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fungussa OP t1_itosh8z wrote

SS: Scientists can now 'decode' people's thoughts without even touching their heads. By its nature, this scanning method cannot capture real-time brain activity, since the electrical signals released by brain cells move much more quickly than blood moves through the brain. In additional tests, the algorithm could fairly accurately explain the plot of a silent movie that the participants watched in the scanner.

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TwistDirect t1_itoufel wrote

Today we invented a working air-gapped thought Scanner. Dark timeline we’re accelerating towards.

p.s. Dreamt my penis tore longitudinally from too much sex and then on my birthday only hours before a two day and two hour census lockdown I went to work the day after my birthday and every female co-worker chastely kissed me on the lips once. Meanwhile the badly torn outer fleshy outer part had ripped off entirely during birthday oral sex from a dear pneumatic friend and inside was another penis with a restored foreskin that looked like a freshly pupating moth larvae. While my family enjoyed films and water park entertainments, I went looking for my friends and found an entirely different set of friends having summer drinks at lawn tables outside in the heat of a sun-drenched square. We talked about work. I could not concentrate on the conversation because of my freshly molted penis. The fatty ecdysis responsible for most of its former girth I threw away. When I found my birthday party again, the guests were making memories of our time together in the form of photo collage and mix tape song playlists on their tablets. I woke up as I tried to return to my third floor walk up apartment in a wooden hotel with Amsterdam-narrow steep stairs but before I did, my penis had grown back to its usual size but now sported a fresh fleshy foreskin.

There. Let’s see their machine read that.

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chaogomu t1_itow95n wrote

I mean, right now the machine can tell if you're paying attention to a pre-selected, silent film by watching the visual cortex.

We're still a long way from reading any coherent thought.

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TwistDirect t1_itox9zt wrote

Not too far.

> The algorithm could then take an fMRI recording and generate a story based on its content, and that story would match the original plot of the podcast or radio show "pretty well," Huth told The Scientist.

> In other words, the decoder could infer what story each participant had heard based on their brain activity.

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GM8 t1_itpfigo wrote

Pretty well can mean just identifying vague topic, like love, nature, fear or mean a 1000 page detailed description.

Pretty well it means nothing

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TwistDirect t1_itpmzpx wrote

Yeah, you’re right, it’s a preprint so waiting for the peer-review.

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GM8 t1_itpwpt1 wrote

That's not what I've said, but thanks for assuming I'm a careful person rather than just argumentative.

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TwistDirect t1_itpx2qq wrote

You’re welcome! It’s selfish altruism though. You may have been just argumentative yet I benefit on average more from my assumption than its alternatives.

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UponMidnightDreary t1_its4iyt wrote

Selfish altruism is just something that works for everyone. If you’re trying to do something good, how wonderful for it to feel good for you as well. I’ve stopped seeing “no true altruism” as a depressing thing that means we are all selfish, but instead as just a really cool extra gift.

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MozerfuckerJones t1_itp111z wrote

Remember, that dumbass from Google thought AI was here.

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TwistDirect t1_itp1dhi wrote

I do and I’m skeptical of these results also (see my comment above). The claims and reported results are significant because their non-invasive nature and accuracy will catch the interest of industry quickly and where capital flows, innovation sometimes follows. Marketers using this to fine tune advertising targeting is just one concerning application.

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joey0314 t1_itpk69h wrote

Eventually they will be able to interact with every single neuron in your brain

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chaogomu t1_itqfytf wrote

Yeah, no.

Not with this technique.

To get every neuron you'd need a very invasive implant.

Hell, this technique can be ruined by just moving your head.

It also needs hours of training data, pre-selected training data. So while this is kind of cool, it's not mind reading, and it's not coherent thoughts.

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joey0314 t1_itsyuln wrote

You dont need an implant just very sophisticated software your brain is one big wireless reciever you need extremely sophisticated software and a modern high quality broad spectrum microwave radio transciever

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joey0314 t1_itsyxeg wrote

The barrier is the software not necessarily the hardware

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joey0314 t1_itsz44h wrote

Also they are working on AI which trains itself automatically

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Able-Emotion4416 t1_itray2l wrote

By reading the article, I got the feeling that they could re-create the stories they heard. Not the exact wordings, but they still get the story right.

