Slashdot Mirror
Mind Over Machine
broKenfoLd writes "Monkeys moving robotic arms by manipulating a cursor on a computer screen, simply by thinking about it? Mice who cause their water tube to dispense some refreshing H2O just by wishing it? Signal processing and decoding has long been a dream of Matrix fans and lazy system administrators for years, and science is amazingly keeping up! Popular Science's Carl Zimmer has written a fascinating piece documenting recent progress in decoding brain signals and interpreting commands issued from thoughts alone. If you heard a single violin playing Beethoven's 5th, you would be able to tell what piece of music was being played even though the rest of the orchestra was not heard. In the same way, by monitoring a relatively few neurons, computers can recognize patterns and allow programming based on these patterns to say, know if a mouse is thinking about pushing his water lever.
You can pass the time waiting for Matrix-style video games and motionless system adminstration/utilization by reading the full article."
But can it be used for channel surfing. That's the ultimate goal.
Sounds like an old joke we shared around the IT dept about 20 years ago related to 'anticipatory paging', why not anticipatory programming. Hmm. Useful
"after the nth time the process failed I gave the computer such a look that the software uninstalled itself, the harddrive crashed and the O/s committed suicide."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Monsters, John! Monsters... from the id!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Saw this on HDNet... very very very cool..
I esp like the lady with the leads out of both sides of the back of her head....
She looked very Borg-Like.
Can you imagine what might happen when a "hottie" walks though the office?
I call it sleeping.
My water tube can dispense a refreshing H20-based substance just by wishing.
...this is some neat shit.
:)
Personally, I find it facinating that the brain can so readily adapt to adding and removing hardware ( limbs ), but reading about it is even cooler.
What other computer do you know can learn how to use foriegn devices without a driver disk?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
the best of these kind of devices (devloped in nasa labs) can only do 95% accuracy. sure that might be fine for say playing a video game(unless its fast pace), but if you tried to walk with 95% accuracy, you'd be the but of more jokes then the "how do you get bob dole out of a tree, wave to him" jokes.
but over all its really cool that they are even able to do this at all.
"Mice who cause their water tube to dispense some refreshing H2O just by wishing it?"
Uncanny! Just this morning I caused by "water tube" to dispense liquid just by wishing it too!
Printing out poster-sized Pr0n just by visualizing it?
Everybody... The day is now!!!
The original generic sig.
It would be interesting to have a cell-phone implant. You can call your friends and relatives, and always get them and know what they are thinking. And MAN, it would get annoying!
How about living in a way that our bodies were actually meant to. Exercising, working with our bodies, and communicating in person. Eventually we will just be sitting at home, in a lazy-boy with our brains plugged in to a network and all work from home. But, that would suck!
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
And I ran him over with my SCV?
"I didn't run him over!"
"Did you THINK about running him over?"
*long pause*
I didn't run him over!
They're talking about reverse engineering the brain - it would be pretty sweet, but one hell of a task to filter through all the activity and figure out what signal meant what, combinations, etc. I'm sure an Altair is all you would need to reverse engineer my brain. You'd flip maybe ten switches, tops.
I also reply below your current threshold.
Not SCV...Damn Starcraft.
I mean, the rat can think about water, and get some water. But a rat's mind is way simpler.
Have you ever thought about suicide? Now imagine if when you thought about it a machine would come and kill you. Also I don't know about you, but I can't control my mind completely, sometimes I have thoughts that are completely unrelated with what I am doing... I really don't think I could trust a machine to make my thoughts come true, I'm sure in the future machines will be able to interpret the signals in your brain with a 99% precision, I just can't trust my own mind.
If we can control the machines, can someone else come back through the machine an control me??? Could I be hacked??? Would I have to have a firewall in my head???
Evolution or ID?
Brain-Computer Interfaces for Communication and Control at the society for neuroscience annual meeting. There are already paralyzed people using this type of technology (electrode and even EEG(!)) on an experimental basis.
Now it's reading the brain. But eventually it will be reading a deeper part of the brain, and not needing the rest of it.
-I am an elective eunuch.
But that would require thinking, and that hurts :(
Popular Science has always been crazy as hell science. I am still wating for my flying car and hotel room on Mars that was predicted in the magazine when I read in in junior high in the 70's.
Popular Science, ya gotta luv'em. I just wish the track record was a bit better, after reading about the nextgen dirigibles off and on for years I'm just a bit disapointed, that sounded like so much fun. Probe in my head? Less so.
;-) but still...
