Artificial intelligence is currently being used by scientists to scan human brain waves and translate them into text. A study in the journal Nature Neuroscience claims that the AI models underlying Google’s Bard and Open AI’s ChatGPT can read someone’s mind and mimic their brain activity in a stream of text. Jerry Tang, a computer science PhD candidate, and Alex Huth, an assistant professor of neurology and computer science at UT Austin, served as the study’s principal investigators.
Huge Breakthroughs
Three persons were asked to listen to stories as part of the study. After that, the individuals were placed in MRI units. Without the use of any brain implants, scientists assert that they were able to translate the individuals’ thoughts into writing. The results of the study show that non-intrusive language brain-computer interfaces are feasible. The study claims that: “These kinds of systems could be especially helpful to people who are unable to physically speak, such as those who have had a stroke, and enable them to communicate more effectively.”
Some Shocking Results
The AI decoder produced a sentence that closely matched a subject’s thought only about half the time, so the semantic decoder can currently only convey the basic “gist” of what someone is thinking. The study gave an example of the decoder in action, demonstrating how a test subject heard, and consequently thought the sentence “… I didn’t know whether to scream cry or run away instead I said leave me alone I don’t need your help Adam disappeared.”
“For a noninvasive method, this is a real leap forward compared to what’s been done before, which is typically single words or short sentences. We’re getting the model to decode continuous language for extended periods of time with complicated ideas, is what Professor Huth had added in their published report. The researchers also express their concerns about the mental privacy. “We take very seriously the concerns that it could be used for bad purposes and have worked to avoid that. We want to make sure people only use these types of technologies when they want to and that it helps them.” said Jerry Tang.
