Brain-sensing technology allows typing at 12 words per minute
sciencebulletin.org
sciencebulletin.org
This is what the alien robot swarms that arrive at Earth will be after, cheap organic computers
Unless they make gooey pods like in the matrix
Perhaps a jar of nutrient-rich slurry, housing five or six brains each, and a monthly cleaning of the probes?
Unless, for some odd reason our DNA is special such that the way our brains/neurons work would be some benefit.
At that point though, they would only need to snatch up a few of us and reverse engineer our DNA/genome to do what was stated in step one....
That would be a good topic for /r/writingprompts.
- WPM is a difficult metric to "game", since if they make a mistake they have to select the backspace key, and then select the correct key again.
- It's a proof of concept demonstration that a human (e.g. in the BrainGate[1] clinical trial) could use this prosthetic system to communicate in text. When a human were driving the system, the keys wouldn't light up; they'd just type freely.
For intuition, this is like clicking on an on-screen keyboard, so the typing speed is very high given the constraint of focusing on each key as a separate, discrete movement.
We'd love to get lightfield imaging working too but starting with vanilla 2P and building from there.
There are discrete versions of dasher that operate using a single digital switch or actuator, rather than an analog input. As long as you can feed in one bit of information, Dasher can work with that.
http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/saw27/dasher/bci/
The video I made of one of our undergrad assistants is still up there!
So it looks like the big improvement here is speed; P300 spellers are slow, like 4 characters per minute. What techniques does this new research use to improve that detection speed? The article doesn't go into much detail about how the signal detection or text entry actually works.
I also wonder if something like this could be adapted to test for locked-in syndrome?
>“Also understand that we’re not using auto completion here like your smartphone does where it guesses your words for you,”
That would reduce the "distance" you have to move the cursor on average.
(Several years ago I had the idea to combine the accessibility software Dasher with the "Neural impulse actuator", which tranduces brain waves, but never went through with it, though I bought the tech.)
Also depending the setup of the onscreen keyboard, it too could have error reducing aspects built in.
Also it's unclear whether the 12 wpm is actual wpm with back spacing and correction, or whether it's an 'adjusted' wpm based on the error rate.
This isn't to say that it's not an impressive result regardless. Just that I'm more skeptical of the 12 wpm.
Or better, learn 50 "commands" which could then be assigned to anything be it letters, tasks, phrases, etc.
http://www.stanford.edu/~shenoy/GroupPublications/KaoEtAlIEE...
Reading the latter reveals the implant side is a 96 channel utah array.
"I'm thinking of a letter... On the far left of the keyboard, middle row."
Considered most governments and corporations, the more decades, the better...
That's not really true. There were significant curtailments of US government power after scandals like Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the revelations of MK ULTRA, and all the spying that was done on journalists, civil rights leaders, etc.
Of course, now there's been a backlash in the other direction, and it will probably get a lot worse before it will get better. But history has shown that it can get better.
Also, see the history of the Stasi in East Germany and Stalin in the USSR.
You might feel safe now, but can you really know for sure that you will never step out of lockstep with the ruling party? What about all future ruling parties? What happens if an easily-offended future regime finds your archived brainscan and decides that an opinion that is OK today makes you then in their eyes like a former Klansman?
"Look at me, I can type 100 wpm... Why would anyone ever want to do this?"
Why does the value always need to be explained? Of course the value is explained in the article, but you just read the headline?
Maybe instead , we'll start really asking what is the good life(for both society and the person), we'll probably get answers like(from various philoshophers and religions): life full of love, compassion, empathy, peace, trancendence, meaning, service, self-actualiztion, health, etc.
And better understanding, control and training of the brain(maybe by using fmri neurofeedback) may be a great tool in achieving all of those qualities in a safe, effective and efficient manner, and of course fully based on personal choice.
How can this expand what it means to be human ? how could it shape society ?
And instead, we're talking about typing with the brain.
And we see this kind of thinking everywhere. for example , the world is filled with tons of "social" technologies, but we can't even get video chat with eye-contact, at people's homes ?
Typing is a first step and is a great way of testing the technology and verifying that the sensors are working as expected, as it's extremely obvious how accurately they're working.
"Typing with the brain" can not only be very useful, but potentially life-transforming for those with mobility impairments -- e.g. quadriplegics, and those fully or partially paralyzed for other reasons.