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Neuroscientists Offer a Reality Check On Facebook's 'Typing By Brain' Project (ieee.org)
the_newsbeagle writes: Yesterday, Facebook announced that it's working on a "typing by brain" project, promising a non-invasive technology that can decode signals from the brain's speech center and translate them directly to text (see the video beginning at 1:18:00). What's more, Facebook exec Regina Dugan said, the technology will achieve a typing rate of 100 words per minute. Here, a few neuroscientists are asked: Is such a thing remotely feasible? One neuroscientist points out that his team set the current speed record for brain-typing earlier this year: They enabled a paralyzed man to type 8 words per minute, and that was using an invasive brain implant that could get high-fidelity signals from neurons. To date, all non-invasive methods that read brain signals through the scalp and skull have performed much worse. Thomas Naselaris, an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, says, "Our understanding of the way the words and their phonological and semantic attributes are encoded in brain activity is actually pretty good currently, but much of this understanding has been enabled by fMRI, which is noninvasive but very slow and not at all portable," he said. "So I think that the bottleneck will be the [optical] imaging technology," which is what Facebook's gear will be using.
Those fuddy duddy scientists know nothing. Facebook will make an APP for it. In the Cloud. VR and IoT ready.
The T in IoT is either a) some thing very close to, or even in, your brain or b) your brain
No, it's typing with muscular peripherals that are connected to your brain via UPPNCP (universal point-to-point neural connection protocol).
Just imagine what happens if either the peripheral is not working correctly or the UPPNCP connection is faulty or severed. Your brain may still want to type, but it can't.
From what I learned doing research, I also think 100 words per minute is extreme. You wouldn't believe the artifacts you get just from blinking or moving a leg or finger, and I had a 21 channel MITSAR and WinEEG to work with. The only way this is going to work is if Facebook has plans involving AI and quantum computing, a very dangerous combination for privacy. This is because an AI would have to get to know your brain waves on an incredibly intimate level, making encryption a joke when your brain is getting digitally fingerprinted. If what they say works, both the polygraph test and "truth serum" would be a joke. The only actual application for finding brainwave averages between people currently is to add to the "what are artifacts" knowledge and perhaps a quick and dirty diagnoses. Very rarely have I ever been able to use EEG to find correlations in research because everyone is too different and there is always some kind of confounding variable. Biofeedback projects in EEG sort of works for fun little things, but it's not the same thing as "mind reading" or 100 words per minute good. Now, I've played around with Tobii eye tracking, and that would be their best bet. In the the Linux and open source world we have a program called Dasher that may work with eye tracking to get their quota. Besides, doesn't Facebook have enough biometric data or are their government overlords hungry for more? This is why they'll never go bankrupt, as long as they have projects like this. Meanwhile, other more important research gets cut.
Considering how much people need to correct what speech recognition software does with your spoken words, this isn't going to work. The electrical signals that get through the skull are weak and noisy. Each person is going to have different brain patterns. But it makes for a great press release and gets people talking nonsense about it.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
I would have had first post, but I used a prototype to type this :(
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Count seconds to 60. Use the traditional quasi accurate method of "one one thousand two one thousand....". You might come up a little short but that's 180 words a minute, and it's not all that fast.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Used to sell a brain controlled mouse, IIRC.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You don't want to, but FB does. Who knows what little gems of data it can extract from that stream and then monetize ...
100 words per minutes might be a stretch, but it doesn't sound all that impossible given that the speed record was set with hunt&peck typing by moving a cursor across the screen. Some fancy machine learning that could guess whole words at a time or something along the line should have no problem beating that by quite a margin. It wouldn't even need to be perfect, just close enough, to give a drastic speed up (i.e. like Tab-completion).
See this earlier work that guessed video sequences from brain activity. Getting information in a more 'holistic' form out of the brain instead by just cursor movement seems plausible.
where do you go if you want to continue to grow your company and maintain your omnipotence?
Heh. If your omnipotence needs to be maintained, you're not really omnipotent.
Now multiple that by about 20. That's how many characters you're actually going to generate with your 180 words per minute.
For the purpose of calculating typing speed, a "word" is 5 characters in length, including spaces and punctuation. 180 typed words per minute is 900 characters per minute, or 15 characters per second. That's superhuman typing speed, but not all that impressive for speech.
