Mind-reading BrainGPT Converts Thought-of Words into Text

There may be new hope for stroke victims and other "locked-in" people who are unable to communicate by conventional means. It comes in the form of the experimental new BrainGPT system, which is able to read users' thoughts and convert them into readable text...

Currently being developed by a team of scientists at the University of Technology Sydney, it simply requires users to wear an EEG (electroencephalogram) cap that's connected to a computer. No eye-tracking cameras or other additional hardware is required.

The custom DeWave software utilized by BrainGPT was trained by recording and analyzing the electrical signals produced by a total of 29 volunteers' brains as they silently read passages of text.

Putting it simply, DeWave's AI-based algorithms learned which specific EEG signals corresponded to which written words and phrases. more  video

The future of eavesdropping marches on.

FutureWatch: Meta Mind Reading

Meta’s mind reader - Meta wants to get to know its users inside and out.

The company filed a patent application for in-ear “spectroscopy” for “cognitive load estimation.” To put it simply, this uses an in-ear device to measure a user’s brain signals to better understand a user’s brain activity...

By understanding a user’s cognitive load, Meta can learn a lot about a user’s mental state, said Jake Maymar, VP of Innovation at The Glimpse Group. It’s essentially a stress tester, he said, indicating how exactly their mind is reacting to the content in front of them.

But with a company like Meta, “it’s all about advertising,” Maymar said. As you use the device, “It gets to know you. Your device starts to really understand you as a person and can customize these experiences for you, so they really appeal to you.” ... these ads will likely target you closer than just being placed in your favorite games, said Maymar. more

The future of surveillance is mind reading. We've been minding it for years.

FutureWatch: Mind Reading Marches On, Maybe

At first glance, the headset is unassuming. It almost looks like a pair of oversized headphones. There’s no outward indication that it can read signals in your brain and help alter your mood. But its creator, the startup Neurosity Inc., believes it’s at the forefront of a new wave of consumer products that will literally alter customers’ state of mind. 

Neurosity is one of a growing number of new companies making hardware that can read brainwaves. ... Startups with names like Emotive Inc., InteraXon Inc. and Earable Inc. are all working on devices that use EEG to measure everything from sleep to creativity...

It’s true that it’s early days for the intersection of brains and computers. “This is a huge area, and we’re going to see more of these devices,” Welle said. “Measuring your own brain signals is a cool thing to do." more   Previous mind reading news.

FutureWatch - Brain Eavesdropping

On Monday, scientists from the University of Texas, Austin, made another step in that direction. In a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the researchers described an A.I. that could translate the private thoughts of human subjects by analyzing fMRI scans, which measure the flow of blood to different regions in the brain...

In the study, it was able to turn a person’s imagined speech into actual speech and, when subjects were shown silent films, it could generate relatively accurate descriptions of what was happening onscreen. more

TSCM Nerd Corner News

• U.S. Army scientists at the CCDC Army Research Laboratory (ARL) have developed a first-of-its kind antenna that could change how ground vehicles and airborne systems communicate, transmit and receive radio frequency signals. The Army used a manufacturing process based on a special class of engineered materials known as metaferrites to make an ultra-thin wideband antenna. The antenna conforms to curved surfaces, making it ideal to integrate into unmanned aircraft systems, rotary wing aircrafts and ground vehicles. more
  
  
• Of ever-increasing concern for operating a tactical communications network is the possibility that a sophisticated adversary may detect friendly transmissions. Army researchers developed an analysis framework that enables the rigorous study of the detectability of ultraviolet communication systems... In particular, ultraviolet communication has unique propagation characteristics that not only allow for a novel non-line-of-sight optical link, but also imply that the transmissions may be harder for an adversary to detect. more
  
  
• Covert Ultrasonic Transmissions between Two Air-Gapped Computers using Speaker-to-Speaker Communication more
  
  
• Groundbreaking new material 'could allow artificial intelligence to merge with the human brain' more

FutureWatch: Mind-Reading Called Brain-Hacking - Food for Thought

The world is in the middle of a new technology arms race, according to best-selling historian Yuval Noah Harari, who warns that the prize being fought over this time is not physical territory, but our brains. 

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Harari predicted a future where governments and corporations will be able to gather enough data about citizens around the world that, when combined with computational power, will let them completely predict – and manipulate – our decisions. Harari calls this concept "brain-hacking".

"Imagine, if 20 years from now, you could have someone sitting in Washington, or Beijing, or San Francisco, and they could know the entire personal, medical, sexual history of, say, every journalist, judge and politician in Brazil," said Harari.

"You could control a whole other country with data. At which point you may ask: is it an independent country, or is it a data colony?" more   Previous mind-reading posts.

FutureWatch: Your Voice Can Give Away What You Look Like

Spying is multifaceted. It includes everything from plain old audio eavesdropping, to spycams (thus adding the visual element), to aggregating all the telltale data about us. Once science fiction, even facial recognition is coming to airports. Is it possible to squeeze more from a spy's cornucopia of tricks?

