Digital Trends:
Think that Google’s search algorithms are good at reading your mind? That’s nothing compared to a new artificial intelligence research project coming out of Japan, which can analyze a person’s brain scans and provide a written description of what they have been looking at.
To generate its captions, the artificial intelligence is given an fMRI brain scan image, taken while a person is looking at a picture. It then generates a written description of what they think the person was viewing. An illustration of the level of complexity it can offer is: “A dog is sitting on the floor in front of an open door” or “a group of people standing on the beach.” Both of those turn out to be absolutely accurate.
This is just a seed of a concept, the barest proof of concept. But it’s not nothing. This deep neural network can track the changes to a brain scan and draw conclusions about what that brain was viewing.
This is a small, terrifying step toward dystopia. Sci-Fi writers, start your engines.
For someone who loves technology you often give the impression of being a pessimist, regarding the advances in the field.
Isn’t technology nothing more than a mirror of humanity’s desire.
What’s funny is, my wife often says the same thing. I do love technology, but sometimes, I can’t help but see the dark side coming.
It’s like the tech that lets you put someone’s face on someone else’s body in a video, creating a believable fake. That just screams darkness to me.
Hope I’m wrong!
— Dave
No. New technologies are creating abilities that, in the wrong hands, can cause a lot more widespread harm than the simpler capabilities granted to human beings by earlier inventions.
It’s important to stay skeptical of the downside of almost anything that breathlessly oblivious tech enthusiasts are likely to clamor about. We’re already living with the consequences of having allowed new tech to outrace our collective ability to keep its creators’ overreach in check. Because at some point, we’ll no longer have the ability to even question that overreach.
You’re not wrong.