[HN Gopher] Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts in...
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Brain implant translates paralyzed man's thoughts into text with
94% accuracy
Author : wlkr
Score : 403 points
Date : 2021-11-10 13:15 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| sam1r wrote:
| This is really awesome. Imagine getting paid to think one day...
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting that the imagined letters are single-stroke, with no
| pen lifting, somewhat like most of the PalmOS graffiti letter
| forms.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| Interesting that the user has to think of specific letters to
| spell out a word. I guess the 26 distinct English letters are
| much easier to parse and separate than the untold thousands of
| words, especially when those words could be used in different
| contexts.
|
| I bet the next step wouldn't be to even parse words to make a
| sentence. It seems to me the next low hanging fruit would be to
| enable this machine to parse common ideas. I wonder how complex
| it would be to translate full sentences like "Good Morning", "I
| gotta take a dump", or "I'm hungry". It doesn't seem like it
| would be that much of a leap, since the user already has to
| imagine the idea of different letters. Admittedly I have no idea
| how different those concepts are, or how they would express
| themselves in the brain to be interpreted by the machine.
| Communitivity wrote:
| That next step is a leap. I view it as the difference between
| parsing and processing spoken English and parsing and
| processing spoken Mandarin Chinese. The letters and numbers are
| 36 symbols to understand, plus capitalization and punctuation.
| Understanding words means mapping out the brain pathways for
| each word.
|
| There is actually a path for this that's been done before, in a
| way. Dragon Naturally Speaking was evolved this way.
|
| As I understand it, that evolution took decades.
|
| In 1952 Bell Labs came up with Audrey (Automatic Digit
| Recognition). Voice specific, and could only recognize numbers
| 0-9. This is where the OP linked Brain Computer Interface (BCI)
| is.
|
| In 1962 IBM revealed Shoebox at the World Fair. Shoebox could
| understand 16 English words. It would listen to the words and
| complete an instruction for example adding up numbers and
| providing the result.
|
| Harpy came in 1971. Funded by Darpa and developed through a
| collaboration between CMU, Stanford and IBM. Harpy cold work
| with ordinary speech and pick out individual words, but it only
| had a vocabulary of around 1000 words.
|
| In 1974, Kurzweil forms Kurzweil Computer Products (KCP) for
| development of pattern recognition technology.
|
| In 1976, KCP introduces the Kurzweil Reading Machine, combining
| three technological firsts.
|
| In 1982 Dr's Jim and Janet Baker launched Dragon Systems and
| prototyped a voice recognition system that was based around
| mathematical models. The Bakers were mathematicians and the
| system they came up with was based a hidden Markov model -
| using statistics to predict words, phrases and sentences.
|
| In 1983, Kurzweil Music Systems launches a keyboard synthesizer
| that accurately reproduces the sounds of acoustic instruments.
|
| In 1985, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence introduces the first
| speech-to-text computer program.
|
| In 1990, Dragon Dictate was launched as the first general
| purpose large vocabulary speech to text dictation system. This
| was a groundbreaking product for Dragon, but it required users
| to pause between individual words.
|
| In 1994, KurzweilVoice for Windows 1.0 is launched, bringing
| discrete speech command technology to the personal computer
| environment.
|
| In 1995, Kurzweil Technologies is founded.
|
| By 1997, the problem of having to pause between words had been
| overcome and Dragon Naturally Speaking v1 was launched, 45
| years after Audrey.
|
| In 1997, the Continuous Speech Natural Language Command and
| Control software is launched as Kurzweil Voice Commands; The
| Medical Learning Company is formed.
|
| In 2000, Kurzweil forms FAT KAT, Inc. to develop artificial
| intelligence that can make decisions about buying and selling
| on the stock market.
|
| Then in 2001 KTI introduced "Ramona," the virtual reality rock
| star.
|
| Yes, the last two have little (maybe even nothing) to do with
| speech recognition, but I found them interesting, so I thought
| you might too.
|
| The sources for the above are primarily:
|
| [1] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/kurzweil-
| te...
|
| [2] https://whatsnext.nuance.com/en-gb/dragon-
| professional/histo...
| LynxInLA wrote:
| I think the next step would be predictive text. Have 3+ symbols
| that correspond to a screen that is in the subject's eye line.
| Basically just leverage the current tech to streamline this.
| cookingrobot wrote:
| Note that this doesn't work by detecting his "imagined"
| letters. It's detecting him trying to move his paralyzed hand
| through the motion of drawing the letters on paper. By
| measuring the motor cortex activity it seems to be looking at
| something closer to an "output" of the brain rather than an
| internal representation. So detecting imagined letters or words
| or ideas seems like a different problem than this achievement.
| spiffytech wrote:
| Does this mean it's plausible to detect sign language instead
| of handwriting? I'd expect the WPM to be much higher there.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| A paralyzed man wrote a book by blinking when someone pointed
| at the right letter (sort of like how the guy stranded on Mars
| in book/movie The Martian sent messages to earth). This story
| was later made into the movie The Diving Bell and the
| Butterfly.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butter...
| tdeck wrote:
| This process seems like it would be so much more efficient if
| he'd learned to blink in Morse code instead.
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| Previous threads:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27134049
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27157369
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Neural implant lets paralyzed person type by imagining
| writing_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27134049 - May
| 2021 (183 comments)
|
| _Brain-Computer Interface User Types 90 Characters per Minute
| with Mind_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27157369 -
| May 2021 (40 comments)
|
| This is pretty similar but I guess it's different work:
|
| _Human use of high-bandwidth wireless brain-computer
| interface_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690126 -
| April 2021 (210 comments)
| fossuser wrote:
| I wonder if it'd be faster if you imagined typing instead of
| writing (obviously would require the patient to be a proficient
| typist).
| [deleted]
| caymanjim wrote:
| This was my first thought. Writing is incredibly slow. I can
| barely even operate a pen anymore. I don't see any reason why
| this mechanism couldn't be used on any thought patterns. If the
| subtle motions of typing aren't high-fidelity enough to be
| differentiated, I still wouldn't have chosen normal letter
| patterns; I'd design a new motion alphabet that is much easier
| and faster to "write" by thought.
|
| The article alludes to this:
|
| > the researchers say that alphabetical letters are very
| different from one another in shape, so the AI can decode the
| user's intention more rapidly as the characters are drawn,
| compared to other BCI systems that don't make use of dozens of
| different inputs in the same way
|
| The fact that it works so well on these complex motions means
| it can probably work better and faster if they use an alphabet
| with simpler--but still distinct--motions. Probably lots of
| lessons to be learned from shorthand and other rapid
| transcription techniques.
|
| Losing the ability to communicate scares the hell out of
| everyone. This is amazing progress. And it'll have plenty of
| applications even for able-bodied people.
