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Former Oculus Exec Predicts Telepathy Within 10 Years (cnet.com)

Mary Lou Jepsen is a former MIT professor with 100 patents and a former engineering executive at Facebook, Oculus, Intel, and Google[x] (now called X) -- and "she hopes to make communicating telepathically happen relatively soon." An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Last year Jepsen left her job heading up display technology for the Oculus virtual reality arm of Facebook to develop new imaging technologies to help cure diseases. Shortly thereafter she founded Openwater, which is developing a device that puts the capabilities of a huge MRI machine into a lightweight wearable form. According to the startup's website, "Openwater is creating a device that can enable us to see inside our brains or bodies in great detail. With this comes the promise of new abilities to diagnose and treat disease and well beyond -- communicating with thought alone."

This week Jepsen went further and suggested a timeframe for such capabilities becoming reality. "I don't think this is going to take decades," she told CNBC. "I think we're talking about less than a decade, probably eight years until telepathy"... Jepsen, who has also spent time at Google X, MIT and Intel, says the basic idea is to shrink down the huge MRI machines found in medical hospitals into flexible LCDs that can be embedded in a ski hat and use infrared light to see what's going on in your brain. "Literally a thinking cap," Jepsen explains... The idea is that communicating by thought alone could be much faster and even allow us to become more competitive with the artificial intelligence that is supposedly coming for everyone's jobs very soon.

Jepsen tells CNBC, "If I threw [you] into an M.R.I. machine right now... I can tell you what words you're about to say, what images are in your head. I can tell you what music you're thinking of. That's today, and I'm talking about just shrinking that down."

3 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Most people will be deaf and dumb. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Telepathy will, after all, require thoughts.

  2. MRI of my brain by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    Won't be difficult to deduce what's on my mind[NSFW]

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  3. Re:New low for privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Fortunately, there is no way that she can do what she claims. This is most likely an attempt to get funding by empty promises that are not quite obviously empty.

    The money men are always falling for the tricks of the egg heads from MIT and elsewhere. I suppose we all do what we can. They give us banking and financial crises and we cheat them out of their money by promising them pseudo-scientific nonsense to get them to "invest" in our startups. It's a tidy arrangement while it lasts.