It sounds like something out of a Philip K. Dick science fiction novel: a system that uses artificial intelligence to translate people’s thoughts into intelligible, recognizable speech.
But fiction it is not: a team of neuro-engineers at Columbia University did, in fact, develop such a system. Information on the technology was published yesterday in Scientific Reports.
In a press release, Columbia University explained how the system works:
By monitoring someone’s brain activity, the technology can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. This breakthrough, which harnesses the power of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain. (source)
Previous fMRI scanning research has shown that when people speak (or even imagine speaking), telltale patterns of activity appear in the brain. Distinct (but recognizable) patterns of signals also emerge when we listen to someone speak, or when we imagine listening. We previously published an article about similar technology being used in China but Columbia’s tech goes much further.
Translating thoughts into words has been challenging, until now.
After early attempts to translate brain activity into recognizable speech failed, the research team turned to a computer algorithm called a vocoder that can synthesize speech after being trained on recordings of people speaking.
“This is the same technology used by Amazon Echo and Apple Siri to give verbal responses to our questions,” said Nima Mesgarani, PhD, the paper’s senior author and a principal investigator at Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
What will this new mind-reading technology be used for?
Dr. Mesgarani explains,
“Our voices help connect us to our friends, family and the world around us, which is why losing the power of one’s voice due to injury or disease is so devastating. With today’s study, we have a potential way to restore that power. We’ve shown that, with the right technology, these people’s thoughts could be decoded and understood by any listener.” (source)
While this development could be life-changing for people who have lost their ability to speak due to injury or disease, the possibility of abuse is concerning, to say the least.
Dr. Mesgarani and his team plan to test more complicated words and sentences next, and they want to run the same tests on brain signals emitted when a person speaks or imagines speaking.
Ultimately, they hope their system could be part of an implant, similar to those worn by some epilepsy patients, that translates the wearer’s thoughts directly into words, Dr. Mesgarani explains:
“In this scenario, if the wearer thinks ‘I need a glass of water,’ our system could take the brain signals generated by that thought, and turn them into synthesized, verbal speech. This would be a game changer. It would give anyone who has lost their ability to speak, whether through injury or disease, the renewed chance to connect to the world around them.” (source)
So…you only have to think something? What could possibly go wrong?
In other words, this technology can read minds.
While there are some very positive applications to mind-reading technology, it’s not all good. Can you imagine the ramifications if law enforcement used this kind of technology? Or workplaces? Or courts of law? What about interrogations of prisoners or enemy combatants? Keep in mind if we have this technology, other countries will too.
Everything could change dramatically and not necessarily for the best.
It’s pretty darned scary to imagine what might happen if people had the power to forcibly read your mind.
Things are moving really fast in the world of technological advances.
Earlier this week, we learned there now exists technology that can beam a voice right into your head from a distance. We also learned that a company called Cooler Screens has created a store fridge camera system that takes photos of shoppers, which an AI system then analyzes. Oh, and that system also has “iris tracking” capabilities and allows companies to observe shoppers in “real time” (in other words, spy on them).
In the past, the late Dr. Stephen Hawking, as well as Elon Musk, have warned that advances in artificial intelligence could eventually result in the end of humanity. In fact, in one interview, Musk said, “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”
With this rapid progression of technological advancement, one has to wonder…how close are we to technological singularity?
What do you think of this mind-reading technology?
What are your thoughts on this information? Do you think the mind-reading technology is a good idea? In what ways do you think it could be abused? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
About Dagny
Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of a professional journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM.
If you cannot speak any longer, if you can either write or type, you can still communicate. So you’d need to be not only mute but either totally illiterate or paralyzed, or both, to benefit much from this technology. If you give me a computer or even a shorthand pad and a pencil, I guarantee that I can still communicate with people just fine.
Imagine the implications for criminal investigations or lying politicians. Sounds much better than lie detectors. However, can we trust the guys doing the testing? Great article. Thanks.
The only thing that I think this would be good for is to use with those who are in a coma. The doctors and family would actually know if that patient could hear what was going on around them. Otherwise, whatever anyone thinks, it’s nobody’s business!
There is no need for this technology. Having had a comatose relative, I knew that he could hear me strictly through observation. It was my personal experience that when speakng to him, he would move his fingers, attempting to signal me. I would never consider violating his personal integrity. I know that he loved me. He eventually awoke from the coma. Comatose patients can respond to external stimuli, like music, it may depend on the individual. I witnessed it through the monitors of oxygen, blood pressure, and pulse rate.
I can certainly understand a paraplegic who can’t talk or move being able to find some benefit from this kind of technology… BUT I bet even they don’t want someone reading their thoughts. And I know that I certainly don’t anyone reading MY thoughts! I’m anti-thought reading technology!
