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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?"
No no no, that was a sense of joy and happiness
Yours truly, Microsoft.
'Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,'
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! ~~
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.
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.
"This copy of Windows will expire in 10 days unless you register your brain with Microsoft"
Table-ized A.I.