New Brain Implant Transcribes Thoughts: and Facebook Has This One.

Two years ago a team of tech engineers created a mind reading A.I. that was able to produce a video of human thoughts based on the brainwaves of its test subjects.

With participants hooked up to an EEG linked to a neural network the AI recreated its own videos from the signals.

The technology was hyped as the answer to stroke patients’ dreams; as it would help them to regain lost cognitive ability, although the fine tuning of the robot for optimal use was still thought to be a good decade or so away.

But that wasn’t all; there were fears authorities would use the technology to monitor citizens thoughts for reasons all their own.

We have come a long way in just a couple of short years baby as brain chips became the next big thing following on the heels of successful clinical trials in animals.

Now, thanks to a new brain-computer interface (BCI), people with paralysis can text; albeit with a difference.

By imagining writing a letter in print someone with a spinal injury can translate thoughts into text; at a speed that rivals thumb typing on a smartphone.

Using 90 characters per minute at an accuracy of over 90 percent, the system leapfrogs every record accomplished by other neural implants.

What makes the difference is an algorithm based on a popular and very powerful neural network, recurrent neural network (RNN); plus a few tricks from the machine learning community.

This neural implant uses AI to convert electrical brain signals into transcripts; and displays it onto a computer screen in real time.

“Mind-texting” may just be the start.

The study suggests that AI is better at decoding brain signals that underlie more complex human behaviors, rather than simple ones.

To be clear, these “implants” are true to their name: they are microarrays of tiny electrodes on a chip that’s surgically inserted into the top layer of the brain.

But this new system isn’t ready for the clinics just yet.

It’ll have to be tested in additional people and have some common typing functions added, such as delete or text editing. The team also wants to add the ability for mind-texting capital letters and symbols.

The next step is to work with patients who can’t speak, such as people who have had strokes or neurodegenerative disease, to restore their ability to interact with the outside world.

Facebook jumps in

Facebook is planning to build a new neural sensor that can read people’s minds and convert thoughts into actions.

The company is closer to making its brain-reading computer a reality, thanks to its vested interest in artificial intelligence.

One year after the social media giant announced it was funding research on brain-machine interfaces it turns out it’s working on a technology that picks up thoughts directly from neurons; and translates them into words.

It plans on giving people the ability to control digital devices, from keyboards to augmented reality glasses using the power of thought.

An example of this tech is a wrist band that can decode electrical signals from the brain; by wearing the wristband, the company says, you’ll be able to control a computer using your thoughts.

Apparently the sensor will take the neural signals from the brain through the spinal cord and arms, and right to the wrist.

Facebook says this will help users to hold a virtual object, type and control a character in a video game.

But Facebook is using AI for a host of reasons, from curbing the spread of misinformation on its social media platforms to removing hate speech, and scanning political content.