One of the most common questions in looking at our rapid AI advancement and its relation to the world’s authors have built in classic sci-fi is the ongoing interest in whether AI will someday be able to read our minds. (The uses cases are profound.)
It’s very exciting, and also somewhat frightening, to imagine that technology could reach in and interpret the thoughts that were previously so closely hidden in our own biological neural networks.
But if you do the research, you’ll find that this kind of supposedly imaginary idea is quickly becoming reality…
At MIT, our people are hard at work, figuring out the difference between multiple types of brain activity, specifically, gamma and alpha waves that make their way through different parts of the brain. You can see MIT reporting from previous years, where Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Earl Miller explains:
“These interactions between beta and gamma are happening all over the cortex, and it’s not generic — it targets the processing of specific stimuli.”
This year, the researchers are reporting patterns of distinct neural layers that can be identified in ways that help with clinical diagnosis. For example, synchronous brain waves are associated with epilepsy. In addition, scientists are explaining that looking at brain responses to familiar stimulate can help show us how predictive coding in the brain is impaired with autism, and why that associates to certain behavioral disorders. (check out this report.)
At the same time, AI’s power to figure out what we’re thinking about is increasing with modern reports of fMRI machine studies where AI’s assessment of a human mental picture was right a majority of the time.
Some characterize this as terrifying accuracy, and some of those with the front-row seat suggest that we’re closer to consumer applications than we might think.
Contrast that with the concept of ESP or clairvoyance, both of which were seen as so intensely mystical just a few decades ago.
If you want more, here’s A.J. Keller (at an Imagination in Action event) talking about a brain headset that can monitor your brain activity for a whole lot of different reasons.
“The first killer application of brain-computer interfaces is probably one that helps people overcome the human condition they were born with,” Keller says, describing his own mental health struggles and introducing a self-learning, self-supervised system that promises, in his words, “incredible efficiencies.”
Many of us had heard about Elon Musk‘s Neuralink or some other early report on brain wave analysis.
But things are really heating up, and the research is far beyond what it was just one year or two years ago.
Think about what this means for the future of the human mind – for imagination, for privacy and for our future interactions with AI.