What if you want to know what a person is thinking, or what they look like?
These two challenges are the future of spying, and they are being worked on today.

We started covering mind reading advancements in 2006. And now, how to tell what a person looks like—and even their environment... just from the sound of their voice.

Brain Imaging Lie Detector Can Be Beaten

People have certain physical "tells" when they conceal information—and studies show that good liars can prevent these "tells" being detected by displaying physical red herrings of their own.

But scientists have now shown that even a brain imaging technique called fMRI, which in theory is much harder to trick, can be beaten by people who use two particular mental countermeasures...

This research is the first to explore the effects of mental countermeasures on brain activity in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)—and it showed that when people used the countermeasures, the test proved to be 20 percent less accurate. more

FutureWatch - Mind Reading - Thought to Speech

Scientists are reporting that they have developed a virtual prosthetic voice, a system that decodes the brain’s vocal intentions and translates them into mostly understandable speech, with no need to move a muscle, even those in the mouth.

“It’s formidable work, and it moves us up another level toward restoring speech” by decoding brain signals, said Dr. Anthony Ritaccio, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who was not a member of the research group. more

Mind reading is a topic we keep an eye on here, as it's the future of eavesdropping. ~Kevin

Judd Bank's Tips on How to Spot A Liar

At some point in life, everyone is a victim of a lie. It may include romantic relationships, business transactions, political behavior and/or criminal misrepresentation...  

There are two main techniques in detecting deception without the use of a polygraph instrument. They are observing body language and asking open-ended questions... more

Concise and very educational. ~Kevin

Hidden Smart Device Commands: Manchurian Candidate, or "Yes, master."

Many people have grown accustomed to talking to their smart devices, asking them to read a text, play a song or set an alarm. But someone else might be secretly talking to them, too.

Over the past two years, researchers in China and the United States have begun demonstrating that they can send hidden commands that are undetectable to the human ear to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant.

Inside university labs, the researchers have been able to secretly activate the artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, making them dial phone numbers or open websites.  

In the wrong hands, the technology could be used to unlock doors, wire money or buy stuff online — simply with music playing over the radio. more

FutureWatch: Eavesdropping... telepathically

Mary Lou Jepsen believes her technology will be 99.9% cheaper than MRIs (that’s an actual estimate, not a euphemism); radically smaller (the size of a ski cap, not a bedroom); and that its resolution will exceed that of MRIs by a factor of a billion. Yes, that’s an actual “b,” not a typo. And the really cool thing? Her creation might also enable telepathy.

If your mind rebels at the scale of these claims, reread Mary Lou’s credentials, then give an interview with her a listen. You can hear it by searching “After On” in your favorite podcast app...

Here’s where telepathy comes in...

Neurons range from 4 to 100 microns in diameter. This makes them invisible to MRIs, CAT scans, PET scans – pretty much anything other than a scalpel and a microscope. But Mary Lou’s technology could monitor them, if it delivers on its maximum promise. Add some clever machine learning, and the system could closely infer what those neurons are contemplating.

Might all this raise an ethical issue or two? To quote a one-time would-be VP, yooooou betcha! more

The Future of Eavesdropping Past – The Thought Recorder

ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER May, 1919

Click to enlarge.

more

FutureWatch: Your Brain Will Replace Your Fingerprints for ID

Psychologists and engineers at Binghamton University in New York have hit a milestone in the quest to use the unassailable inner workings of your brain as a form of biometric identification. They came up with an electroencephalograph system that proved 100 percent accurate at identifying individuals by the way their brains responded to a series of images.

“It's a big deal going from 97 to 100 percent because we imagine the applications for this technology being for high-security situations,” says Sarah Lazlo, assistant professor of psychology at Binghamton who led the research with electrical engineering professor Zhanpeng Jin.

Perhaps only one other such experiment in the long quest for this ultimate biometric has hit the 100 percent mark, and the Binghamton system has some advantages over even that one. For one it proved itself with less complex equipment and in a larger group, identifying 50 people. But perhaps more importantly this new form of ID can do something fingerprints and retinal scans can’t: It can be “cancelled.” That’s important because hackers have shown that fingerprints can be stolen and faked. more

The Future of Eavesdropping – Mind Reading

Imagine a world where all of your thoughts are visible – including to government agencies. This scenario might sound like it’s been plucked straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel, but it’s not as far-fetched as you might think.

Devices that measure and interpret electrical signals from our brains can already detect things like whether we are drowsy while driving.



In this video for the World Economic Forum, Nita A. Farahany, Professor of Law and Philosophy at Duke University, discusses the potential but also the legal and ethical risks of these emerging technologies.