Have I misunderstood something? Isn't that huge?

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chaogomu t1_itrucew wrote

From my understanding, they could only track the story as the people were in the MRI listening to it. And it took hours of training data before they could do that.

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[deleted] t1_itptre6 wrote

How are people downplaying this like technology never advances?! Oh, the machine is only reading about a movie someone watched’ Like, what?! This is both amazing and absolutely terrifying.

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WalkofAeons t1_itpsjtx wrote

Thank the heavens for that : , I was very worried for a second.

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Sgt_Beefy t1_itowymk wrote

Ah yes very nice just what we need more man made horrors beyond my comprehension

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mb5280 t1_itozg67 wrote

yeah why tf do they keep making evil shit? dont we have enough problems?

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myusernamehere1 t1_itp6kiy wrote

A hammer can be used to drive in a nail or smash someones skull open

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BrokenSage20 t1_itpdkrz wrote

Ah or drive a nail into someone's skull. Best of both worlds.

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Marvele10 t1_itq3s27 wrote

I heard screwdrivers have made a comeback

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Weird_Cantaloupe2757 t1_itqpgz5 wrote

Yeah seriously if you are working on this type of thing, fuck you. Whatever benevolent ideas you have for this tech, you have to know how fucking evil the actual usage will be, and how much irreparable harm this can do. Just stop.

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Aint_not_a_dorkus t1_itouqw7 wrote

Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow

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AeternusDoleo t1_itoxuak wrote

Makes me wonder if tinfoil hats (or Magneto-style helmets) will be a privacy tool eventually... heh. Wouldn't that be hilarious and sad.

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EvoEpitaph t1_itoyp1n wrote

I mean more realistically sellers would just build a layer of some flexible blocking material in between the normal layers of a baseball cap or whatever making it look no different.

You'd still be the town crazy if you were walkin around in a home made tinfoil hat.

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doomturtle21 t1_itpx42p wrote

During covid I was nearly left homeless so I made a business selling various styles of hats and helmets out of tin foil and aluminium foil. So many people bought them that I was able to pay five years of my mortgage off from 2020 alone. Don’t get me wrong I put pride into them and layered the two foil types, then shaped and painted them according to customer order. People are just gonna make them themselves why not make them good at least. Funnily enough most my customers were cosplayers or larpers instead of lobotomites

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AeternusDoleo t1_itpxxg2 wrote

Hey, you found a need and made a living out of it. Good on you :)

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xandarianladiesman t1_itoye2e wrote

Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day! Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day!

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[deleted] t1_itptuqq wrote

Think unsexy thoughts. Think unsexy thoughts.

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lungshenli t1_itp5h3y wrote

Technologically impressive
In practice, r/BoringDystopia

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Weird_Cantaloupe2757 t1_itqpq8c wrote

No this is the type of thing that escalates a boring dystopia into an overtly horrifying, traditional sci fi dystopia.

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TheBlakout t1_ittbw6c wrote

This is the kind of thing that researchers want you to believe is much more impressive than it actually is so you don't pull their funding and that journalists want you to believe is much more interesting than it is so they get paid for the sixth article they had to write today

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Revelec458 t1_itoxsf0 wrote

Jesus... Literally nothing good could possibly come from this. Why put research into this?

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gfsincere t1_itoyy30 wrote

People in comas that aren’t brain dead? People with locked in syndrome?

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SireRequiem t1_itq1n1c wrote

I feel as though it would be time and money better spent to learn how to reverse the processes that lead them to that fate. This technology, if legitimate, will not be used wisely on the whole.

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gfsincere t1_itrhvfb wrote

Well you go tell people in comas and locked in syndrome that.

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xByron t1_itoy6av wrote

What do you mean?

Think about the advertising! Your tv can farm your thoughts while you sleep for truly targeted advertising!

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045675327 t1_itoyyaw wrote

Advertising of course.

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lupusrex13 t1_itp1o0m wrote

Light speed briefs

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pretendperson t1_iu2nppt wrote

Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!