| ThaJay wrote:
| I don't think it works like that. Letters are shapes but keys
| just are a relative position. The software is reading gestures,
| specific keypress motions seems much less data to work with.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think it's trained.
|
| "Imagine writing an A"
|
| Then they look at what fires and record it.
|
| Instead you'd ask "imagine typing an A" and then do the same
| thing.
|
| Eventually when brought training happens to capture variation
| you start to get visual feedback and can train faster.
| GOONIMMUNE wrote:
| > 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 about writing letters. Would the man eventually find
| that the system is more accurate or faster when he instead learns
| how to think "the thought that generates the letter A in my BCI
| device"? Fascinating stuff all around.
| seventytwo wrote:
| I'd be interested to compare this to an adult who is brand new
| to typing on a keyboard (if you could find one!).
|
| What's the typing speed and error rates over time as the
| subject practices? How do these compare to the progress with
| the BCI?
| endymi0n wrote:
| Conversely, T5 is 65 years old and just adapting to a
| completely new way of communicating at retirement age.
| Comparing that to the neuroplasticity of a far younger
| subject, I can see a high chance of this outperforming mobile
| typing. 10 fingers, I'm not so sure.
| mlatu wrote:
| i wonder how this would have performed on recognizing hanzi
| fossuser wrote:
| 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.
| mistermann wrote:
| I agree, and I'm a bit excited/worried if brain interfaces
| turn out to be kinda like smart handheld devices, years of
| failures until the essential "recipe" is discovered like the
| iPhone, followed by a tsunami of innovation, functionality,
| _and power_ - some realized, some not.
|
| Do we have adequate wisdom to wield the powers we are
| granting ourselves?
| 0xFreebie wrote:
| Long ago, the accuracy would decline as scar tissue formed
| around implanted electrodes. Not sure if that's changed in
| recent years as techniques improved.
| idrios wrote:
| How long ago is long ago? 7 years ago I took a course on the
| then-current state of the art for neural interfacing, and
| this was nowhere near a solved problem then. There was
| research going into emulating sea cucumbers, so the electrode
| could be stiff enough to penetrate the brain but then soften
| to avoid the build up of scar tissue. I think that research
| is still ongoing.
| Xevi wrote:
| I remember reading about the problem in an article posted
| on HN a couple of months ago, so I don't think it's solved
| yet.
| striking wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| This makes me wonder if "thinking about writing letters" is
| really an accurate description of what's happening. Was the
| subject merely _thinking_ about writing letters, or was he
| actually trying to write them, such that if he weren 't
| paralyzed his muscles would be moving to perform that task?
| striking wrote:
| The subject was instructed to actually try and write the
| letters; the AI they trained on the electrode outputs
| attempted to return pen stroke velocities.
| zivkovicp wrote:
| Amazing
| cs702 wrote:
| System diagram (how it works):
|
| https://github.com/fwillett/handwritingBCI/raw/main/systemDi...
|
| --
|
| Code and data (for replicating results offline):
|
| https://github.com/fwillett/handwritingBCI
|
| --
|
| Published paper (you can find its full contents online):
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03506-2
| dnautics wrote:
| yeesh it's an RNN and not even something like a transformer
| cs702 wrote:
| ...which means that even a modestly sized transformer model
| could do _significantly_ better.
| dnautics wrote:
| with a big heap of "maybe". Signal could be a limiting
| factor, but also come on, more than 99% correct? That's
| above the level of a non-professional human transcriber in
| most situations. I'm not sure that typing I get more than
| 99% correct, I've made at least six errors typing this
| sentence alone (though it's quick to fix).
|
| The real improvement, it seems would be to speed and
| latency, looking at the diagram, the sampling is over the
| course of 3 seconds, which is butt-slow. A good NN would be
| able to compressed patterns in the data stream and blat out
| more than one letter, or contextually learn letters in the
| word, or learn whole words, etc. But that is not, it
| appears, supported by the model.
| cs702 wrote:
| That's why I wrote "could," as opposed to "would" :-)
| savant_penguin wrote:
| > (Don't think this nurse is hot! Don't think this nurse is hot!
| Holy shit she's hot.)
|
| > (You can do this)
|
| > (OMG, is it on already?)
|
| > (You can do this)
|
| > (What a nice bottom)
|
| > (Don't think bottom you idiot)
|
| > (She's entering the room, think something else, now, fast,
| bunny bunny)
|
| > (Bunny)
|
| > (Bunny)
|
| > (Bunny, you got this)
| ugh123 wrote:
| certainly needs some kind of 'Confirm?' handling, however that
| would work..
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Imagine being in a meeting with your bosses and the "confirm"
| has a bug.
|
| > "Will this idiot please shut up and end the meeting"
|
| Everyone looks at you
|
| > "Shit"
| melling wrote:
| " translates his imagined handwriting into actual text."
|
| Not sure why people love to skip any interesting conversation
| and immediately run into the weeds.
|
| Imagine if we worked as hard at solving the actual problem
| rather than discussing all the things that could go wrong.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Good point, and we are! BCI is a rapidly growing field with
| plenty of academic and now industry groups working on all
| aspects of implantable devices, decode algorithms, etc.
| [deleted]
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| Relevant scene from a sci fi movie called "Chaos Walking"
|
| https://youtu.be/Od-0XFHlcto
| etrautmann wrote:
| This is a decode of attempted handwriting, so it's unlikely to
| have a leak of subconscious like this
| emsy wrote:
| Peak HN comment :D
| samstave wrote:
| Sooooo....
|
| A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I was dating an
| insanely hot girl...
|
| When she asked me to go get an STD test prior to us doing
| anything...
|
| I was 18 - and it was all good...
|
| So I go to the clinic and am awaiting to see what happens at
| said test...
|
| This ISANELY hot nurse comes in and tells me about the
| procedure and such and then leaves me in the room to disrobe...
|
| I sit there literally goin g through such thoughts in my mind
| "DONT GET HARD DONT GET HARD" etc...
|
| So I spend what feels like an eternitiy trying different
| thought methods to keep me distracted away from that amazingly
| beautiful nurse...
|
| Then the door opens.
|
| And in steps this troll of a person to do the actual
| procedure.... dealing with if I am flaccid is no longer a
| problem.
|
| A few years later my DAD told me about Whitehouse.com being a
| porn website...
|
| I check it out (this was lit. like 1999 or so)
|
| I find a nice video and the girl in the video was my super hot
| girlfriend who asked me for the STD test... and thats when I
| knew why.
|
| (BTW I'm now old and still flaccid.)