“We are not yet at the point where a little thought bubble above your head is something we can see, but we’re getting there,” she says. more

FutureWatch - Another Step Closer to the Future of Eavesdropping

...a new experiment at the University of Washington may be bringing ESP closer to the realm of reality.

According to University of Washington computational neuroscientist Rajesh Rao and UW Medicine neurosurgeon Jeff Ojemann, the combination of a brain implant and a complex algorithm has given researchers the ability to predict human thoughts with unprecedented speed and accuracy. In fact, the duo says, they’re able to track what we’re thinking as we’re thinking it, bringing us closer to mind reading than ever before...

 “We were trying to understand, first, how the human brain perceives objects in the temporal lobe, and second, how one could use a computer to extract and predict what someone is seeing in real time,” explained Rao to the UW NewsBeat. “Clinically, you could think of our result as a proof of concept toward building a communication mechanism for patients who are paralyzed or have had a stroke and are completely locked-in,” he said. more

FutureWatch: Mindreading - Talking to yourself used to be a strictly private pastime...

That's no longer the case – researchers have eavesdropped on our internal monologue for the first time. The achievement is a step towards helping people who cannot physically speak communicate with the outside world.

"If you're reading text in a newspaper or a book, you hear a voice in your own head," says Brian Pasley at the University of California, Berkeley. "We're trying to decode the brain activity related to that voice to create a medical prosthesis that can allow someone who is paralyzed, or locked in, to speak."

When you hear someone speak, sound waves activate sensory neurons in your inner ear. These neurons pass information to areas of the brain where different aspects of the sound are extracted and interpreted as words.

In a previous study, Pasley and his colleagues recorded brain activity in people who already had electrodes implanted in their brain to treat epilepsy, while they listened to speech. The team found that certain neurons in the brain's temporal lobe were only active in response to certain aspects of sound, such as a specific frequency. One set of neurons might only react to sound waves that had a frequency of 1000 hertz, for example, while another set only cares about those at 2000 hertz. Armed with this knowledge, the team built an algorithm that could decode the words heard based on neural activity alone (PLoS Biology, doi.org/fzv269). (more)

Weird Science: Bugging Plants & Reading Minds

Spying on plant communication with tiny bugs...
Internal communications in plants share striking similarities with those in animals, new research reveals. With the help of tiny insects, scientists were able to tap into this communication system. Their results reveal the importance of these communications in enabling plants to protect themselves from attack by insect pests. (more)

Scientists explore possibilities of mind reading...
At Yale University, researchers recently used a brain scanner to identify which face someone was looking at — just from their brain activity. At the University of California-Berkeley, scientists are moving beyond "reading" simple thoughts to predicting what someone will think next. 

And at Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, cognitive neuroscientist Marcel Just has a vision that will make Google Glass seem very last century. Instead of using your eye to direct a cursor — finding a phone number for a car repair shop, for instance — he fantasizes about a device that will dial the shop by interpreting your thoughts about the car (minus the expletives).

Mind reading technology isn't yet where the sci-fi thrillers predict it will go, but researchers aren't ruling out such a future.

"In principle, our thoughts could someday be readable," said Just, who directs the school's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging. (more)

Yet Another Step Closer to Eavesdropping on the Brain

Science fiction has long speculated what it would be like to peek inside a person's mind and find out what they are thinking.

Now scientists are one step closer to such technology after forging a new brain monitoring technique that could lead to the development of 'mind-reading' applications.

The breakthrough comes from a Stanford University School of Medicine study that was able to 'eavesdrop' on a person's brain activity as they performed normal functions by utilizing a series of electrodes attached to certain portions of the brain.

The process, called 'intracranial recording', was tested... (more)

Eavesdropping on the Brain: Mind-Reading Devices Could be Possible in the Future

Could we read minds? Scientists are certainly one step closer after this latest study. Researchers have managed to collect the first solid evidence that the pattern of brain activity seen in someone performing a mathematical exercise under experimentally controlled conditions very similar to that observed when the person engages in quantitative thought in the course of daily life. The findings could lead researchers to a way to "eavesdrop" on the brain in real life. 

"This is exciting and a little scary," said Henry Greely who played no role in the study but is familiar with its contents, in a news release. "It demonstrates, first, that we can see when someone's dealing with numbers and, second, that we may conceivably someday be able to manipulate the brain to affect how someone deals with numbers."

In order to examine the thought processes of volunteers, the researchers monitored electrical activity in a region of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus. This part of the brain is known to be important in attention and hand motion. Previous studies have hinted that some nerve-cell clusters in this area are also involved in numerosity, the mathematical equivalent of literacy.

The scientists used a method called intracranial recording, which allowed them to monitor brain activity while people were immersed in real-life situations. The researchers tapped into the brains of three volunteers who were being evaluated for possible surgical treatment of their recurring, drug-resistant epileptic seizures; this involved removing a portion of the patient's skull and positioning packets of electrodes against the exposed brain surface. (more)