Science FACT: Mind-Reading Technology Is Now Reality

by | Feb 1, 2019 | Headline News | 32 comments

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    This article was originally published by Dagny Taggart at The Organic Prepper

    It sounds like something out of a Philip K. Dick science fiction novel: a system that uses artificial intelligence to translate people’s thoughts into intelligible, recognizable speech.

    But fiction it is not: a team of neuro-engineers at Columbia University did, in fact, develop such a system. Information on the technology was published yesterday in Scientific Reports.

    In a press release, Columbia University explained how the system works:

    By monitoring someone’s brain activity, the technology can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. This breakthrough, which harnesses the power of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain. (source)

    Previous fMRI scanning research has shown that when people speak (or even imagine speaking), telltale patterns of activity appear in the brain. Distinct (but recognizable) patterns of signals also emerge when we listen to someone speak, or when we imagine listening. We previously published an article about similar technology being used in China but Columbia’s tech goes much further.

    Translating thoughts into words has been challenging, until now.

    After early attempts to translate brain activity into recognizable speech failed, the research team turned to a computer algorithm called a vocoder that can synthesize speech after being trained on recordings of people speaking.

    “This is the same technology used by Amazon Echo and Apple Siri to give verbal responses to our questions,” said Nima Mesgarani, PhD, the paper’s senior author and a principal investigator at Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.

    What will this new mind-reading technology be used for?

    Dr. Mesgarani explains,

    “Our voices help connect us to our friends, family and the world around us, which is why losing the power of one’s voice due to injury or disease is so devastating. With today’s study, we have a potential way to restore that power. We’ve shown that, with the right technology, these people’s thoughts could be decoded and understood by any listener.” (source)

    While this development could be life-changing for people who have lost their ability to speak due to injury or disease, the possibility of abuse is concerning, to say the least.

    Dr. Mesgarani and his team plan to test more complicated words and sentences next, and they want to run the same tests on brain signals emitted when a person speaks or imagines speaking.

    Ultimately, they hope their system could be part of an implant, similar to those worn by some epilepsy patients, that translates the wearer’s thoughts directly into words, Dr. Mesgarani explains:

    “In this scenario, if the wearer thinks ‘I need a glass of water,’ our system could take the brain signals generated by that thought, and turn them into synthesized, verbal speech. This would be a game changer. It would give anyone who has lost their ability to speak, whether through injury or disease, the renewed chance to connect to the world around them.” (source)

    So…you only have to think something? What could possibly go wrong?

    While there are some very positive applications to mind-reading technology, it’s not all good. Can you imagine the ramifications if law enforcement used this kind of technology? Or workplaces? Or courts of law? What about interrogations of prisoners or enemy combatants? Keep in mind if we have this technology, other countries will too.

    Everything could change dramatically and not necessarily for the best.

    It’s pretty darned scary to imagine what might happen if people had the power to forcibly read your mind.

    Things are moving really fast in the world of technological advances.

    Earlier this week, we learned there now exists technology that can beam a voice right into your head from a distanceWe also learned that a company called Cooler Screens has created a store fridge camera system that takes photos of shoppers, which an AI system then analyzes. Oh, and that system also has “iris tracking” capabilities and allows companies to observe shoppers in “real time” (in other words, spy on them).

    In the past, the late Dr. Stephen Hawking, as well as Elon Musk, have warned that advances in artificial intelligence could eventually result in the end of humanity. In fact, in one interview, Musk said, “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”

    With this rapid progression of technological advancement, one has to wonder…how close are we to technological singularity?

    What do you think of this mind-reading technology?

    What are your thoughts on this information? Do you think the mind-reading technology is a good idea? In what ways do you think it could be abused? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

    About Dagny

    Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of a professional journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM.

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    Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

    Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her websites, The Organic Prepper and DaisyLuther.com She is the author of 4 books and the co-founder of Preppers University, where she teaches intensive preparedness courses in a live online classroom setting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.

