe was using The Matrix
       | as a comparison for BCIs since that movie was a warning about
       | what this kind of tech could bring, but he did express a lot of
       | concern around more real-world ramifications around what this
       | technology could bring if it wasn't properly used or secured.
       | What he was describing then reminded me more of the movie Strange
       | Days where people would use neural connectors to record and play
       | back experiences from others, but amplifying the signal too much
       | would result in scrambled neurons.
        
         | corysama wrote:
         | Also reminds of "Better Than Life" from a cheesy, teen-sci-fi
         | _Shadowrun_ novel. The story starts out assuming _Strange Days_
         | -style neural recording and playback is a commonplace consumer
         | good. But, then quickly gets into highly edited experiences,
         | generated experiences, and eventually into overwhelming, drug-
         | like experiences.
        
       | johnnybaptist wrote:
       | I work at OpenBCI. It's been great getting to work with Gabe and
       | the Valve team. Can't overstate how unique they are as partners
       | on a project like this. Also cool to see OpenBCI (sortof) in the
       | top 10 today :)
       | 
       | Happy to answer any questions people have about OpenBCI
       | https://openbci.com/
        
         | farias0 wrote:
         | What is the timeframe you imagine for us to see the first
         | consumer BCI-based products?
         | 
         | Gabe seems to talk a lot about "inserting" data (like feelings)
         | into the brain, instead of reading it. Is the technology really
         | there already? Can we reliably read data from the brain (i.e.
         | using it as input for a digital system)? And regarding
         | inserting, what is the coolest thing you've done that you can
         | share with us?
        
           | johnnybaptist wrote:
           | Right now, OpenBCI makes products that only handle the "read"
           | side of the equation.
           | 
           | As far as "writing" back into the brain, the coolest thing
           | I've seen was the "BrainNet" project from University of
           | Washington which used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
           | 
           | https://www.washington.edu/news/2019/07/01/play-a-video-
           | game...
           | 
           | The science and tech is advancing very fast, but I think it's
           | not accurate enough to be in everyday use yet as a controller
           | for devices. 90% accuracy sounds great in a paper, but
           | imagine if your mouse clicks or keystrokes didn't register 1
           | out of 10 times.
           | 
           | What feels way more likely is that we'll see biometric data
           | being collected by more consumer tech devices (cellphones,
           | laptops, headphones) and used as one of many inputs to
           | improve software applications and operating systems. Could
           | EMG or EEG data be used to improve iOS autocorrect and reduce
           | fat finger mistakes? That's a mundane application for crazy
           | tech, but it's the kind of thing that I think will be a
           | necessary intermediate step in us learning how to use these
           | types of signals in everyday ways.
        
           | tashoecraft wrote:
           | Considering I own Neurosity's Notion: https://neurosity.co/,
           | which is a consumer BCI based product, I'd say a couple years
           | ago.
        
         | andygmb wrote:
         | In the area of BCI, what is the most "Science-Fictiony" thing
         | you have seen made into a reality?
        
           | johnnybaptist wrote:
           | I referenced this in my other reply, but this is one of the
           | ones that blew my mind:
           | 
           | https://www.washington.edu/news/2019/07/01/play-a-video-
           | game...
        
         | mentos wrote:
         | I often wonder about the parallels between reverse engineering
         | games using memory inspection software like 'cheat engine' to
         | trying to reverse engineer the brain using a BCI.
         | 
         | For example if you want to find the memory address for your
         | guns ammo you search for a start value in memory say '30', get
         | all addresses that match that value, fire the gun and then find
         | which of those addresses now have the value 29. Continue the
         | search until you narrow down the memory address to just one.
         | Then you can use that address to query the ammo for a 3rd party
         | program that alerts you that you're low on ammo or even write
         | to the memory address to give yourself more ammo..
         | 
         | Obviously the brain isn't as discrete but I feel like if I
         | could play around with a BCI I could find fun signals for when
         | I'm thinking about 'apples' vs 'oranges' and slowly build up an
         | interface.
         | 
         | Have you been able to use a BCI to detect when you're thinking
         | about something specific?
        
           | throwaway3699 wrote:
           | I thought about buying an OpenBCI kit to try something like
           | this, but I think there's just not enough sensor resolution
           | to get anything meaningful in the way you're suggesting. The
           | strongest signals by far come from muscle movement, too, so
           | that tends to be the basis of interfaces.
           | 
           | (FWIW: absolutely not an expert)
        
           | mattkrause wrote:
           | There's a huge chunk of neuroscience devoted to questions
           | like this.
           | 
           | Several groups have shown that they can "decode" a remembered
           | image from brain activity. This is comparatively easy when
           | the images are simple and there are only a few possibilities,
           | but can generalize to larger sets of images and even (sort
           | of) never-before-seen ones. Sensory and motor information is
           | relatively accessible; I don't know that anyone's making
           | great progress decoding thoughts like "I should be home by
           | 8pm".
           | 
           | If this is up your alley, you may want to check out work done
           | by Frank Tong's lab at Princeton (e.g.
           | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1808230/) or
           | Jack Gallant's group at UC Berkley (e.g, https://www.scienced
           | irect.com/science/article/pii/S105381191...), among others.
        
       | Old_Paris wrote:
       | That looks like an awful over complicated way of performing a
       | lobotomy.
        
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