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| LOL. I think the system actually interprets you wanting to move
| your hand as if you're writing, like tracing each letter. It's
| not listening to your thoughts and transcribing. Actual
| thoughts are very non linear, I think. Transcribe that and it
| would be sort of like a Trump speech I guess. Lol
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I feel like if we got a perfect transcript of our internal
| monologue, we'd all be shocked at how much we think but
| instantly forget.
| divs1210 wrote:
| reminds me of a segment from HHGG in which a species started
| to make noise so they won't hear each others' thoughts.
| mhcolburn wrote:
| Or instantly regret and choose to forget.
| Verdex wrote:
| Feels almost like the setup for a horror story. It turns out
| everyone's inner monologue is saying absolutely terrifying
| things, but then we just immediately forget. Schizophrenia
| turns out to just be the ability to remember and notice the
| things we're all saying.
|
| And with that thought, I wonder if this sort of technology
| might be really useful for people with intrusive thoughts or
| schizophrenia, etc. Being able to objectively measure how
| well any given medication or therapy is working feels like a
| win to me.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I've had several occasions where some absolutely insane
| thought occurs to me during a wedding or a funeral. Makes
| me feel like a psychopath lol.
| ForgotIdAgain wrote:
| You are not alone :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My entire life whenever I'm having a face to face with
| someone, anyone at all, I get this urge to kiss them. No
| freaking clue why. Don't worry, I manage it effortlessly.
|
| Same with my urge to break the tension and jump onto
| train tracks.
|
| Same with just intensely inappropriate thoughts during
| formal events. Like wanting to stand up and scream the F
| word or something.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| 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.
| golergka wrote:
| May be you're like me? I have a lot of thoughts, I just
| don't use language internally to express them. It makes it
| hard sometimes to articulate what I'm thinking to another
| human being, but thinking through language, and especially
| in SPOKEN language seems so excruciatingly slow and
| ineffective I'm quite glad I don't have to do it in order
| to think.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I'm on the opposite side of that spectrum. I have such a
| strong internal dialogue that I talk to myself vocally when
| doing stuff. Not always, but very often.
| fossuser wrote:
| 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 extent that they
| don't even recognize the inner voice that's omnipresent.
| doliveira wrote:
| Does you inner monologue have an accent? Can you
| recognize a definite tone to it? I heard someone
| mentioning "I loved your accent, so I'll imagine you
| narrating my thoughts from now on" and the idea of your
| thoughts being pronounced in your mind with accents
| sounded completely alien to me.
| psyc wrote:
| I can apply any character voice I can imagine to the
| inner voice. The default that I "hear" most of the time
| isn't even my voice - the timbre is a bit lower and more
| neutral, and it lacks my distinctive vocal affectations.
| But if I want to hear it as an Irish woman, or whatever
| else, I just do. Perhaps it's relevant that I always did
| character voices and accents out loud as well, since I
| was a kid wanting to be an actor.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It is not surprising. That you can use verbal language
| does not mean something inside must use it continuously.
| In fact, it makes sense that it is used only when
| relevant. That you can move your hand does not mean you
| continuously use them. If an <<internal voice is going
| on>>, you are somehow letting it. This is especially
| valid for people with heightened introspection (owing to
| the higher control that internal assessment gives).
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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?
| fossuser wrote:
| 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.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Indeed, there are legions of non-dual meditation apps and
| meditation teachers who train people to deal with this
| inner voice in ways that are helpful.
|
| If such people were not rampant, I do not think these
| teachers and apps would be so popular.
| fossuser wrote:
| A lot of therapy is also focused around self-talk and
| rumination too.
| andrem wrote:
| Well here is one other random sample who has to turn the
| inner voice on when necessary :)
|
| Instead of a voice I have a constant song playing in my
| head when I am not focused. The song changes multiple
| times per week but if I am on idle I have a song.
|
| When I speak the song turns off, but no voice comes on,
| unless I consciously prepare my words.
|
| Now when typing this comment, I have a voice (which is my
| own voice) say the words I am about to type milliseconds
| before I type them.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I also have a song playing in my head most of the time
| (even while reading but not writing , like you). I'm a
| hobbyist musician; maybe that's part of it.
|
| But I also have an inner voice . I think the music stops
| when the voice starts, not sure.
|
| For the last week I've had "right down the line" by Gerry
| Raferty (70s pop song) playing.
| te0006 wrote:
| This repetetive inner soundtrack thimg can be really
| annoying sometimes, hampering or even killing
| concentration on "real thoughts". Any pro tips on how to
| turn that off? Best approach I found is bulldozing it
| over with a really powerful but not too
| beautiful/memorable song. The famous "rickrolling" piece
| seems to work OK for this. (I.e. not by actually hearing
| it, just by intentionally "playing it internally".)
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| This is the best thread on HN. Thank you everyone for
| being so goddamn interesting.
| [deleted]
| fontofzeor wrote:
| 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
| rileyphone wrote:
| probably better than a bickering Italian couple!
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/25/the-last-
| gre...
| fossuser wrote:
| That kind of variation isn't too surprising to me. The
| claim that there isn't one at all though I don't really
| buy.
| mach1ne wrote:
| If I would hazard a guess, I'd say it's possible that the
| region of the brain processing language has developed
| elsewhere than with your average human, leading to less
| connections from language (Broca's region) directly to
| auditory region.
|
| This hypothesis would explain hearing the inner monologue
| when reading, as reading actually transcribes visual data
| directly to their phonetic counterparts.
| jhedwards wrote:
| 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.
| romanhn wrote:
| I have also wondered if the two are related. I have
| aphantasia, and also the majority of inner monologue I
| experience is when sounding out words during reading.
| It's pretty much quiet all the time in my head (which I
| guess is not everyone's experience?) and much of the
| thinking seemingly happens at the conceptual level.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think it's different - there was an old post by an
| early FB employee who has no ability to visualize images
| after a head injury and has to adapt as a result for
| that.
|
| Thinking of images is also different than thinking of
| words (since all of us speak the language).
|
| I'm not saying it's impossible, but that I suspect its
| more likely a lack of introspection - I'd need to be
| persuaded empirically somehow and don't know how to test
| it.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Thinking of images is also different than thinking of
| words (since all of us speak the language).
|
| No more of speak the language than see with our eyes.
| Personally while I do have some kind of inner voice, my
| thoughts tend much more heavily to the visual. And
| memories too. If I need to recall a phone number or
| spelling then I'll imagine it written.
| fossuser wrote:
| Thanks - something for me to think about. These HN
| threads do have a history of changing my mind (or at
| least softening my position) on topics where the true
| answer can be harder to know.
| wpietri wrote:
| My introspection is quite good on this; I've been doing
| meditation on and off for decades. Sorry, but I don't
| have an internal narrator. Instead, the meditative
| interruptions that come with words are generally imagined
| discussions with other people or things to write about.
|
| Like you, I had a hard time believing people were
| different in this. The whole idea of an internal narrator
| seemed absurd to me. Why would anybody need a narrator
| for themselves? They're right there! But enough people
| claim that this is their real life that I'm willing to
| believe it, however tedious and exhausting that sounds to
| me.
