You all know by now at least two or three things that artificial intelligence AI) has been used for. Now you can add mind-reading to that too thanks to four scientists over at Kyoto University in Japan. The AI platform they created is called BioRxiv and last December they tested it to see just what it could do.
In order to decode a person’s thoughts, the team used AI-based deep neural networks to really get inside their mind. The AI-enabled the scientists to depict certain hierarchical images that are made up of several different layers.
“We have been studying methods to reconstruct or recreate an image a person is seeing just by looking at the person’s brain activity,” said Yukiyasu Kamitani, one of the scientists on the project. “Our previous method was to assume that an image consists of pixels or simple shapes. But it’s known that our brain processes visual information hierarchy extracting different levels of features or components of different complexities.”
The AI also enables scientists to detect objects as well as individual pixels. In a recent research project, the three participants involved were shown a series of alphabetical letters, artificial geometric shapes, and natural photographs. The person’s’ brain activity was monitored at varying stages throughout this process. A computer loaded with the AI software then set to work decoding this information to get a visualisation of the participant’s thoughts.
Results from the study showed that the scientists were, in fact, able to “reconstruct visual imagery a person produced by just thinking of some remembered images,” said Kamitani. The potential of this kind of technology, once perfected, is endless. The visualisation technology would enable you to create images by simply imagining them. This could be particularly useful in trying to help patients that are hallucinating.
It may seem a little far-fetched at first – AI reading your mind. But when you really sit down and think about it, it’s not that hard to believe. Others that are also moving in the same direction are former Google worker, Mary Lou Jepson. She is currently working on a telepathic hat that will make mind reading a real possibility in the near future (or within the next decade at least).
While Bryan Johnson is busy developing computer chips that are implantable in the human brain that will help improve neurological functionality.
Source CNBC
