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Robot Interprets, Plays Back Dreams
foobarx writes "Digital artists have created a humanoid robot which uses brainwave activity recorded during sleep to playback an interpretation of your dreams. The artists, Brendan Burns and Fernando Orellana used machine learning to find patterns in the brainwaves and then matched these patterns to dreams which they remembered having. Others have noted the possible hazards of this new technology."
How exactly would you propose to turn a machine that acts out measured impulses into a mind control device?
It's nothing more than a sophisticated puppet; is it likely that the puppeteer of a Punch and Judy show will start feeding people to crocodiles and bashing folks over the head with a policeman's truncheon?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
It seems more like it's a meaningless representation of brain waves (or whatever) using physical actions of a robot. Until they think of a way to make the robot actually do what I'm dreaming about doing, it's not any kind of interpretation at all. It seems kinda like making a robot that interprets FM waves by dancing a little bit faster when the frequency is higher.
No two-way communication is occurring.
The robot--if such a word is even really appropriate--has only read access. There is no input from the device to the brain--there are only sensors reading the electrical and motor impulses. There's no "determination" of where the impulses are--there are merely changes recorded by sensors which the operator places on the head that passively read the electric fields.
The device does not in any way, shape, or form 'write' to the brain at all.
This is nowhere near a 'mind meld'--if anything, it's like a video camera that records electrical activity rather than visual spectrum activity.
No Matrix bots for you. Sorry. You'll have to wait a while before you can meet Agent Smith.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
It's common place for police to leave out key details about a crime or murder scene when annoucining the story to the public. Then, when they get 5,000 calls from people claiming to know what happened; they can use that missing information as a test to weed-out the fakers.
If there were an unsolved crime and one piece of information was missing from the report; and you dream of the crime - WITH - that information in it; then, in theory, that would point a finger at you.
The weight of that finger would depend heavily on the accuracy and legality of the machines that read your dreams.
Having said all of that - this robot is not at all a dream reading machine. It measures electrical activity in the brain and was 'programmed' based on dreams that designers could remember.
It sounds cool, but it's just a novelty. It doesn't know what you are dreaming at all.