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."

Comments

Interesting to me because I know 1 of the artists

[tpjunkie]

Fernando Orellana was my professor for a digital art class I took in college. He was way into the computer as a tool for creating artwork, and the fusion of traditional art with the modern and bleeding edge digital techniques. Interestingly, he asked the class one day what each of us would do with an unlimited budget for an art project. No one thought to ask him what he would do but it looks like this is certainly a hint. He's a great guy and has some cool ideas, I'll have to look him up when I'm at school for alumni weekend this year.

Raises the question..

[wellingtonsteve]

of whether you are responsible for what your robot does while re-enacting your dreams...

A speculation machine?

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA (emphasis mine):

Periods of high activity (REM) where associated with dynamic behaviors (flying, scared, etc.) and low activity with more subtle ones (gesturing, looking around, etc.). The "behaviors" the robot demonstrates are some of the actions I might do (along with everyone else) in a dream.

"Might" do? So, if I'm experiencing high-activity REM, I might be flying...or I might be scared? There's a big difference between those two activities (well, alt least there is for me).

It sounds like Fernando Orellana and Brendan Burns have created a robot whose function is to speculate wildly on what someone might have been dreaming.

Big deal. I can do that right now, and I can do it for free.

I'm reminded of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader

[greenguy]

The ship is sailing merrily along, when the sailors rescue a man floating on a piece of driftwood. He tells them he's fleeing an island where dreams come true. The sailors want to set a course for this island immediately. "Not daydreams," he tells them, "real dreams!"

The sailors quickly decide they don't want to go there after all.