60 karma · joined March 4, 2013
Gotta be careful of those discrimination laws.
This does sidestep some of the security features of the device, but it's fine if you really want it. Or you can just ssh somewhere.
"Working with funding from the Yale Provost’s office, Cowen and post doctoral researcher Brice Kuhl, now an assistant professor at New York University, showed six subjects 300 different “training” faces while undergoing fMRI scans. They used the data to create a sort of statistical library of how those brains responded to individual faces. They then showed the six subjects new sets of faces while they were undergoing scans. Taking that fMRI data alone, researchers used their statistical library to reconstruct the faces their subjects were viewing."
So yes, it will always output something like a face. It's more like they are using the FMRI to select among preset options. It's still potentially a great result, but we need more detail than this article provides.
Some of the stuff is a but uneven but he's written some of the most thought-provoking sci-fi I've read in some time.
For example, my macbook track pad takes velocity into account. Something like that could make a big difference for covering large distances. I'm withholding judgment until I try one.
But then I play FPS with a trackball now, so it doesn't seem so alien to me.
There's some more from the author here: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html
I really don't see why everyone is assuming these guys are in the right. I don't see much to support that claim.
If they come after bitcoin and you make the same comment, I'll be more sympathetic.