| fossuser wrote:
| Imagined discussion is what I'm talking about. It's not
| narration like "I'm picking up the coffee mug now, I'm
| clicking the button now" - it's silent speech with
| oneself. Often it's trying to predict what will happen or
| thinking about things with language. It's not that every
| action must be stated by some narrator, but that a
| narrator exists to discuss things with oneself.
|
| Without language and semantic meaning tied to ideas, what
| does 'thinking' mean at all?
|
| My point is more that there are always thoughts
| (typically in the form of words, but sometimes images)
| flowing through your mind all of the time. Meditation and
| 'mindfulness' is focused on recognizing them as they
| happen and getting control of that kind of thing (at
| least enough to reduce thought loops, rumination,
| unwanted emotional response, etc.).
| wpietri wrote:
| For me there are significant periods without words or
| images. I also almost never "discuss things with
| oneself". I understand that people do that, but for many
| years I just thought it was metaphor occasionally made
| real in film and books. The sort of storytelling
| convention that is made fun of here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CahNAauFgys
|
| I get that you have a hard time understanding thinking
| without words because that's your main experience. But
| please understand that it's different for other people.
|
| And not just people. Animals can be very thoughtful.
| Watch documentaries, for example, of animal cognition and
| problem-solving. From crows to chimps, an awful lot of
| thinking happens, just not in words.
| fossuser wrote:
| The animals example is a good one, thanks for the
| thoughtful response.
| SeanSpearo wrote:
| Everyone's brains operate the same from a basic view, but
| have very different details. We all think in different
| ways, we all experience life differently. We just apply
| similarly understood terms that make it seem like it's
| all the same. Who knows how varied our actual
| consciousness is.
| krageon wrote:
| > I'm pretty skeptical of people that make this claim.
|
| Your essential point for justifying this skepticism is
| that you cannot imagine people are this different. In my
| experience people are always a little bit more different
| than you can imagine. After all, there are people that
| tirelessly work to charitable ends on one end and people
| that run death camps on the other.
|
| > people making this claim are lacking introspection to
| such an extreme extent
|
| It's perfectly acceptable to you to imagine that you are
| (essentially) fundamentally better or more complete than
| them, but not that perhaps they are your equals and
| merely experience life differently. I think it could be
| valuable to figure out why one is easy to you while the
| other is hard.
| indrax wrote:
| For many cognitive processes, I don't see a clear
| survival value to conscious awareness of that process, so
| I don't expect that awareness to be a reliable feature.
| The survival relevant _result_ of that cognition can
| still come through.
|
| I also think that an internal voice that doesn't get
| conscious awareness is likely to become a process that
| doesn't present as voice. So it's not like someone can
| just pay more attention and hear something, because it
| stopped talking a long time ago.
| [deleted]
| impjohn wrote:
| Language is still a learned skill. It is quite normal to
| assume someone not raised in civilization and doesn't
| speak any human languages does not have an inner
| monologue expressed in words. While we do all thinking in
| terms of words (thats how we express ideas) it doesn't
| necessarily follow. I do have quite a loud "copilot" but
| I can see how it's a configurable behavior
| [deleted]
| fossuser wrote:
| If you don't have language I'd guess a lot of things are
| different about how you think.
|
| If you can speak, read, and write though?
| impjohn wrote:
| Meditation is exactly the practice of letting your inner
| monologue chatter until it dies away and you're fully
| tethered to your sensations and surroundings. So if one
| can learn to meditate, in theory one can meditate all the
| time (therefore not have inner chatter/monologue) The
| more interesting question is what is the usefulness of
| inner dialogue in itself. A way to rehearse/articulate
| thoughts to be communicated to someone else? A roleplay
| with yourself to prepare for a future encounter? Thinking
| doesn't necessary need the 'echo' of hearing a voice.
| That's separate, that's more intriguing to me
| fossuser wrote:
| Meditation is recognizing the omnipresent voice and
| trying to quiet it down. It's partly why I suspect those
| that think they don't have an internal monologue just
| aren't recognizing it.
|
| I think you can get better at quieting the voice or
| letting thoughts pass, but I don't think you can really
| turn it off for longer than a few moments. Gurus that
| claim they have and have "reached enlightenment" just
| seem to be lying either to themselves or everyone else
| (or both).
| psyc wrote:
| How or where did you acquire such specific beliefs about
| what minds can or cannot do?
| fossuser wrote:
| My skepticism probably comes in part from an anti-
| religion, anti-mystic reflex. There's a lot of woo around
| this stuff so it often puts me on guard.
|
| Obviously nobody is claiming psychic powers here, but I
| wouldn't expect brains to operate that differently - so
| it's surprising to me.
| LocalH wrote:
| >but I wouldn't expect brains to operate that differently
|
| Everyone's neurotransmitter balance is different. Of
| course that will cause brains to sometimes operate wildly
| differently.
| fossuser wrote:
| Sure, but there are 4 billion years of selective pressure
| behind us that make us a lot more alike than different.
| Maybe this runs at a higher level in the 'brain software
| stack' that has more variation, but it seems like it'd be
| a more common lower level type of thing.
|
| Ultimately this is just a hunch though about what I
| suspect is more likely, I can obviously be wrong.
| traverseda wrote:
| You might enjoy "37 ways words can be wrong".
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways
| -th...
| psyc wrote:
| Do you not consider introspection a base level feature? I
| think the point of these aphantasia-related discussions
| is that people make wrong assumptions about what is base-
| level.
| traverseda wrote:
| I have an inner monologue when reading (or otherwise
| interacting with language), but mostly not when actually
| doing stuff. There must be some stuff you do where you
| don't have an inner monologue? I think it's a matter of
| degrees, like when programming my inner monologue
| consists mostly of variable names, but not like a
| procedural "I'll do this, then this, then it will do
| this".
|
| If you're having a hard time grasping that, try doing or
| thinking about things while doing a mantra. I think
| you'll find that you're still able to "think" while the
| only thing your inner dialogue is saying is some kind of
| mantra. (It may take some practice)
|
| You can also try speed reading apps which force you to
| absorb information without the time for an inner
| monologue.
|
| I find this helps with introspection as you can observe
| ideas without the (direct) bias of language. Being able
| to recognize and observe the thing that's making your
| inner monologue happen is a useful skill, I think. I
| can't really imagine being _bound_ to language like you
| 're describing, and it often takes me a while to put more
| complicated ideas into words.
|
| Languages categories are never going to be accurate. Is a
| whale a fish or a mammal? Well technically a mammal, but
| if you want to put someone in charge of them it's
| probably better if it's the department of fisheries than
| whoever's in charge of buffalo. One of of them has boats.
| The word is just a word, a pointer at a vague collection
| of things with similar properties. Being able to think
| about and work with the things directly without the
| distraction of language is very important to me.