I AM HEARING IMPAIRED FROM BIRTH. NOT DEAF BUT HARD OF HEARING MAKING MY LIFE VERY COMPLICATED. IT’S HARD TO GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE AND REALLY WANT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE SAYING TO ME WITHOUT MY HEARING. I READ LIPS SOME, BUT IT’S NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. PEOPLE FOR THE MOST PART ARE NOT PATIENT. USING A PHONE IS IMPOSSIBLE AND HEARING THE VIDEO CAMERA ON SKYPE OR MUSIC FROM A COMPTER OR PHONE IS ALSO NOT POSSIBLE.
THEREFORE MY WISH IS THAT SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO CREATE THESE THINGS WOULD CREAT A DEVISE THAT WOULD BE ABLE TO RESTORE MY HEARING TO “NORMAL” SO THAT MY QUALITY OF LIFE WOULD IMPROVE. I AM ISOLATED FROM THE WORLD IN EFFECT B/C OF MY LACK OF HEARING EVERYTHING. I UNDERSTAND EVERTHING, THAT IS SAID TO ME, IT’S THE HEARING IT THAT PRESENTS A PROFOUND PROBLEM. SO I AM ALL FOR THAT TECHNOLOGY.
I DO SINCERELY BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE FAR MORE PEOPLE WITH HEARING ISSUES THAN WITH ISSUES OF SPEECH IMPEDEMENT. HOWEVER IT’S NOT REALLY BENEFICIAL FOR THEM TO HELP PEOPLE LIKE MYSELF, B/C IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH “CONTROL”, BUT WHEN THEY CAN LITERALLY “READ YOUR MIND” THEN IT’S A WHOLE NEW BALLGAME.
I completely understand and am sympathetic to your limited hearing. Most people will experience hearing loss if they live long enough, so yes, it is a common problem. Hearing aids have been improving and can now fit inside the ear and are not visible to others as the older large beige plastic hearing aids with plastic tubes were.
Cost is the issue. They are quite expensive. The truth is that the medical community is not even capable of curing the common cold. It’s a racket, for the most part. Antibiotics and aspirin were probably the most significant developements, in addition to some vaccines, however, there is a new polio epidemic taking place, and there is now super bacteria resistant to antibiotics as a result of antibiotics being overprescribed, not taken as directed, and in meat and dairy products.
Read thoughts? When I was working in medical transcription, I would have been surprised if a VOICE recognition system could tell the difference between “Pap smear” and Pabst beer.”
The first thing is how trustworthy is a person’s thoughts anyway? Most of us nowadays have a pretty big imagination. Also I like that they pretend this technology hasn’t been use the military and intelligence agencies for more that 30 years lol
The more that I have learned about universities, the more opposed to them I am. These are frankenstein’s with God complexes. This could be used as the ultimate theft device, granting access to all passwords, not to mention, all of an individuals intellectual property. It is total enslavement, and total rape. It is rape that never ends. It is rape that is never brought to justice. It is entirely sick, and entirely evil. MIT professor, Dr. George M. Church wrote a book called Regenesis, in which he advocated re-creating cro-magnon man, the perfect slave… too dumb to realize it. The universities also instituted Eugenics programs in the early 1900’s, and illegally performed radiation experiments on pregnant women and new-borns. They must be stopped. They must no longer recieve any government subsidies, as a result of over a century of psychopathic, anti-humanitarian behavior, and total disinformation, which has totally destroyed America.
SHUT THEM DOWN AND LOCK THEM UP!
i kept trying to post something extremly important that my psychopath hackers prevent fom being sent. I can’t even begin to fathom the level of amorality and idiocy that would lead individuals that are targetting me have. Total losers without a purpose, a cause, or even an excuse!
Hell is wating for them! Satan saved a place for them and is keepng it warm!
They are evidently athesists, who will be in for one hell of a surprise!
I couldn’t agree more! I have a few questions and need help with protecting myself from a mind reading device. Please contact me if you have the time. Thank you
This could be used for those in comas, perhaps! This is wonderful! 😀
Tech can be misused (nuclear tech comes to mind), which is why we must guard ourselves as a people against all the evils that, since the dawn of time, threaten to destroy humanity – nothing new there. We’ll always be fighting that fight.
That’s no reason not to develop tools, like this which can be used for great good.
I mean, think about ultrasound, or genetic testing. That can save lives by catching a growing tumor, or a tendency toward a disease someone needs to guard against.
Or…it can be used to check for deformities in a fetus so that a “mother” wanting a designer kid can kill it in the womb.
