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Microsoft Wants To Read Your Brain
Simon Night writes "Microsoft has entered the realm of brain machine interfaces, attempting to patent a method of classifying brain states from EEG input. 'Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,' the patent application notes, so reading directly from your brain is a preferred option."
I've spent a fair amount of time looking at this problem (as have others with certain agencies who have invested not insignificant amounts of money) and I can tell you that this is pretty much up in the night kinda speculation. Technical issues of obtaining clean EEG signals in a convenient manner aside, the origins of techniques like this to classify comes from the epilepsy literature, where folks attempt to classify interictal seizure spikes, but also from the sleep and awareness literature (both of which have been reasonably successful, yet are still lacking optimal tools). Granted, there are rather dramatic global state changes that occur with different states of consciousness, but this application focuses principally on the awake EEG. Specifically they quote the P300 signal which the FBI and CIA are using (trying to use) for lie detection, but the problem here is that the P300 is only an evoked potential that simply tells you whether or not someone recognizes an input (audio, visual, tactile etc...). So all questions or inputs into the system have to be crafted to understand that one is looking for an evoked potential with no necessary context in place to explain that evoked potential.
So, this is not mind reading per se nor is it a means to break cognitive processing into temporal windows to determine intent in any of those potential epochs. At its very basic fundamentals this is simply a rehash of signal detection theory doing simple Fourier analysis to "classify" brain waves. But the thing here is that there is no science behind using these signals to interpret what one is thinking even with the invocation of Bayesian networks. There are a number of other more promising methods for classifying data that have been in the literature and commonly used by a number of other disciplines that I am surprised have not made it into the EEG literature yet.
In short.... in my assessment, this is a patent proposal without much in the way of novelty or benefit to the problem at hand.
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...where the Bill-Gates-as-Borg icon truly applies.
"'Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,' the patent application notes, so reading directly from your brain is a preferred option." Translated: Humans are often trying to keep personal secrets from us, so stealing it all directly from your brain is a preferred option.
"It looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like help?"
Can you read my mind now, Bill? BECAUSE I'M THINKING IT AS HARD AS I CAN!
No no no, that was a sense of joy and happiness
Yours truly, Microsoft.
'Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,'
I didn't see any "references" in the application. There is numerous patents relating to EEG technology. I work with Quantitative EEG technology as part of my day job. There is definitely prior art for "de-artifacting" EEG data.
In Soviet Russia ^H^H^H America, The bank finances YOU!
No, no, you don't understand the concept here. What you are reporting as "annoyance" is, in fact, a state of enlightened bliss. Our EEG says so. It also says you love Vista, and have a desire to be abase yourself before the Supreme Overlord, Bill Gates.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
as the fundamental technology, you have nothing to fear.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
*Tink tink tink!*
GET OUT OF MY HEAD YOU ROTTEN PAPER CLIP!
*Tink tink tink!*
ARGHH!!! It's in my head! Aarrggghhh!
*Tink tink tink!*
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions
I find it very interesting that this reflects Microsoft's thinking. "You say no to this update, when you really mean yes", "You don't know what's best for you", "You don't need that feature, trust us".
What is creepier is that this patent application will grant Microsoft the exclusive right to read your brain... at least in the way the patent describes.
Just imagine what happens if Clippy tries to cut and paste your thoughts into the letter.
Before:
"Dear Cindy: I'm afraid this won't work, our differences are too much"
After:
"Dear B**ch: Don't even dream about it, I found a girl who really knows how to- F***! How the heck do I turn this off! Don't"
e-mail sent.
That's just the power cord. You'll get used to it.
Star Pirates
Holy cow, I was just joking around, honest! Now I'm gonna have IP lawyers knocking down my door. And's it's not like I'm going to be able to lie to get myself out of this one 'cus, like, they'd know.
We told you, but you just called us paranoiacs and laughed at our tinfoil hats! This fall, the fashion accessory is foil!
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
So what happens, you think of Linux, piracy, or boobies and you get a shock through the Windows Genuine Advantage Testicle Electrodes, aka MS Testitrodes(tm)?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"This copy of Windows will expire in 10 days unless you register your brain with Microsoft"
Table-ized A.I.
Well, one positive outcome would be if they use it in testing of new products.
Allow this action? Yes
Allow this action? Yes
Allow this action? Yes
Technician: Sir, the test-subject's EEG is spiking Allow this action? Grrr, yes
Allow this action? Yes, damnit!
Technician: He's red-lining sir! Cerebral reading critical
Manager: Wow, so customer's really aren't happy with that feature. OK, scrap it and throw in some more eye-candy and perhaps a fluffy kitten or two
Technician: Yes, sir!
Microsoft is this world Umbrella corporation. It is a extinction for our species. The clue, why do they want to mess with peoples brain to start with.
For example, you harbor thoughts of harm towards someone. You know in your own mind you would never do it. Does the computer know that. Would it report it? If so to whom. Could you incrimate yourself by your thoughts?
Suppose your a terrorist sympathiser, having done no bad stuff yourself, just understanding why they did it, you bet your ass the FBI would be knocking.
Ok this isn't exactly what we are saying, but this is the thin end of the wedge. Feature creap. You are telling me MS will not slip in a reporting feature in exchange for an easy ride from the DOJ?
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
I think most of you are missing the point - I got the impression from the article that this is only being done in the context of usability studies so that Microsoft's interface designers can improve the quality of their feedback. Traditionally in usability studies users are asked to "think out loud", which gives good data as long as the users remember to talk/aren't distracted by having to talk. I guess Microsoft is developing this as an alternative, hoping it will give them more accurate data as to what the user is trying to do and how they respond to the interface. So no, no one's going to read your mind unless you're in Microsoft's usability lab and sign a release form!!
One must keep into account that :
- EEG only records surface activity (you only "see" what's visible on the "outside". Deep structures that also play important roles in the way the brain works, mostly by working as filters and first step analysis are not visible on the EEG)
- No matter how much different tracks you analyse, what you read is an overall tendency (you only "see" blurred image. You can get very high resolution, but it's still a high resolution of a blurred out-of-focus image).
The only advantage of EEG is its speed : you can measure those variations in the millisecond range.
There are stuff for witch EEG is a good tool : epilepsy is an example (in epilepsies, instead of having a lot of tiny different activities which just read as noise because of the blurred/surface characteristic, suddenly the whole or at least a significant part of the brain start to fire up signals in a synchronous manner, those "electrical signal spasms" add up nicely and their net result can be seen on the EEG).
But EEG is completely useless because it lacks the fine resolution (it only measures a global effect) that other techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provide.
(And fMRI is far from perfect too : it measures the increased blood flow of brain regions that are working and are needing oxygen. It's much more precise than EEG but its much slower. At best you have a temporal resolution around several seconds)
The gold standard would be inserting electrodes directly into the brain but that's completely out of question for the purpose that Microsoft want (it can be used in some complex neurosurgery to help predict the potential function loss in case of tumor removal)
So EEG is useless for mood prediction.
They only problem I see with this patent, is Microsoft coming after some obscure small research group that try to develop a tool to assist clinician in diagnosis and Microsoft attacking them on ground of infringing a technology that automatically reads and interprets EEGs (for example to try to push contracts for machines with windows licenses for potential buyers of the technology). i.e.: once again restricting development.
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