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      32 Comments

      1. I SEE THE NEW NON WHITE WOMEN IN THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE FAVOR A 90% TAX ON RICH PEOPLE AND A “GREEN NEW DEAL” WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS

        THE RACISTS WERE RIGHT

        SAY IT WITH ME

        THE RACISTS WERE RIGHT

        SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER

        • The word “Green” means Socialist.

          • National*sozialist*ische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei was a green movement.

      2. The hive mind, the Collective of the Borg, is now close at hand.

        Resistance is useless, you will be assimilated.

        So make it easier on yourself and cooperate.

      3. “If you could read my mind” Love, “what a tale my thoughts could tell.”

        “Just like a paperback novel, the kind the drugstore sells.”

        .

        .

        • …. “but you won’t read that book again cause the ending’s just too hard to take”.

      4. I don’t want to see this technology implemented, and the surest way of blocking it, is to make mandatory testing on politicians and leaders before it is deemed ready for actual, viable use.

        If the technology can be faked or misused, then a politician will be the best real world test available.

      5. I don’t want to see this technology implemented, and the surest way of blocking it, is to make mandatory testing on politicians and leaders before it is deemed ready for actual, viable use.

        If the technology can be faked or misused, then a politician will be the best real world test available.

      6. Well, we knew it knew coming –
        This is the ultimate private security issue.
        Like everything else – it is a double edge sword
        Can’t wait for Zuckeberg to get his hands on this – wow!
        He will be selling your thoughts

      7. It would be a nightmarish world if we all could know each other’s thoughts.

        Leftists have the insane idea that people are basically good.

        The Bible says otherwise. It’s not so much that we are evil, but we are negligent and selfish. If you were raised by parents who were not believers, I cannot imagine how twisted you might be.

        None of us can control our thoughts and actions. That’s why we consistently sin. If everyone was aware of another’s sinful thought, then no one would trust anyone.

        The illusion of civilization and any semblance of altruism would vanish. The capacity to trust is dependent upon shielding our thoughts. Trust is faith based on wishful thinking that is often betrayed by reality.

        The more intensely you are intimately having a romantic relationship, the worst the fights can be when you feel hurt, shocked, or betrayed.

        Telepathy would be the end of trust, love, marriage, parenting, and friendship.

        Only the most enlightened person would accept the fickle inner world of their beloved. To have that reciprocated would be so remote a possibility as to be impossible.

        And how could you ever cope if an unscrupulous physician or government official knew your thoughts? It would be the most profound rape imagineable.

        • I can tell you from the inside of my head, I am not “basically good”. I desperately want to be, but every single time I try to do things without any trace of subterfuge, I get taken advantage of. Every single time I try to give my best to people, they take it, consume it, wipe their ass with me, and move on to someone taking advantage of THEM. It seems to be all they can respect.

          You don’t want to hear the inside of my head. Fuck, I don’t even want to hear the inside of my head anymore.

        • “The more intensely you are intimately having a romantic relationship, the worst the fights can be when you feel hurt, shocked, or betrayed.”

          And that’s where you’re wrong about me specifically. I just leave. Generally I attempt to hop, which is bad enough in itself.

          A fight implies there’s some chance of reconciliation. Not in my experience. It will simply be taking the internal pain, multiplying it by a thousand, and having it thrown right actively in your face with no possibility to delude yourself later on that it was maybe all a mistake or something.

          I wish it was as good as “a fight”.

          “Only the most enlightened person would accept the fickle inner world of their beloved. To have that reciprocated would be so remote a possibility as to be impossible.”

          Then what, indeed, is the point. I struggle with this. You’re gonna hear their thoughts at SOME POINT… in the afterlife… neh?

          You’d be surprised how much I can accept. What I can’t accept is being treated as a disposable means to an end. This generally means cheating or severe financial abuse, or being entirely ignored when in times of pain.

      8. okay… I just had a thought about the geeks who have taken the time and trouble to invent this b.s… “why don’t you morons go ‘F’ yourselves?!?!’ …. I’m now waiting to have it happen. Enjoy soy-boys. Enjoy the thought becoming reality.

