From lips and text to speech now from thought to speech in AI

About 20 years ago or so major efforts were expended on reading lips from videos and match it to speech. Then came text-to-speech and became very successful!

This is very early research!

Beware of the usual alarmism and hysteria regarding e.g. mind readers!

"The little voice inside your head can now be decoded by a brain scanner — at least some of the time. Researchers have developed the first non-invasive method of determining the gist of imagined speech, presenting a possible communication outlet for people who cannot talk. But how close is the technology — which is currently only moderately accurate — to achieving true mind-reading? ... 

Most existing thought-to-speech technologies use brain implants that monitor activity in a person’s motor cortex and predict the words that the lips are trying to form. ... computer scientists ... combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) ... with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms called large language models (LLMs), which underlie tools such as ChatGPT and are trained to predict the next word in a piece of text. ...
But many of the sentences it produced were inaccurate. The researchers also found that it was easy to trick the technology. ..."

From the abstract:

"A brain–computer interface that decodes continuous language from non-invasive recordings would have many scientific and practical applications. Currently, however, non-invasive language decoders can only identify stimuli from among a small set of words or phrases. Here we introduce a non-invasive decoder that reconstructs continuous language from cortical semantic representations recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Given novel brain recordings, this decoder generates intelligible word sequences that recover the meaning of perceived speech, imagined speech and even silent videos, demonstrating that a single decoder can be applied to a range of tasks. We tested the decoder across cortex and found that continuous language can be separately decoded from multiple regions. As brain–computer interfaces should respect mental privacy, we tested whether successful decoding requires subject cooperation and found that subject cooperation is required both to train and to apply the decoder. Our findings demonstrate the viability of non-invasive language brain–computer interfaces."

Mind-reading machines are here: is it time to worry? Neuroethicists are split on whether a study that uses brain scans and AI to decode imagined speech poses a threat to mental privacy.

Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings (no public access)

Brain Exams Instead Of Multiple Choice Tests

Posted: 7/20/2019

“Here, we investigated whether patterns of brain activity collected during a concept knowledge task could be used to compute a neural ‘score’ to complement traditional scores of an individual’s conceptual understanding” (S2)

Are we entering a new age of measuring human cognition? Mind reading ante portas!

I thank the author of S1, Sibylle Anderl, for giving me the idea for this blog post!

Sources (S):

1. NEUROIMAGING : Hirnscan statt Klausur? (7/11/19)
2. Decoding individual differences in STEM learning from functional MRI data (5/2/19)

Can AI Tell Whether You Will Be A Future Killer?

Posted: 9/3/2018

Just read this article: This new AI can track 200 eye movements to determine your personality traits (Science paper is here)

To quote (emphasis added):

1. “Using over 200 physical behaviours, such as the frequency with which subjects blinked, the researchers established connections between eye movements and personality traits.”
2. “Using a state-of-the-art machine learning method and a rich set of features encoding different eye movement characteristics, we were able to reliably predict four of the Big Five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness) as well as perceptual curiosity only from eye movements.”
3. “Our findings demonstrate a considerable influence of personality on everyday eye movement control, thereby complementing earlier studies in laboratory settings. ”
4. “Studies reporting relationships between personality traits and eye movements suggest that people with similar traits tend to move their eyes in similar ways.”

Unfortunately, the sample population with only 42 participants is very small.

To take this a few steps further, perhaps as early as within a few years we would possibly be able if a person has a propensity to become a killer if not treated. Thus children could be screened early on etc.

If this is no or little hype, then mind reading etc. is achievable within a generation.

More Advances In Mind Reading

Update

American Scientific just (10/23/2013) published a lengthy article about this subject here.

Trigger

Carnegie Mellon University reports more progress in computers reading human emotions based on neural activation patterns. Read here or here.

Excerpt from the abstract of the above PLOS paper (Emphasis added): “Method[:] actors were asked to self-induce nine emotional states (anger, disgust, envy, fear, happiness, lust, pride, sadness, and shame) while in an fMRI scanner. Using a Gaussian Naïve Bayes pooled variance classifier, we demonstrate the ability to identify specific emotions experienced by an individual at well over chance accuracy …”

The Mind Reader Applied To Suspected Iranian Agents Crossing The Mexican Border

Human Thoughts Are Private

Or as we used to say in German “ich bin doch kein Gedankenleser” (I am not a thought reader) meaning I don’t know what you were thinking.

At The Cusp Of Reading A Human Mind?

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) just published an article titled “The Mind-Reading Machine” by Celia Gorman in IEEE Spectrum (July 2012). This article summarizes some of the latest advances of machines capable to read specific brain activity associated with, e.g. someone recognizing a person on a picture.

This is just another recent article I have read about advances in mind reading capabilities.

Iranian Agents Entering The US

From this article one also learns that the US Defense Department is already applying mind reading machines in the field. “According to Elbot (CEO of Veritas Scientific), the U.S. military used an earlier Veritas device called BrainTruth to test the thoughts of suspected Iranian agents crossing the Mexican border into the United States.”

I was stunned for a moment to read in this rather technical/scientific magazine that Iranian agents may already be entering the US. I was not yet aware of any actual cases. What are these agents up to?