Scientists in Texas developed a GPT-like AI system that reads minds
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system capable of interpreting and reconstructing human thoughts.
The scientists recently published a paper in Nature Neuroscience exploring using AI to non-invasively translate human thoughts into words in real time.
According to the researchers, current methods for decoding thoughts into words are either invasive — meaning they require surgical implantation — or limited in that they “can only identify stimuli from among a small set of words or phrases.”
The team at Austin circumvented these limitations by training a neural network to decode functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals from multiple areas of the human brain simultaneously.
In conducting this experiment, the researchers had several test subjects listen to hours of podcasts while an fMRI machine non-invasively recorded their brain activity. The resulting data was then used to train the system on a specific user’s thought patterns.
After the training, test subjects had their brain activity monitored again while listening to podcasts, watching short films and silently imagining telling a story. During this part of the experiment, the AI system was fed the subjects' fMRI data and decoded the signals into plain language in real time.
According to a press release from the University of Texas at Austin, the AI was able to get things right approximately 50% of the time. The results, however, aren’t exact — the researchers designed the AI to convey the general ideas being thought about, not the exact words being thought.
Fortunately for anyone concerned about having their thoughts infiltrated by AI against their will, the scientists are very clear that this isn’t
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