Facebook can literally read your mind and 'decode' your thoughts

Facebook-backed scientists have announced that they can now read human thoughts by analysing signals sent within the brain.

The researchers insisted there was nothing ‘sinister’ about this tech, which is designed to allow people paralysed by a stroke, neurodegenerative disease or traumatic brain injury to communicate with the outside world.

A team from the University of California San Francisco worked with volunteers who already had electrodes placed on the surface of their brains to gather data ahead of major surgery.

The researchers were then able to use machine learning to recognise the ‘sound’ of responses to questions and ‘decode’ the contents of brain transmissions.

This experiment was a success and allowed scientists to ‘instantly identify’ three volunteers’ ‘spoken responses to a set of standard questions based solely on their brain activity, representing a first for the field’.

‘Most previous approaches have focused on decoding speech alone, but here we show the value of decoding both sides of a conversation – both the questions someone hears and what they say in response,’ said speech neuroscientist Eddie Chang, MD, a professor of neurosurgery.

‘This reinforces our intuition that speech is not something that occurs in a vacuum and that any attempt to decode what patients with speech impairments are trying to say will be improved by taking into account the full context in which they are trying to communicate.’

The research is funded by Facebook Reality Labs, which wants to develop a non-invasive brain interface which will allow people to type by simply thinking about what they want to write.

Scientists don’t want you to worry about the thought of a future where people like Mark Zuckerberg can work out what you’re thinking.

‘In those of us lucky enough to have intact speech, the boundary between thinking and speaking is almost imperceptible,’ the university explained in a statement about the ethics of mind-reading tech.

‘So when scientists talk about designing technology to decode the brain activity underlying speech, it is easy to think they are talking about reading people’s minds, with all the serious ethical concerns that would imply.

‘In reality, there is a huge gap, both scientific and technological, that makes any sinister attempt to intrude on a person’s inner thoughts virtually impossible, while decoding what they are trying to say out loud – a clinically urgent need for people with paralysis – is merely very hard.’

Chang added: ‘I have no interest in developing a technology to find out what people are thinking, even if it were possible.

‘But if someone wants to communicate and can’t, I think we have a responsibility as scientists and clinicians to try to restore that most fundamental human ability.’

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