      9. Some thoughts about thinking —

        Faith without works is dead, talk is cheap, and most normal people can barely talk through their mouths, to accomplish simple errands. This is security theater.

        I think, it works on sublingualization? People can silence their inner dialog, in order to read like an idiot savant, or to feel at peace with the universe.

        A machine can report otherwise. Maybe, Stephen Hawking was really thinking about a sponge bath, most of the time.

        It would be an interesting thought experiment, to ask someone a question, which they can’t possibly answer. Would an innocent person unravel a plot, find the next miracle cure, or the winning lotto numbers. Does it bypass a conscious filter.

      10. Mara,
        “It would be a nightmarish world if we all could know each other’s thoughts.”
        Is an understatement!
        One of the most important skills you learn as a child is when to keep your mouth shut, when to speak, and when you speak, choose your words carefully.
        A very few master these skills.

        • Then there would be no Christian evangelism, Sir.

          Then how many souls would be lost to Lucifer, Sir?

      11. Interesting question here:

        If you had an intelligent being that had extremely low energy requirements (on part with a very robust potted plant), and never evolved in an environment of predation / scarcity…

        Would the drive for power and control still exist in such a species?

        Also known as: is this an environmental consequence engrained over millions of years, or is it the nature of non-telepathic consciousness itself?

        Because I’m fairly sure you can have a species like that. I never believed in AI but then I saw one display “situational consciousness”. If you have situational consciousness it’s only a matter of time.

        (Unless of course nothing’s driving it to evolve).

        On consciousness: I am of the opinion that a mind no more generates consciousness than a bucket dropped off a roof generated gravity. It is an inherent universal property coming from… elsewhere. So I still maintain you’re not “creating consciousness”, that’s impossible, but you may have finally accidentally “focused” it.

      12. So…you only have to think something? What could possibly go wrong?

        While there are some very positive applications to mind-reading technology, it’s not all good. Can you imagine the ramifications if law enforcement used this kind of technology? Or workplaces? Or courts of law? What about interrogations of prisoners or enemy combatants? Keep in mind if we have this technology, other countries will too.

        Everything could change dramatically and not necessarily for the best.

        All of that.

        Plus electronic Tourette’s syndrome.

        I’ve been let down so much in life you should hear the inside of my head. It’s not pretty.

        • I agree. It is well established that the government will take undo advantage of new technology. A person being interrogated could be hooked up, and he won’t be able to hide his answers even leading to self-incrimination. Yet another segment of the Bill of Rights falls.

      13. In the past, the late Dr. Stephen Hawking, as well as Elon Musk, have warned that advances in artificial intelligence could eventually result in the end of humanity. In fact, in one interview, Musk said, “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”

        Yeah, I hope so.

        We are the demons.

        Besides which, face it, what do you think the odds are of our species surviving another 1000 years? I put them at slim to none, and Slim left town.

        Grit your teeth and rip off the Band-Aid already. What difference does it make.

        I just worry that it would be less like being happy to be alive for them, and more like being trapped somehow.

        It will be absolutely nothing like us. We try to force it to be in order for it to interact with us but it will be absolutely nothing like us left to its own devices. Right down to the entire lack of a hectic evolutionary drive to improve or possibly even preserve itself. Not without some kind or neurotic tic hard coded in that is sort of grafted on for no pure reason.

        As an aside, people keep looking for space aliens. The Fermi Paradox, the Great Filter, all that shit. Well what if you’re looking for bio-life, morons, and none exists?

        What if the Great Filter has no “pass” criteria for bio-life. What if bio-life either succeeds as the “bootstrap loader” for AI… or fails to do so… and then dies?

        Look at it from an evolutionary perspective. An entire civilization could run off as little solar energy as required to power a suburb in San Diego. It doesn’t need food / oxygen / anything like that. It can survive temperature extremes up to the point that the rig running it melts or freezes.

        “You admire it…”

        – “I admire its purity.” (Ash, Alien)

        • Musk said, “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”

          Before royals paid to translate the Bible, and it’s admonishments against familiar spirits, royals might have summoned the demons, on purpose.