Mod me down, off topic troll
This could have a potentially incredible impact on impaired and disabled people. Imagine if Stephen Hawking would be able to work at the same speed his mind seems to function at? However, what about Mind through Machine over Mind? Put your helmet on, jack in, and remote control that fish - imagine the long-time deep-sea discoveries we could make - maybe even find a live Architeuthis?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
2. I'm thinking I deserve a raise. Zzzzt! agreed.
Idiot! 3. I'm thinking I'll have myself a raise. Zzzzt... done.
4. I'm thinking that the leggy busty blonde wants visit my bed tonite...Zzzzt!
5. I'm thinking I should you all leave think. Zzzzt!.. !@#RTA [NO CARRIER]
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
So, the average person thinks of sex like every 4 seconds. The traffic on one of these brain networks would have more porn than the internet.
Evolution or ID?
Ever seen clockwork orange? Very deep stuff.
This does not answer how brain works at all :-) As a motor control neuroscientist by trade, I can tell that finding out what the brain actually doing has little to do with these neat things.
:-)
This is not to say that it's not important -- all kinds of prosthetic devices can be made to help people with disabled limbs or other parts of the motor control system -- so it's a great benefit to those people. The important thing is that these devices are still controlled by the human brain, and nobody has a good idea how.
The fact is, you can probably hook up whatever device to whatever portion of the brain (e.g. an artificial arm to you toenail brain area) and after some practice the subject will learn now to move it. So when they say "we don't see the brain as a mysterious organ anymore" they are telling you a bold-face lie.
The mystery would be demonstrated to be solved when we can build a computer with massively parallel and slow (up to 1kHz) elements that can match human performance in tasks like tracking, reaching, as well as learning those tasks.
So far, all the beatiful performance of the cool gadgets is accomplished by super-fast feedback and super-fast computing elements. Our neurons are ways slower, but they do much better. Therefore, the whole essense and mystery of the brain is how to connect 10^10 shitty elements into a great learnable machine. Algorythms and parallelism are still the mystery of the brain, even if the popular science magazines claim otherwise
Still waiting for the implantable math co-processor, ideally with optically interfaced plotting/visualization capability ...
Imagine the possibilities.
Lurking in the desert
I'd like to see a simple switch based on brain activity that would toggle on during sexual thought/arousal and toggle off in the absence of that.
Jesus sweet fucking christ I sure as hell don't want to see that! What the hell are you thinking?
Children could then be taught that if somebody's "face button" is glowing when that person is asking them to [get in the car|go play with a cute pet|have some candy|etc.], to run and get help.
Why don't we just teach children that when a "person is asking them to [get in the car|go play with a cute pet|have some candy|etc.], to run and get help" without the face-button shit?
GMD
watch this
Singing to self: "I wish I was an Oscar Myers wiener"
P O O F !
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Then, before you know it, you've thought, "\rm -r *"
Okay, I saw something like this (minus the thought part) happen in real life once upon a time. A friend and I were just talking about people accidentally typing "\rm -r *" in the lab when suddenly, someone using the Sun boxes yelled "oh shit!" because he absentmindedly typed what we said.
Of course. And when this project becomes successful, we can implement it on convicted murders, robbers, terrorists, communists, tax-evaders, cheaters, liars, ...
But we shouldn't stop there, the ultimate goal is to prevent crime. So we should implement it on everybody, just in case even a law-abiding citizen starts having impure thoughts about the validity of the president-for-life's reign on the country.
ill be more impressed when they have hooked it up so that when you grab the glass you will feel the pressure building rather then going by a visual clue...
basicly we need this device to talk back to the brain, not just listen to it.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
They talk about using this for people with disabilities. This would be great for sure but ... interpret though.
;-)
they say in the article that they need to "train" the computer beforehand (no pun intended)
before it can
My question, which was not answered in the article, is: Are every brain emmitting the same signals for the same action
or do they need to "train" the program for every new user (monkey)? I would think that every individual have a somewhat
unique "brain signature" and if it is the case, how can a totally impaired person train a computer to use an artificial arm or
leg or whatever if anyway he isn't able to move a "joystick"?
Can the computer associated anything as an input to compare with the brain activity?
Could (let's say ) S. Hawking program the system by blowing in a tube harder or smoother for example?
Am I clear?
I'd rather be sailing...
But a rat's mind is way simpler.
Allow me to introduce you to our management team.
KFG
Cool. (not)
...}
We could use this to build psionic exercise devices which restore our latent mind-over-matter powers.