| VRay wrote:
| Man, this is a really weird thread. I don't vocalize my
| thoughts internally either unless I need to formalize and
| remember them. My guess is that the people who can't
| imagine not having an inner monologue just don't take
| control of that process, since I can't imagine they're
| unable to think at all without mentally vocalizing
| things.
|
| And now it sounds like a lot of meditation is training to
| be able to think the way you or I do, haha.
|
| Is there any useful, productive research out there about
| this stuff? The only time I've come across any convincing
| or scientifically rigorous psychology was when Feynman
| did some for fun in his spare time and wrote about it
| nathias wrote:
| Similar, inner monologue is a (weird) willed activity for
| me.
| javajosh wrote:
| It sounds peaceful. Do you experience it that way?
| agency wrote:
| 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.
| krageon wrote:
| In my experience, it's not significantly more peaceful
| than how other people experience life: I can still
| ruminate, it just doesn't involve an internal monologue
| or dialogue.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. For years I thought "inner monologue" was just a
| metaphor for the interplay of thoughts. I was really
| surprised that many people literally have an internal
| monologue going all the time. That seems so exhausting to
| me!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm so deeply fascinated by that because it's not how I
| experience consciousness. Very cool. I think I'm far in the
| opposite direction: I have a voice that sounds like me, but
| I don't control and it asks me questions and gives
| opinions. It's like having a copilot.
| mach1ne wrote:
| That's odd. Can you silence the voice? Do you exert
| influence over it?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| If I start trying, it completely goes away, replaced by
| my monologue. I'm sure a lot of people know that feeling
| where you very intentionally drive your own internal
| voice. I can do that.
|
| I think it's related to my ADHD. Reading is very
| difficult because as I read, my voice just completely
| wanders off, CONSTANTLY. "Oh hey, 'gargantuan' that's a
| great word. Reminds me of a video game monster... Oh did
| you just read 2 whole pages without absorbing a single
| bit of it?"
|
| To add a bit more commentary: this is the one time I
| consider my ADHD to be a terrible disability. I cannot
| read. I just can't. Grad school was HELL when I had to
| read. But my ADHD and associated strong independent inner
| monologue is immensely powerful when I'm trying to solve
| problems myself, such as doing software design.
| wpietri wrote:
| As someone with ADHD, I have those same experiences, just
| not verbally. I can verbalize them if I have to, but they
| are wordless.
|
| The only time I experience the sort of word-based
| hijacking you're describing is with what I think of as
| "internal argument". I'll think of a previous or possible
| future discussion and structure my reply in words.
| Although since words are slow, often the words will sort
| of collapse and I'll shift to sort of a mental outline
| mode, where it's more a feel of structure with occasional
| words or phrases cropping up.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I also have a very constant inner voice, sometimes
| multiple, maybe it's an ADHD - although my ADHD I can
| read fine (although sometimes I need to get up and walk
| around absorbing what I've read and considering the
| implications)
| jholman wrote:
| Yeah, my inner monologue sometimes feels like I'm driving
| it, and sometimes I am definitely definitely not driving
| it. I don't know if it's "my voice" or not, it's just...
| the the thing in my mind that outputs (silent) language.
|
| And yeah, I can have conversations with the voice. Yeah,
| it can help to focus moving my thinking forwards on some
| problem-solving thing. But, alas, often when I'm doing
| that it just starts saying obviously-silly things, as if
| it's a Markov model. Sentences that might sound
| structurally reasonable but that are obviously not what I
| meant to say/think, and obviously not true.
|
| But it almost never interferes with reading. Reading is
| too compelling. Even if my thoughts go off in some other
| direction while reading and I do the "just read a page
| but absorbed nothing" thing, there's no voice involved
| then, it feels like a different process.
| gowld wrote:
| Relevant book:
|
| The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
| Bicameral Mind Paperback - by Julian Jaynes
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| Is that just an ADHD thing though or part of human
| nature? Reading in the beginning is difficult yet, after
| training your brain to sit and process by reading an hour
| in the morning you can change things. Very fast.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This is called discursive thought and is very common. The
| goal of non-dual mediation is to recognize these thoughts
| and realize they are not you.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| If not you, what do you think they are?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| You do not need to identify with them. They come and go
| like the wind. They are no more "you" than your hair on
| the barber shop floor.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| I see now from your other answer what you meant, I
| thought you had meant not you in some sense of being
| externally created or imposed.
| gowld wrote:
| They are you; they are a part of you, but they are not
| all of you. They are as much you as your foot or your eye
| is you. You are not an atomic entity.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Perhaps I should have written "to not identify with them"
| just like you rarely identify your core self as your
| foot.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| That sounds like you're practiced in metacognition; "Why
| am I thinking this?" etc.
| kungito wrote:
| Could people without inner monologue be anxious? How would
| that kind of overthinking work?
| desmosxxx wrote:
| You overthink things just without words. Anticipation
| itself can cause anxiety.
| desmosxxx wrote:
| I've always been a bit perplexed by the claim of not having
| an inner monologue, but after reading the replies to your
| comment I wonder if I'm closer to not having an inner
| monologue than having one. I thought it was about not being
| able to summon an inner voice at all. Regardless, it's
| fascinating to read peoples descriptions and see that it
| lies on a spectrum.
|
| I definitely experience it when reading & writing carefully
| and sometimes in deep thought with conscious effort, but
| never minute to minute and definitely not compulsively. I'd
| describe my minute to minute like you, more abstract and
| intuitive. Yet at the same time I'm very introspective, it
| just doesn't happen with an inner monologue.
|
| edit: after reading the study, I think I fall into the not
| having an internal monologue. Fascinating.
| doliveira wrote:
| May I ask you if your inner voice has an accent, can you
| recognize a tone to it? It was very weird when I realized
| that other people can imagine their thoughts having a
| physical voice.
| desmosxxx wrote:
| When I do have it, it does have a sound and sounds mostly
| like me.
| logosmonkey wrote:
| Yeah, mine is my voice. When I was thinking rather or not
| to reply and what I would reply with it was just my voice
| - as it sounds in my skull, not as it sounds in recording
| - just talking through the details as if I were speaking
| out loud to myself.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| My inner voice by default sounds like how much own voice
| sounds to me, but I can make it sound like anyone I know,
| even with accents, though I can't _speak_ with those
| accents because I don 't know how to move my mouth to
| precisely make the sounds.
| brightball wrote:
| Now I feel like I need to read the study to better
| understand the definition.
| mywittyname wrote:
| In one of Feynman's books, he discusses and experiment
| that he did with people keeping time in their heads
| (count 30 seconds) while simultaneously reading a passage
| of a book. Some people had absolutely no issue with doing
| this, but many people found it impossible.
|
| When he asked people how they kept track of how much time
| had passed, he found that people who pictured a number in
| their heads were able to keep time and read without
| issue, while those who "spoke" the time to themselves
| found it impossible to read.