Good and evil uses for everything- including cars, and planes (9/11). It’s how we use it the tech that makes us who we are.
So, kudos to these guys! Pretty incredible development!
How would this technology benefit a comatose patient in any way? Do you believe that just because someone is comatose that they have lost their rights to be free of invasive, anti-humanitarian, anti 4th amendment, technology depriving the already victimized individual of their last right of personal integrity? You sound like an extremely dangerous psychopath. You have absolutely zero respect for personal rights.
Universities, medical personelle, private corporations, and individuals are in no way, shape or form entitled to violate peoples liberties, including the 4th amendment.
How is it possible for these mad scientists with God complexes to be either so short sighted and naive, failing to recognize the potential for extreme abuse, or so amoral and psychopathic that they are willing to take the money for research, and have their names displayed in Journals, going down in history inventing some of the most sadistic technology that the world has ever known?
Why do people sink money into these evil Orwellian tech companies?! I guess that they would sell their children’s kidney’s on the black market for money too, since they have justified selling their children’s 1st and 4th amendment rights for a profit.
Their kid’s may inherit money, but money without liberty or kidnies won’t provide a legacy that anyone would wish to inherit!
Having read the paper in Scientific Reports, my impression is that the research team did not come close to actually reading people’s thoughts. They fed a very few lines in to a few brains, and (using electrodes planted directly in the brains – not terribly practical in everyday life) managed to distinguish between the words they KNEW the person heard, and to reproduce those words later because they knew which brainwave patterns those words were associated with. That’s like showing a person 5 different photos, noticing his or her facial expression with each one, and then correctly identifying the photo the person sees later by knowing which expression is connected with each photo.
If mind-reading technology is developed, it will be abused by those in power, and probably be far too expensive to provide benefits for anyone in the bottom 90%.
Orwell was right, he just got the year wrong. The thought police are coming. Your TV will not only be watching you, it will be reading your mind.
The Universities, as well as the many American institutions that profit from implementing the universities mala en sei policies have completely destroyed America.
If the governmentbmust seize control of a child’s brain for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 9 months of the year, strictly for the individual to be able to function in American society, it is a 5 alarm wake up call!
The first lesson that they are taught is that they have no control over their destiny, mind, and body, being forced to be brainwashed into submission and complacency for the complete usurption and destruction of their lives to benefit a parasitic, psychopathic oligarcy legalizing mala en sei practices, and overburdenning society with mala prohibitus legislation.
Schools, universities, hospitals, prisons, and jails are nothing short of being American concentration camps.
The universities, government, and corporations have displayed obscene behavior though their legalization of mala en se.
This is a matter of personal bounaries. People have the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures in their persons, papers, houses, and effects, as stated in the 4th amendment. Nothing in that statement permits private corporations, universities, and medical personelle to conduct unreasonable searches and seizures either.
Peoples brains and bodies must be free of searches and seizures under any and all circumstances. Forceable searches on peoples bodies and brains is rape, without question. there is absolutely zero excuse for it!
If anyone is incapable of determinning acceptable bounaries on their own, read the constitution, ( specifically the first 13 amendments) and the bible. They are quite clearly spelled out for the morally impaired psychopaths.
The people that invent these things and do this kind of stuff to people should have been aborted, since this crime ring parading as a governent allows this sadistic abuse of people, and continues enriching and empowering predatory psychopaths.
Here’s a Petition to make the right to mental privacy one of our new Human Rights.
https://www.change.org/p/make-the-right-to-mental-privacy-one-of-our-new-human-rights
In another artical it was said that ” we delete memories, reconstruct and manipulate them “…they also can interrupt the brains ability of identifying a substance ihaled, eated or even injected in our body when then our body wouldnt be able to naturally get rid of a such substance. So, this researches are extremely harmful when in wrong hands…
Hi Mike.
I don’t know if this will reach you but I know I have been a victim of mind reading technology. Please research my court cases in AZ. Specifically, Eric and Brandon Reinsch. I am a professional and have over 100 professional recommendations on my LinkedIn profile.
I am currently out of the country just trying to survive. Thank you!!
Karrie
Be careful!! Think about the negative effect. If you make fire , you should make fire alarm and fire extinguisher together. . Even if you make the security system, you can not guarantee that it always win.
When someone can read others brain, there would not be human society left!! So horrible to know that your every thought be read by others!! No privacy!! No human right!! No peace of mind!! No happiness!! No meaning of life!!
Do you want such horrible situation?
I am telling you as 24 hour monitored Victim of such illegal, no consensual human experiment ,that no human society would remain,
Careful!! Everything has pro and cons.