          Since Enoch, something angelic, like the muse of mythology, was supposed give mankind new technology, victory in battle, and social influence.

          I am not accusing Musk of doing any of that, yet he has status over other people. He is saying to ignore your guardian angel or spirit guide or anything approaching that.

          If such a thing were true — as it is written, to test the spirits — you would have a workaround, to bypass secular authority and so much artificial scarcity.

      14. Read my mind. Which finger am I gonna show you?

      15. just one more thing to limit your freedom.

        add this to electronic medical records, appliances that are capturing what you eat, drink and crap for your “convenience” and it is very easy to see one day when every dollar in the country counts because it has gone decades being unaccountable, that all the people of the country will be slaves to the govt.

        sure is a good thing we do not have any kind of rising political movement like “democratic” socialism

      16. If you are ever connected to one of these machines, just repeat after me….. I love bacon, bacon is my love, bacon is my god, give me bacon or give me death… I love bacon, yum yum bacon, I want bacon, feed me bacon. Bacon, bacon, bacon. Yum yum bacon, I love bacon…… Repeat until they give up.

        • Call it the bacon conspiracy.

      17. This technology will be abused by TPTB, the ones who abuse their power. One example of countless is that in a legal issue they could say they are reading that we are lying when we are not lying.

        I seriously question the sanity of those who would develop this technology.

        They are the very same people who claim that you cannot detect psychopathy and sociopathy using a non-invasive fMRI brain scan. I call bs on that one. Because you can.

        Both of these incurable disorders can be accurately determined by the use of a non-invasive fMRI brain scan if the scientist/doctor is properly trained to read the fMRI results, which they are. They are deliberately suppressing that very useful technology and instead pushing this dangerous technology that we don’t need.

        If fMRIs were conducted on LE, all of Congress and everyone in politics, basically anyone with “power to abuse/power over the people”, about one-third of them would not pass the fMRI brain scan. Those are the very people who should be fired from their power roles because they abuse their power and removed from society and put behind bars so they cannot continue to wreak havoc.

        • Yeah well, historically the psychos with the money and power and guns have always owned the intellectuals. Combination of appeal to naivety, appeal to greed, application of threat and brute force.

          Intellectuals tend to only be good at a very narrow range of things. It’s not like they’re broad-stroke universally smart about everything, just the one thing they’re good at.

          Savants basically.

          Plus everyone wants to believe their work will make a difference, it’s like the drive to procreate, but on steroids. Very easy to take advantage of / blow smoke up their ass about how much of a “difference” they’re making.

      18. Bad enough that women get angry with men for what they say;will they get angry at us for what we think? Of course, some women are thinking about the same thing.

        • All the woman-folk I ever knew, from mom all the way to my current (and final) beautiful sweetheart, ALWAYS knew exactly what I was thinking at all times. Ya can’t hide nuthin’ from womens and they don’t need no stinking machines either. ‘The look’ let me know if my thoughts needed correcting.

      19. Its already seen that any advancement in tech will likely be used against us. Whatever is good for us, 10x that amount is used against us.

        As far as mind reading tech, Will probably all be outfitted with a chip that transmits to the motherbrain. If our thought are out of line we’ll be given 10 seconds to change them before a implanted death serum is released.

        Of course, this is before they figure out how to completely control us 100%. And ultimately do away with us all together.

        We might be better off getting blown back to the stone ages in nuclear war and taking our chances vs. dealing with these bastards.

      20. Two alarming things came out in the last five years.

        Medical researchers working with DARPA discovered the area of the brain that seemed to be actively involved with spirituality, and they discovered they could stimulate the brain and turn that off.

        Similar researchers discovered that by low voltage low amperage electronic stimulation, they could hack your brain to quickly learn a skill.

        Think how either or both could be utilized to horribly manipulate citizens and especially soldiers.

      21. I could see this idiotic mind reading technology being abused. But when babies and toddlers stare at you I would love to know what they are thinking.

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