Oh no. Psionic Wars, here we come.
{Honestly, I'm beginning to see what all the fuss is all about over The American Beast, in those Middle East sects
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
As his cat goes up in flames...
No!!! God dammit!!! I thought a BUD LIGHT!!!
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
This sort of reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin's story, "The Lathe of Heaven". For the uninitiated, "The Lathe of Heaven" takes place in Portland, Oregon in the year 2002. Its main character, an insignificant working class man named George Orr (Bruce Davison who appears in "The X-Men" movie), is plagued by 'effective dreaming', where his dreams literally come true.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
(Damn, didn't work)
Natalie Portman in my cube.
(Nope, still doesn't work)
I want to be overworked and overpaid, but still have time to surf slashdot from work.
(Woohoo! It works!)
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
I'm sure most coders out there have dreamed of this ability for years. No more clunky keyboard interface to slow you down.
Typos would be a thing of the past. Imagine scanning though some source and noticing that you assigned 100 to a var rather than 10, before you can even refocus your eye on the line the value has been changed.
Grep would be a thing of the past! Need to change all the instances of a function name? Think it and its done.
I want to be the lawnmower man!
Apple free since 1990!
Look developers, just get speech recognition running already, willya? If what your software does to my luminous eloquence is any example of the current state of interface tech, that thinking-cap UI is going to lead to some pretty psychedelic dyslexic synaesthesia in photoshop once it gets that olfactory plugin I've been waiting for...
Damn those pesky terrorists
I'd like to see a simple switch based on brain activity that would toggle on during sexual thought/arousal and toggle off in the absence of that. The application I have in mind would be taking convicted sexual predators (rapists, child molesters, etc.) who are being released back into society, and permanently affixing something to their face that would glow when they're thinking that way. Children could then be taught that if somebody's "face button" is glowing when that person is asking them to [get in the car|go play with a cute pet|have some candy|etc.], to run and get help.
Sounds double-plus-good to me.
Also sounds like those studies they did recently for "latent racism". Studies that were fatally flawed because they didn't take into account that people who are painfully aware of racism and who try to avoid it at all costs - including the appearance of being racist - are the same people who were labelled as being racist in the study.
Please, don't go down the thought-crime avenue. Actions are what count - not thoughts. And as noble as your goals might appear to be to you, consider this:
If you have a predisposition towards doing something (whether child molestation, smoking, drinking or breathing), it takes conscious thought to not do that act. And that thought will trigger the same "flashing button" that deciding to do that act will.
Try thinking about not breathing without thinking about breathing. It ain't going to happen.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Just because you're controlling something with your mind doesn't mean it will be "think something, and a machine makes it come true." Think of it more as a mental mouse and keyboard - instead of using your hands to control a computer, it would be your thoughts.
However, typing in to a computer "make me a sandwich" won't make my computer contact a sandwich-making robot over the intarweb and order a sandwich. You'll still have to issue the commands like you would now.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
computers can recognize patterns and allow programming based on these patterns to say, know if a mouse is thinking about pushing his water lever. ...
what would happen to the mouse if, at long term, she knows that by thinking about pushing the lever she don't have to push that lever anymore, the computer can't find that previous pattern because the mice have forgotten the use of the lever. thus reprogramming is re-required. seems like an infinite loop
Doh !
What might be more useful, and even MORE controversial and ethically complex, is developing an implant that would suppress those thoughts before the offender has a chance to act on them at all.
Better yet, what happens when you feel like destroying the computer. Will it self destruct, or act in self defense?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Or, more accurately, "I, for one, welcome our new monkey-controlled robot overlords."
Remember, the first rule of comedy: Monkeys are funny. The second rule of comedy? Anything that is funny can be made more so by the addition of monkeys.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled /., already in progress.
The real exciting part isn't about the machine learning what the brain is doing, but rather the brain learning how the machine works. Near the end of the article, he talks about a cluster of neurons that grew in the monkey brains after the implants, and would fire only when the implants were active. The monkey's brain, in effect, sensed a new presence and adapted to it within minutes of its arrival.
If you've ever tried learning an activity that instinctive reflexes like skateboarding or ice skating or even playing the piano, you realize that no matter how much instruction someone gives you, at some point you feel like once you've done it enough, you just "get it". It's the whole muscle memory thing, how your brain encounters something new and just adapts, learning exactly which neurons to fire at the right moments to get the desired affect. Seeing neuron's grow and cluster especially for the robot arm is indicative that the monkey's brain can assimilate the arm and treat it as a natural extension as opposed to a external tool with an awkward interface. In geekspeak, it's like a kernel that, on detecting a new device, can probe it, learn the API, and build its own device driver automatically, without ever knowing anything other than that it's something on the other end of a bus.