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Enzor t1_itpnhnb wrote

Govt/military already have mind control. This is just the population catching up.

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Regular_Try_4833 t1_itp8ath wrote

> Jesus... Literally nothing good could possibly come from this. Why put research into this?

Interacting with electronic devices with just thoughts would be nice.

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Heap_Good_Firewater t1_itpgzjo wrote

This is really cool, but the headline is misleading.

An MRI requires the subject to be cooperative and lie still. The headline makes it sound like you can point a mind-reading ray at a random person on the street.

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LilRee12 t1_itpm0hx wrote

Yeah since they’re measuring blood flow to make the predictions. Being up and active will affect those readings. But you never know

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stage_directions t1_itpp34f wrote

I do know. Jiggling while in the scanner will wreak havoc on the readings. Full on “up and active?” Forget it.

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[deleted] t1_itpu14z wrote

For now. The motivation to make this work as well as possible will have every spy agency masturbating furiously while figuring out how to fine tune this technology.

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TheBlakout t1_ittbmku wrote

Yeah, absolutely, they just have to invent room-temperature superconductors (A century of research and billions of dollars and we're still looking at slightly warmer than liquid nitrogen),

manufacture them at scale (graphene, a substance you can make by putting a piece of sticky tape on some pencil lead and pulling, has needed 2 decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to start to look like maybe we'll possibly be there in another decade or two),

develop a pocket-sized nuclear fusion reactor for power supply (go fuck yourself),

covertly position two agents equal distances apart on exactly opposite sides of the target (lol),

train an A.I. on the target after a few dozen readings compared to a profile of what they're probably thinking about at the time (double lol), and

pray to god they happen to be preoccupied with thoughts of something important while you manage to do that (go fuck yourself, again.)

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AstronautOk1143 t1_itr86fl wrote

Wait they are just measuring blood flow? That can’t be accurate at all

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Marvele10 t1_itq41j4 wrote

It's really just a matter of time at this point

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andresni t1_itozik6 wrote

This is actually quite interesting. Unlike most studies of this kind, the test stimulus was novel. That is, the decoder wasn't merely trained to detect which of a set of stimulus a participant listened to (e.g. which of these 5 stories), but from that set decode a novel stimulus! On a single trial basis no less.

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InternationalHatDay t1_itp4gbd wrote

thats awesome but could we hit this cancer thing a little harder?

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NurblesOkami t1_itpoees wrote

Theyre working on it, look into new CRISPR advancements!

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StarChild413 t1_itxjy3d wrote

Not the same scientists or even the same area so whether or not you agree with this it's not poaching scientists who could be curing cancer

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InternationalHatDay t1_iu9x4ka wrote

:) yes i know they are not poaching scientists. im making a comment about our societal priorities.

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ChronoPsyche t1_itpktu7 wrote

Guess the tinfoil hat people were not wrong, just early.

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ZRhoREDD t1_itplekg wrote

Omg, eye-tracking eat your heart out! Wait until they put those in MS Teams and base your hourly pay on how often you are THINKING about work (up to a maximum of 6.5 hours per day, ofc)

... How did we end up in the dystopia timeline?

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thEiAoLoGy t1_itq5nrw wrote

This would be epic for controlling video games unobtrusively

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The_Wanderer25 t1_itp8mg4 wrote

If this is what they are telling us about, they are long past this stage behind the scenes. Maybe it's how the ads appear for what you've thought about and what you haven't spoke.

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Drwfyytrre t1_ittkl52 wrote

That would be such a sad use of advanced tech. I’d hope the Illuminati would be more creative

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CaptainAppalling t1_itplubx wrote

This article is needlessly sensational.Brain decoding with fMRI goes back 21 years. It’s better now but incrementally so. Not brave new word so.

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Random_182f2565 t1_itpq4nu wrote

Attention you have lost 250 social credit points for wrongthinking you are now not allowed to use public transportation, hotels or leave your district of residence .