Most people talk at around 150 words per minute, so presumably they're doing something approximating thinking at the same rate.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No no those cars have to be coming real soon now so I can leave the driving to them and focus on my hipsterisms.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
with the things I hear people say I would guess it is actually about 1/3 of that ;)
love is just extroverted narcissism
m y s p a c e
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'm using it wiggle fingers right now foot itches squirrel is it lunch time yet and it works perfectly did I leave the oven on well I smell pizza i can't believe I did that 10 years ago.
There have so much money and software-based anything generates so much revenue with a relevant investment that this apparent nonsense seems self-sustaining! This project, for example, is likely to not lose a dime, even to generate profits, independently upon its final outputs. After injecting a relevant amount of money, Facebook might start applying for R&D grants/prizes which will most likely earn; just this might be enough to account for all the costs during some years. Additionally, it will be very positive for the public image of Facebook as a game-changer and R&D-focused company. All the workers and managers will get lots of money, excellent experience for their CVs and lots of relevant knowledge (even in case of not reaching a proper product, working on so demanding projects is the best to get top-level expertise). Facebook might even get some further direct benefits via commercialising preliminary versions or merchandising.
When you have enough money to invest, losing in software is virtually impossible, mainly in a place like Silicon Valley which has already an important intrinsic value (virtually anything from there gets lots of attention/free advertisement and is appealing to customers everywhere). I mean having more expenses than earnings, because in case of bringing costs of opportunity into picture too, all these jokish projects would be pure losses. But I guess that nobody cares/knows as far as the apparent profit continue flowing.
Someone might think that people like me might be unhappy with such an unfair situation, but I do fully accept it. Note that my personal situation (as the one of most of programmers/software-companies outside a few privileged areas) is completely different than all that: no investors, no opportunities, no money flowing around, having to do everything perfectly to be systematically ignored, not having any kind of support (for most of people in the town where I am now programming isn’t even an actual occupation or cannot understand what remote work is), etc. Although I would certainly love working under better conditions, I wouldn't ever renounce to some of my current benefits (e.g., doing what I consider right without tolerating ignorant arbitrary impositions); I am also sure that most of people working on these generating-money-from-nowhere projects are systematically tolerating what I would never do. That's why I don't envy those programmers and think that this Silicon Valley apparent nonsense is likely to continue existing for a while (and, hopefully, the TV series forever! Season 4 premiere on Sunday!!).
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Invasive brain implants for everyone!
And you'll also need coffee, and the latest miracle drug to treat obesity. Hey, can we check your insulin levels while we're at it? You already gave us access to your brain, so looking into something as innocent as the level of a hormone shouldn't be an issue, right?
They should make sure Facebook developers have a brain in the first place. Every piece software developed by FB is pure garbage. Is this some kind of lame attempt to get brainwaves data depending on what FB advertisement users are seing? Besides that BCI input devices have been around for years. He's trying so hard to be Elon Musk.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
In other news, rocket scientists offer a reality check on the SpaceX "land rockets on barges" project. If NASA can't do it, nobody can so it's a waste of time and money to even try it.
What's the budget of the Medical University of South Carolina? How much money does FaceBook have? Yep, thought so.
Oh sure, rich people are going to save the world. Ayn Rand would love your world view. If a rich person can't do it, it can't be done, right? I'm sure they will put millions of dollars into it before they realize that it won't work. But why not? I saw it in a movie once! And next, Facebook will invent warp drive and teleportation. You know, because they are rich!
I've read some of the primary literature on doing this in people who are disabled. It is not going to be practical for regular use, and will never be faster or nearly as accurate as typing. But who knows what they may come up with in the process of trying; a cozy head warmer maybe. Or an IoT pizza ordering device for your head.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Would you prefer them spending their money on private jets, big mansions and wild pool parties?
For crying out loud, if rich people want to spend their money to advance the state of the art, I applaud it. Musk has already achieved things that seemed impossible a decade ago. Landing and reusing orbital class boosters at prices even the Russians can't match, making electric cars that people actually want to buy, etcetera. And he's not the only one. I'm all for rich people spending their money that way instead of just throwing it away for their private pleasure.
So what is Musk going to do with his rockets? Send rich people into orbit for a hefty price tag so he can make even more money? Wow, now I'm sold on rich people doing big things. How about maybe he spend his money to cure cancer, and give the treatments away once they are available? Oh, that wouldn't make any money. OK, so he can sell his cancer cure to very rich people who can afford it. Great. Now I'm really sold on rich people doing big things.
Look, rich people are rich because of a broken, oligarchy system that is rigged in their favor, and they don't give a shit about regular people. Their behavior proves that to be true. A true philanthropist would spend their money for the betterment of everyone, not just to make more money.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.