| progman32 wrote:
| Just tried it on this thread. I speak the time to myself
| and had no problem reading this comment and formulating a
| reply while keeping time.
| thyselius wrote:
| Did the same and couldn't keep the time. I can feel the 1
| second beat, but I forget what second I'm at after a few
| seconds
| [deleted]
| asimovfan wrote:
| you can try meditation to have a go at just watching more
| closely.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I feel like if we got a perfect transcript of everyone elses'
| internal monologues, we'd no longer have any shame.
| bmn__ wrote:
| https://www.insidemymind.me/blog/brain-stuff/today-i-
| learned...
|
| Check previous HN discussions of the broad topic, nice
| rabbit-hole.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=internal+monologue
| dqpb wrote:
| I used to worry about this a lot, particularly when
| brainstorming. I found that I would start with a breadth-
| first search for ideas, but then as soon as one was
| moderately appealing, I went into depth-first mode and not
| only did I stop the breadth first search, but I also forgot
| much of the initial set of ideas.
|
| I created a tool for myself to avoid this pattern, which is
| effectively a kind of interactive map-reduce system.
|
| Also, I really like insights like this. Is there a dedicated
| place where people discuss these kind of meta-cognitive
| topics?
| rileyphone wrote:
| lesswrong maybe? And I'm curious about your tool - I've
| been thinking about making something in the same vein via
| continuous speech recording.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| That's not how this worked though. The guy focused on
| individual letters and imagined himself writing them.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| I was just thinking about how, once this technology is
| perfected, at how easy it will be to interrogate high value
| prisoners. Just pop one of these in their head, and tell them
| not to think about the top secret or incriminating stuff.
| tester34 wrote:
| remember that it may be used against you
|
| once regime changes
| jerf wrote:
| I'm not going to pay for the article, but note there's a big
| difference between sticking this device on a guy and him
| having to _learn_ how to use it deliberately, versus sticking
| something on your head and reading your internal monologue.
| This is almost certainly something the man had to do with
| great deliberation and effort, not something that was
| magically reading his mind.
|
| I'm not convinced a device to read your internal monologue
| from the outside is even possible, or if it is, it may be
| very, _very_ large. A device that sees you 're conducting
| one, perhaps, but reading out the contents externally? I'm
| not sure it could gather enough information and training data
| to ever decode it. (That is, my point is more information
| theoretic than technological.)
| david-cako wrote:
| Don't think about top secret or incriminating stuff.
| elliekelly wrote:
| There are some people who, it seems, can "lie" to
| themselves. They're so convinced of their own lies they end
| up truly believing it. Can you imagine a world where people
| train themselves to be delusional for the purpose of
| avoiding self-incrimination during this kind of "brain"
| interrogation?
| alok-g wrote:
| ... till I guess a deep fake thoughts arrive. ;-)
| hwers wrote:
| Adversarial thoughts that get misclassified into something
| safe.
| T-A wrote:
| Check out the interrogation scene in "Ghost Fleet" (2015).
|
| It's excerpted here if you don't want to read the whole book:
|
| https://gizmodo.com/how-ghost-fleet-nails-the-perfect-
| vision...
| santialbo wrote:
| this could be a dialog from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Walking_(film)
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| I linked a clip from this movie to OP before I saw your
| reference. Great minds think alike!
| frebord wrote:
| Lmao some of the responses to this... God ppl can you like
| enjoy life a little bit maybe
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is very very cool and interesting.
| swayvil wrote:
| This opens the door to bad-thought-monitoring. Of course it will
| become required equipment for all citizens. Mark my words
| rubylark wrote:
| I'm curious how his imagined writing compares to the handwriting
| he had before he was paralyzed. Was it always that messy or are
| the BCI controls difficult to use? For example, his comma seems
| exaggerated, as though he had to imagine grand gestures to get
| the SW to recognize it as a valid character. But on the other
| hand, his "m" and "n" look fairly normal. It's possible that's
| just what his handwriting looks like.
| ordu wrote:
| Actual handwriting goes with a feedback, at least with
| kinesthetic, tactile and visual. Here he writes "blindly". I
| dont' know how much it contributes to the mess, but I'm sure
| that a noticeable amount of it can be explained by the lack of
| a feedback.
| [deleted]
| grumple wrote:
| Very cool. The opportunity for people with physical impairments
| to continue communicating - and convey their ability to still
| experience the world - gives us the ability to help these people
| lead happier lives.
| codegladiator wrote:
| I can imagine a pretty good horror/scifi movie enabled by this.
| brazed_blotch wrote:
| I wonder how something like this would function with chorded
| typing? A keyboard like this [1] with only one key per finger I
| would imagine would be relatively easy (easier than handwriting
| even? Since it's not limited to only your finger muscles - you
| attach every easily controllable muscle in the body to a button
| on the 'keyboard', and it seems to be a binary value whether a
| finger is clicking down or not, instead of what letter your hand
| is writing) for a brain implant to register. And a lot faster
| than handwriting.
|
| [1] - https://www.gboards.ca/product/ginni
| cblconfederate wrote:
| This is the metaverse we should be funding, not phones strapped
| on bulky blindfolds.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Give it 5 years and VR will not be bulky at all.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Five years ago, the avegant glyph seemed reasonably small for
| an HMD (well, if you could get it without the earphones). I
| feel like we've regressed from that point.
| charcircuit wrote:
| That HMD only had a FoV of 45 degrees.
|
| The current technology which is production ready is optics
| using pancake lenses. For an example look at Huawei's VR
| glasses or HTC's Vive Flow.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Yea, I actually consider the smaller FOV a feature.
| Doesn't necessarily have to be 45 degrees, but I'm not
| interested in covering my entire field of view. I want a
| monitor for work, not for games and movies. Immersion
| doesn't matter, but the comfort of not needing to cup my
| eyes sure does.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| The whole point of VR is immersion. It's literally called
| Virtual Reality.
|
| What you seem to want is just a screen strapped to your
| head with some lenses to make it look further. Why do you
| want that exactly? Portability? Space saving?
| foxfluff wrote:
| Yeah I never said I want VR. I want head mounted displays
| to free me from bulky & expensive monitors that require
| lots of desk space and aren't available when travelling
| with a laptop. And if you can see around the HMD and
| reach for the coffee cup on the desk without having to
| look through cameras as you can with the glyph, I
| consider it a good design. Unfortunately the whole market
| seems to have developed around multimedia consumption and
| immersion.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| it will still be a blindfold. I dont get the entusiasm about
| a wearable form factor. i d much rather have 5 screens around
| me
|
| In any case brain implants are the ultimate input device,
| which will solves a major information bottleneck for work in
| general.
| charcircuit wrote:
| With VR you can have as many screens as you want. Though
| you'll need a high resolution headset for it to look good.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| And FOV. The virtual screen is a nice gimmick but gets
| old quick imho.
