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Technology Could Enable Computers To "Read The Minds" Of Users
New techniques under development could allow computers to respond to users' thoughts of frustration or boredom (too much or too little work) by applying functional near-infrared spectroscopy technology, which uses light to monitor brain blood flow as a proxy for user workload stress. Applying this noninvasive, portable imaging technology in new ways, the researchers hope to gain real-time insight into the brain's emotional cues.
Well, the computer already knows what I'm going to write, so why bother?
No joke... if my computer scanned my brain and posted random LOLCats when I got sad or bored, my life would be legitimately better.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
... the tinfoil hat will become useful.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I am a developer and a user and I still can't understand what I want, much less what the average user is thinking... Good Luck!
I'm glad they are restricting the sensors to monitor brain blood flow while I'm at the computer. When my employeer starts automatically monitoring blood flow below my waist when I'm surfing online, that's when I'll start to get a bit worried. :)
GMD
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will the computer send the appropriate message to software vendors? Would this technology have been able to cause clippy to die a horrible death? Would the detection of boredom and frustration and other mental states actually be translated to something useful? Will it help use make sense of the 'load letter' error? Will see see reports on CNN stating that 79.35% of Exchange users are confused, thus leading to the conclusion that the more intelligent you the more likely you use Thunderbird?
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My windows machine computer already does this. It uses an incredibly precise mind reading method to determine the absolute worst moment to shut down/blue up, or provide me with a handy dialog box explaining that the current app doesn't want to play any more and has taken my data home with it.
Using my mind reading technology I can tell that you are under extremely high level of stress. Would you like to:
a) Take a nap
b) Have a healthy snack
c) Continue working
AAAAARGH *fist crashes through the monitor*
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"While wearing the fNIRS device, test subjects viewed a multicolored cube consisting of eight smaller cubes with two, three or four different colors. As the cube rotated onscreen, subjects counted the number of colored squares in a series of 30 tasks."
It seems you want to strangle me. Would you like some assistance?
who thought it was an oxymoron to see "non-invasive" and "computer brain scan"?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Boss: Look, we got a report from our monitors that you were... um... sexually excited, two days ago around 3pm. Just about the time we heard reports of grunting sounds from your cube. ...
Employee: uhhhhhhhhhh
Boss: This prompted us to install a logger on your machine. We were able to get your VPN password you were using to connect to your home, and noticed you have a thing for zombie midget porn.
Employee: errr
Boss: We were also able to detect that your... libido... rise when the one-legged secretary delivers your mail to your cube. Employee:
Boss: Wait till you see my wife's mother. She is coming in here with my wife in about fifteen minutes. You'll like her. She was in a car wreck a year or so ago and had a skin graft on 80% of her body!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Text-based interfaces prove that most users couldn't read.
Graphic interfaces prove that most users can't understand abstractions.
Mind reading interfaces will only prove that most users can't think.
Personally comma I don't trust this thing period I mean really comma if the voice-recognition program can get it straight comma what makes me thing this thingamadongle on top of my head is going to get my thought pattern down correctly question mark question mark question mark It's just silly period
Yes comma I did train the word thingamadongle period
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X's and O's for all my foes.
What is the device supposed to do with the information without knowing the context? Am I stressed because of the call I've just taken, the news story I've just read or my inability to use a specific app. Neat tech but good luck trying to use it to do anything useful.
Sony and Microsoft are developing competing formats for reading your mind.
I don't know why, ma'am.
Seriously. I think if could peer into the "mind" of my users, I'd just see a saw going back and forth through a log, or one of those cymbal-clapping wind-up monkey toys. I can't imagine there's much else going on up there.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Getting a computer to read and understand text or understand speech is still aways off, never mind mind reading. I have no doubt it will happen some day, but things on the interpretation and understanding front have a long, long way to go. Speech recognition has been stagnant for 10 years. OCR still requires many hours of human cleanup and tweaking. Natural language translation is a field that seems to be advancing faster than the others, but it, too, has a long way to go.
The inputs to all of the above are well known. Reading signals from implanted sensors, and interpreting their meaning is above and beyond the call of hype.
Grand... combine this with the pain ray gun and you have the makings of a fully-automated interrogation device.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Everyone is quick to dream up what technology like this could yield, but we are far from being able to apply this technology into anything truly useful.
:)
We have an unimaginable amount of information on the brain anatomy and biology, but no real idea on how the brain works at a fundamental level. That information is vital to being able to make intelligent technology that can actually make use of stuff like is discussed in TFA. I am sure many have already read it, but there is a great book on the subject called On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. It talks about the study of the brain and why current attempts to create AI are doomed to failure.
Anyways, I thought I should mention the book as it opened my eyes and gave me great insight into the industry and our very remarkable brains.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
They will use the stress level to monitor if you are providing enough output. Obviously, Maximum Stress(tm) = Maximum Output(tm).
This feeds directly into the whip cracking algorithm.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"