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Bunkochunko200 t1_itpu92g wrote

“From a distance” is a weird way to say “from a very short distance if you lie PERFECTLY still in a several-million-dollar tube” Magnetic resonance imaging will never work at any considerable distance, because of the rapid drop off in field strength. This is cool science, but it’s not ushering in a darker new reality. The real ‘mind-reading’ is done by you interacting with your phone.

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Cruntis t1_itozxdj wrote

Title is slightly misleading in saying “from a distance.” It’s not like some ray-gun you can point at someone and figure out what they’re thinking—the article is making a point out of there not being a need for physical contact, but subjects were put in an fMRI machine and guided through activities that were processed by machine learning. Still amazing, but we’re only scratching the surface.

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av-atr t1_itpha43 wrote

psycho-pass is a documentary of the distant future

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itslog1776 t1_itp6nwh wrote

Just what f**king Big Brother needs. ... More tyrannical tech to rule over the masses with.. Believe it’s about time to cash it all in, buy some gear & retire to the wilderness just before the mind reading AI armies rise up & enslave humanity, LoL.

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hawklost t1_itqyylk wrote

Yes, because sticking someone into an MRI machine and asking them to hold their head still so that they can use this technologies over putting someone in and placing electrodes on them directly is very much what the Big Brother will do.

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Temp89 t1_itq3lvn wrote

fMRI has been used in brain-computer interfaces for years. I imagine the novel part of this unpublished paper is the decoding algorithm they mention.

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[deleted] t1_its5cpy wrote

How long until it’s used against citizens by their governments

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mouserat_hat t1_itsxrvt wrote

...the new study, "which has not yet been peer-reviewed", the team.....scanned the brains of "one woman and two men" in their 20s and 30s.

3 people. Not peer reviewed. Cool.

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yeet_bbq t1_itt5b2r wrote

The 1980's called and wants their sci-fi movie back

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FuturologyBot t1_itovvc2 wrote

The following submission statement was provided by /u/fungussa:

SS: Scientists can now 'decode' people's thoughts without even touching their heads. By its nature, this scanning method cannot capture real-time brain activity, since the electrical signals released by brain cells move much more quickly than blood moves through the brain. In additional tests, the algorithm could fairly accurately explain the plot of a silent movie that the participants watched in the scanner.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ycwpmj/new_technique_for_decoding_peoples_thoughts_can/itosh8z/

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Blakut t1_itpm4pl wrote

It probably works like this:
"Is the subject thinking of something?"
BZZZT 30 seconds analysis
"...YES..."

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Black_RL t1_itpvurn wrote

This is mind blowing!

>For the new study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, the team scanned the brains of one woman and two men in their 20s and 30s. Each participant listened to 16 total hours of different podcasts and radio shows over several sessions in the scanner.

>The team then fed these scans to a computer algorithm that they called a "decoder," which compared patterns in the audio to patterns in the recorded brain activity.

>The algorithm could then take an fMRI recording and generate a story based on its content, and that story would match the original plot of the podcast or radio show "pretty well," Huth told The Scientist.

>In other words, the decoder could infer what story each participant had heard based on their brain activity.

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dillrepair t1_itpzxz7 wrote

Literally… don’t really want to spend that much time in an fmri…. Probably is somewhat mind blowing getting so much mri to the head.

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Calvinbah t1_itvkpmm wrote

New Tech Decoding people's thoughts

Me, who pictures every person they meet in a sexual situation,

imindanger.gif

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Bosswashington t1_itpth8h wrote

This technology has been ongoing for quite some time. I think that when the tech becomes viable, it will mark the end of the human race.

In its infancy, it will start out rather innocently. Marketed to kids and families as a game.

“New! from Hasbro. ‘What Were You Thinking’. The mind bending twist the boring, old, 20 Questions that your grandparents used to play. Just put on the patented ‘Thinking Cap’ and show your friends and family the answer even before they can ask the question. Amaze your friends! ‘What Were You Thinking’. Get yours today, where toys are sold”.

Then, it will become more invasive. People’s secrets and lies will start to be exposed. The powerful people with the darkest secrets will stop at nothing to keep these secrets from seeing the light of day. It will not end well.

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Null_Hype t1_itpx36w wrote

New technique for decoding people’s thoughts at a distance - it’s called listening

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