|
| OTOH brain implants provide for information exchange that
| is orders of magnitude faster, even if it is just text,
| as we do here.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Full Dive VR coming soon
| arbitrage wrote:
| Good VR has been five years out since 1993.
| charcircuit wrote:
| What's your point? The standard of what's good keeps
| improving.
| bawana wrote:
| This too will be weaponized. How? Capture a North Korean
| official, put one of these in his brain and siphon off all the
| juicy intel. Capture a narco trafficker. ditto. Capture a
| terrorist. ditto. Have we made the world better? It seems that
| whenever we develop ANY device for improved information
| processing, it disrupts the world we live in and displaces the
| uniquely human style of information processing-rendering humans
| less necessary. It is paradoxical. We make our lives 'easier' and
| human talent is lost.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| 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.
|
| These are not mind-readers. They hook into your normal brain
| circuitry. It mostly works the same way that you can type out a
| message on your keyboard without thinking about the keyboard:
| it's a brain HCI, `/dev/input`, not kernel-space.
| hwers wrote:
| 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.)
| alboy wrote:
| Maybe you could even do supervised by force-feeding known
| stimuli a la Clockwork Orange.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| This bypasses the desired capability, that of getting
| info from the hard disk.
|
| If you connect input in a feedback loop with an output
| and train on a particular output, of course you're going
| to get the output you're training for. It's just not
| going to bear much resemblance to the data that's on the
| hard disk without cooperation from the host system.
| alboy wrote:
| It depends on how much control the host system has over
| the output (can consciously drown out the signal).
| Suppose you just show YES and NO in big flashing letters
| while asking your subject the questions you already know
| the answers to and measure the output when training the
| device. Then it boils down to whether it can pick up what
| you "really think" over what you "try to think" better
| than the current generation of polygraphs (which is very
| bad at its job). So these technical specifics would
| decide where exactly it falls within the range from
| "comically unreliable" to "dystopian nightmare".
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I think you are overestimating the power this kind of stuff
| has.
|
| Quite a big leap from being able to identify a letter someone
| is thinking of REALLY HARD with the express purpose of making
| the software recognize it to randomly implanting something in
| someones brain and being able to browse through their thoughts.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This nightmare scenario fails the "rubber hose" test[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
| pedrobtz wrote:
| Can this be used for interrogation technique?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I've spoken to Abe Caplan, one of the Braingate researchers a few
| times online on clubhouse. https://clubhousedb.com/user/abecaplan
| https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Abraha...
| He said it did not need a high resolution to work well off the
| top of my head (it did not need to be very accurate, it does not
| have to be a single method of working, there are many places it
| can be linked and still work, this refers to the signal
| processing on the BCI), companies like neuralink often repackages
| these research projects with slick marketing as original but it
| was simply rebuilding this project with another interface (they
| used clunkier probes while neuralink wants to do an implant, but
| that was before they filed a patent for an implant as well).
|
| This says it requires an implant, but I am not sure if its true,
| his contributions are much older though and they might not be the
| same as the current Braingate research, but they were also for
| aiding with disabled people with controlling prosthetics, and
| also with signal processing and calibration to the user, they
| have made text input before inplants were required, so I don't
| see why its required, its benefit is being more convenient than
| setting up the probes or as a wearable.
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2012.0007...
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| It wouldn't be particularly hard for a trained person to block
| their thoughts to a brain implant, if the police were trying to
| read their mind.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| It wouldn't require any training at all. This tech cannot read
| your thoughts. It's reading motor inputs.
|
| The difference is on the level of hearing someone's chess moves
| dictated vs. reading their mind to understand how they perceive
| the game.
|
| It is entirely a consciously composed and intentionally sent
| message.
| tremon wrote:
| _It wouldn 't require any training at all. It's reading motor
| inputs._
|
| You're assuming that everyone's motor cortex/nervous system
| is wired exactly the same way. Given what we know about the
| variability of the human body, I wouldn't expect this to hold
| for the entire population.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I meant training on the human part to hide from the device.
|
| Every human is wired differently. You need to train an ML
| model to read signals specific to that human for this tech
| to work.
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| If the police are able to implant a device into your brain to
| get information out of you, I think you're screwed either way
| as the good 'ol rubber hose method is likely on the table - at
| least until people commonly elect to do the surgery or the
| surgery somehow gets to legendary levels of safety in the
| dystopian future.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| It wouldn't be any different from trying to force a
| confession through torture. You need to control your thoughts
| during the interrogation.
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| Oh that's interesting, make them think the thoughts at
| least for extraction. This first version of the tech
| requires the user to mentally imagine moving muscles to
| trace letters so yeah it's not likely to be an option...
| yet.
|
| I wonder what happens to these BCI results when the user is
| on psychedelics a la MK Ultra
|
| EDIT: Wait your point was slightly different then I first
| read but that makes perfect sense!
| gus_massa wrote:
| Ignoring the ethical and legal problems with torture, the
| main problem that is not usually portrayed in films is that
| people say whatever the interrogator wants to stop the
| pain.
|
| interrogator> _We have been torturing you for 10 hours. If
| you spell "John" we will stop torturing you and torture
| John instead._
|
| interrogated> _[The pain is too much. We have a deal. Sorry
| John.] JOHN_
|
| A better interrogator can be more subtle, like
|
| interrogator> _We have some evidence [1] that John is the
| one that put the bomb, and that you are innocent, but my
| boss is not sure. If you confirm this info we will send you
| immediately to your cell._
|
| [1] It's a lie! Also, John is innocent in case you are
| wondering.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Nah. Generic brain reading is not possible in the forseeable
| future. Everyone's brain works differently. You have to train
| a machine learning model to recognize specific types of
| inputs. You likely cannot do pure thought reading.
| WithinReason wrote:
| I'm pretty sure torture would be seen as barbaric and
| inhumane while reading thoughts would not have the same
| associations
| tremon wrote:
| Yes, just wait until we can do the reading with on-skin
| electrodes or micro-needle patches.