Extending that line of thought, who's to say that if the signal processing and classification algorithms advanced far enough to classify even our thoughts, our brains wouldn't be able to instinctively learn how the mind-readers worked and retaliate in return?
Pleeeeeeease don't let MS get their hands on this one, mister!
This was the main theme of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
In it, a violent young man is subjected to a psychological process that renders him unable to commit violent acts. Undergoing it is one of the conditions for his release from prison.
One of the main questions posed by the book (or film) is whether someone who is forced to be good can be considered to be good or if they're the same person as before, just in an enternal prison. It's a disturbing idea when dwelled upon - what happened to progress, development and redemption?
Equally disturbing is the the side-effects of this operation on the character. Aside from accidentally conditioning him to despise the music of Beethoven which he'd formerly adored, there is a horrible scene where he is picked up by two of his former friends and almost killed now that he is incapable of defending himself.
I am sure that there are people who think such control over others would be wonderful. In fact, it would render people little more than robots living according to their masters' (the police/judge's) ideals of correct behaviour. At that point you might as well just kill the people.
I also can't help thinking of the main characters last words in the film of 'Clockwork Orange.'
"I was cured alright."
At that point, the audience's sympathies are with him.We've lived through the mind-altering experience ourselves and we want to be free.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The poster is either really young or got into geekish stuff after he saw the Matrix screensaver.
In the Matrix, the singals only control movement in a virtual environment. As for moving objects within the physical world, this is much more in the alley of William Gibson. I'd suggest reading Burning Chrome as a start. These short stories, most which were written long ago in the late 70s (yes late 70s) to be published in Omni magazine (remember that?). In addition to tapping into cyberspace with a headjack, a person could hook up to a jet and pilot it with no hands (Turner in Count Zero).
If you also check out Gibson's Cyberpunk trilogy from the 80s, you'll see the reasoning behind the mind/machine link - the military began with hooking up monkeys to vitural cockpits to see if human pilots would be able to fly jets with no hands and ideally, romotely.
I can't waid two get this of my home computer. I hoop is works is goat as me speak recondition program!
-
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Reading the article it occurred to me that in the future jobs may require that an employee get brain implants in order to perform some job related task or interact with future computer systems where manual user interface interaction is no longer practical. Would such systems separate workers into a group who are willing to submit to such an invasive operation and those who would refuse implants. I wonder how long we have before implant specifications start to appear on job descriptions and resumes?
The article did touch on the ethics of placing such implants into healthy soldiers, but ethics and morals that would prohibit such activity tend to be very fluid.
Non-invasive techniques may one day be developed for interacting with machines through thought, but this technology is probably much further off than taking the short-cut of hardwiring the brain.
I'd like to see a simple switch based on brain activity that would toggle on during sexual thought/arousal and toggle off in the absence of that.
The device already exists, only it works on your dick instead. Google for "penile plethysmograph" for more. It's a very good 1:1 mapping of sexual arousal. The real problem is that arousal and desire to commit the acts isn't - how many men get turned on by a hot lesbian scene, without wanting to be a lesbian?
The other fallacy is that the mind isn't one-dimensional. People can be in some way happy, yet in some way sad over exactly the same thing. In the same way, they can be both aroused and disgusted at the same time. There's a saying that "Most people wouldn't dream about doing what they dream about doing."
The mind is simply associative. Show it something sexual and it will connect, be it performed by an adult or a child. The only thing you measure is if you're able to drown it out by sending conflicting signals - much like your average male does when he wants to lose an embarrasing boner - think of a complete turn-off.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Here's the original paper:
t -document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0000042
p df/10.1371_journal.pbio.0000042-S.pdf
html:
http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=ge
pdf:
http://www.plosbiology.org/archive/1545-7885/1/2/
Does the water come when mice are thinking they want water...OR
have they learned that every time they think about death/sex/food the water comes?
Will code a sig generator for food
What this really opens up is the possibility of training animals to operate machinery. Imagine taking an aquatic animal (such as a dolphin) and using it (or its brain) as the central component in a spaceship autopilot.
By stimulating various parts of the brain (including pleasure centres), one could train it to respond to your input in the way you want - it already has the hardware to deal with three dimensional maneuvering, timing and calculating trajectories and intercepts.
This was used in a novel called Space, in which GM Squid controlled a space probe. In the novel, the squid became smart enough to do a runner with it.I would look up the author's name for you all, but try typing "Science Fiction" and "Space" into Google and see what happens
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I'm sure most of you are aware the brain is a very complex system. I have a theory. The brain tries to relay information to the rest of our body as much as it can, although the rest of our body is complex I doubt it comes even close to the brain in terms of complexity. The brain can be thought of as a monitoring system; it relays information back and forth within the body. I think it is very conceivable to think that the brain is able to measure a lot more about our body in general than it is able to show the rest of the body. This means that in theory it is able to measure minor changes within the body (such as the start of a cold) before the changes reach a level deemed critical by the "system". Once a signal is deemed critical your body starts feeling it (such as the pains associated with a cold). Assuming my theory is correct why would it throw away such information? It is like any other monitoring systems; you just cannot keep all information and affect your entire system because of it. Your body quietly attemps to fight off a virus early on without your knowledge because of information relayed back and forth between it and the brain. If it is succesfull you will never be aware of it, should it reach a "critical" stage you are aware of it as you feel the symptoms. The body would not be able to handle all of these signals; no matter how complex the humain body is, there must be billions of signals alone. Your body is obviously aware of the cold before you are since it transmits information to parts of your body to produce the cells capable of fighting infections (as you can see here I'm not fammiliar with all the mechanisms of a cold but I'm sure I'm probably not too far off). Anyways; I'm leaving you with this thought: What if your body is able to detect the "Intrusions" of a cancer as it forms still in a stage that is very easy to kill? What if it can detect a foreign entity (such as the virus that causes AIDS?) What if the Brain wave patterns can be found....what if?
The same people who brought you "Nuclear, sorry, Nucular Cars," "Flying Cars," and what ever else doesn't require much imagination and even less knowledge of math and physics.
Entreprenurial posers.
Still it sells magazines.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It's called "Ghost in the Shell" and discusses issues like this (it's an anime BTW). In the case of the article, though, there isn't any feedback or direct neural stimulation, so now you couldn't be hacked.
It's not that hard
Then what's the point? Especially when married?
Infuriate left and right
"motionless system adminstration"
Yip.
What about the thoughts you "really" don't need everyone else to know hear though. Somehow it needs to determine what to transmit and what not to. Even if it is controlled by you thinking, 'say this or that', what if you're thinking of saying it but don't really want to. This is getting confusing. You could imagine thinking about talking and having it projected into a room 2,000 miles away," says Craig Henriquez. "I don't see that that will be a problem. It's very, very possible."
Why design an arm that has to figure out which brain signals mean "lift up?" Why not design an arm that will respond to brain signals in a number of ways, and one of them is by lifting up? We've each got the best learning device known to our species in our heads, why not use that skill? We all learned to use our original arms through trial and error (albeit when there was a lot less clutter in our heads), I've got the sneaking suspicion that we'd figure out how to make a mechanical one do whatever we want.
It would be no different than learning to swim, or ride a bike, or swing a golf club.
Then all you need is a way to get signals from the brain to the device, and you're set.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
You're thinking about it in the wrong way. The robot that you control will just be like another limb to you, like your hand. If you think about suicide, your hand doesn't just automatically get a knife and jab yourself (hopefully). There's a certain amount of filtering done between what you're actually thinking, and how your body moves. Basically, it's not a one-to-one mapping
The robot/machine that you are controlling will be no different than your usual body: there won't be anything out of your physical control.
First, when you think about an action, like suicide, it's a bit vague. What limb are you actually wanting to move? I'm willing to bet you would be thinking more on a high level: why is my life miserable? What did I get myself into? I want to die.. etc. This article isn't talking about machines actually interpreting these high level thoughts, it's talking about interpreting low level thoughts like "I want to grab that glass of water. Move my hand to the right, and squeeze, etc." These thoughts will generate a specific action.
If our bodies actually interpreted high level behaviours and thoughts on its own, there would be havoc. It's really the brain that does that, and tells the peripherals the specific movements.
Imagine going head-to-head (hehe) with someone in a game where you both put on your "mind caps" and you battle it out... and the winner is simply the guy who can think the fastest. Forget moving a goofy little thumbstick around and pressing buttons. Imagine the feeling of playing some FPS game and moving around in the game just by sheer willpower. Wow. With good enough graphics, you could probably forget that it's a game pretty easily.
Cool, but a little scary, too.