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| If like the sibling said they develop on-skin electrodes or
| micro-needle patches I 100% agree.
|
| Currently it requires an invasive and risky brain surgery
| which AFAIK would be a definite no-go. At least in the US,
| this would likely be considered extremely inhumane unless
| it could be done without such significant risk of death or
| brain damage - given the nature of the surgery I find that
| unlikely.
|
| In the cases where an invasive brain surgery would be
| permitted, I imagine torture would already be an option.
| Keep in mind torture doesn't have nearly the same risk of
| death and permanent brain damage as an invasive brain
| surgery.
| clircle wrote:
| How do you measure accuracy? Is there another way the man can
| communicate?
|
| edit: The researchers compared the BCI output to a prompt that T5
| was supposed to restate. I was thinking that T5 was communicating
| without prompts in the experiment. This isn't my idea of
| translation accuracy, but you've got to have some baseline.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "A man paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord
| injury" typically can still talk.
|
| If not, there's blinking/mouth controls like Stephen Hawking.
| Levitz wrote:
| It would also be easy enough to make him memorize some text
| and attempt to replicate it, would it not?
| cgriswald wrote:
| No. You're trying to measure whether the machine is
| accurately translating his thoughts into characters. He may
| make errors in spelling or memory. Success is whether the
| machine spits out the characters he intended, even if they
| weren't the ones he was supposed to send.
| excalibur wrote:
| Surprised at how far I had to scroll to find Hawking's name.
| If he were still with us I bet he could type circles around
| this guy.
| graindcafe wrote:
| Same way autospell is not working with 100% accuracy and you're
| still managing to express yourself, I believe
| shepik wrote:
| > In this case, the man - called T5 in the study,
|
| i wonder if it's a coincidence?
|
| https://huggingface.co/transformers/model_doc/t5.html
| rdevsrex wrote:
| Total dystopian thought, but I wonder if this could ever be used
| to extract info people unwillingly, as in some interrogation
| scenario. I mean, you have a lot more control over what you say
| than what you think.
| marviel wrote:
| Perhaps someday. It seems the way this experiment worked was by
| "imagining writing the words by hand", which would indicate
| that this kind of transmission was dependent on an explicit act
| of will.
| Raidion wrote:
| If you read the article it's clear that the researchers aren't
| pulling out the information from the guy's thoughts, they're
| reading the nerve signals from him "imagining" he's writing a
| letter, and using ML to map that to pen strokes which get
| mapped to words.
|
| So if James Bond gets captured, all he has to do is to not
| imagine writing the information, he can think it all he wants.
| 3r8riacz wrote:
| Dont't think of your Gmail password now
| capableweb wrote:
| Most likely the brain implement is working against/with a
| persons consciousness. This "information extraction" device you
| talk about, would need to work against/with the sub-
| consciousness, otherwise you can just think "WALL WALL WALL
| WALL WALL" and the device would only be able to extract that.
|
| Not to say that this device was probably trained on the person
| a lot before they could reach that accuracy. A "information
| extraction" device would have to be trained on it's victim
| first, but why would they play along with the training?
|
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people have control over what
| they consciously think, at least it works like that for me.
| qntty wrote:
| The title is clickbait. This isn't "reading thoughts", it's
| reading motor movements, which is a different part of the brain
| than cognition. Most people will assume thoughts = cognition
| reading the title.
| rasz wrote:
| His first words were "I need more computing power"
| mikepurvis wrote:
| "How about sending me a fourth gimbal for Christmas."
| abdulhaq wrote:
| A friend of mine was a nurse on a mental health ward in the
| UK. There was a long term patient there who no-one could
| understand, until my friend, who was Mauritian, started
| working there. The patient was saying 'mes dents, mes dents'.
| (my false teeth, my false teeth..)
| adminscoffee wrote:
| if someone spoke 94% of a second language we would say that
| person is fluent in that second language. this is great news
| restalis wrote:
| Something even more impressive, IMHO, from the same source:
| https://www.sciencealert.com/a-brain-implant-has-allowed-a-b...
|
| It's Star Trek like technology (think TNG series' Geordi La
| Forge).
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is freaking awesome. Those mind-control drone pilots we have
| today mean there's an exciting near-future for mind-machine
| interfaces. It will be fantastic not just for people who are
| paralyzed, but also perhaps we will have better prostheses, and
| maybe in the metaverse we will have additional appendages to do
| more tasks.
|
| I am looking forward to our new world.
| jonplackett wrote:
| The next truly massive tech revolution will have to be something
| even we tech peeps reject. And I think bodily embedded stuff
| would do the trick.
|
| It could be amazingly effective though if this is where we're at
| already. Imagine the speed and enjoyment increase for anything
| from typing to gaming to driving a car. You'd get completely left
| behind if you rejected it.
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| > 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).
|
| Don't get me wrong I'm sure there will be advances. But this
| current tech is based off reading nerve data meant to be
| movement data - the user needs to mentally trace each letter.
|
| So I don't see this form of the tech at least being able to
| compete with qwerty let alone stenography.
|
| Actually to that point, stenography would allow people to input
| data (it must be language specific and error tolerant but most
| BCI is as well) at ~5x the average typing speed on qwerty but
| that hasn't proliferated.
|
| EDIT: On second thought I could see it matching physical
| movement, maybe _slightly_ outperforming it by a few % by
| skipping a few physical limitations. I think this should be
| essentially identical to any other physical motion based
| communication.
| Frost1x wrote:
| >this current tech is based off reading nerve data meant to
| be movement data - the user needs to mentally trace each
| letter.
|
| I just thought about tracing out a letter as to how I might
| write it and it took me a second or so per letter, around the
| speed I actually write I'd guesstimate, and I can't write
| anywhere near 90 characters in in minute, probably because my
| brain has adapted to sync with my hand speed. I'm curious
| whats actually meant by "tracing" for movement signals
| because I'm either slow at this or it means something a bit
| different. I can easily type 90 characters a min but in a lot
| of cases its rote memorized patterns for words I'm thinking
| of in sequence (I'm not really thinking of individual letters
| in words, just words as a known pattern of keystrokes), at
| least I think that's how I think.
| EGreg wrote:
| Simple ... how about mentally tracing over a keyboard like
| Swype?
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| Question to anyone that knows - I know that actively
| "imagining" movements/activities is neurologically _very_
| similar in many ways, which is why it works here for BCI.
| Do these "imagined" thoughts develop muscle memory?
|
| Anyway, assuming they do, I'm not sure if it'd be a real
| advantage over physically swyping with your finger (for
| those that can obviously) - it seems like they'd be roughly
| equivalent?
|
| Actually that'll be my second question - how is this system
| affected by things like tremors?
|
| I'd suspect they originate from your brain in which case
| your "mental movements" should have the exact same quirks
| and limitations as physical movements.
|
| The end game of course is not needing to use the movement
| system to interpret information.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| From the research that I recall from a decade ago when I
| was much more into BCI, I'm not sure there's a
| significant difference. And just like with a swipe-
| keyboard, accuracy will be hit or miss but be partially
| dependent on trained feedback mechanisms to hone towards
| a set of patterns.
|
| Those that train on a BCI from an early age will "type"
| significantly faster and more naturally (as if at the
| speed of thought) than those that do not. There's a
| natural limit to idea-formation => symbol-formation =>
| symbol-expression. Those that have trained on keyboards
| are able for this to fly from their fingers with only a
| _slight_ delay; those that speak at something like
| "auction-speed" are mostly executing verbal macros: ie,
| it's just a single thought/action, highly trained so that
| it can manifest at high speed.
|
| I can retype the entirety of the text above with just a
| few actions: cmd-A, cmd-C, ->, cmd-P. Performing a novel
| action, however, moves at a different speed entirely.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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