p2pnet - rss feed: US Army wants mind reading computer
p2pnet news view | Freedom:- Various elements of the US government already penetrate your privacy online and off, and now they want to be able to get into your mind.
Literally.
In a project lifted straight out of science fiction, “The U.S. military is paying scientists to study ways to read people’s thoughts,” says the Associated Press.
“The hope is that the research could someday lead to a gadget capable of translating the thoughts of soldiers who suffered brain injuries in combat or even stroke patients in hospitals.”
Initially, maybe, but …….
Can you imagine what the likes of Rummy Rumsfeld would’ve done if they’d been able to penetrate peoples’ thoughts?
In June, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, “have developed a ‘mind-reading’ computer,” said ComputerWorld, going on the machine could forecast the activity patterns a brain will create for a specific word.
“Researchers used nine volunteers to train the computer,” says the story.
“They were given 58 words and asked to think about the meaning and properties of the words. Brain scans taken when the users were thinking about the different words were then captured using magnetic resonance imaging, which identifies real-time brain activity.”
ComputerWorld has Tom Mitchell of the machine learning department saying the next step would be to study brain activity for phrases rather than singular words.
“If I say ‘rabbit’ or ‘fast rabbit’ or ‘cuddly rabbit’, those are very different ideas,” Mitchell said. “I want to basically use that as a kind of scaffolding for studying language processing in the brain.”
He also highlighted a few problems with the research.
“It can be hard to focus. Somewhere in the middle of that their stomach growls. And all of sudden they think, ‘I’m hungry - oops.’ It’s not a controllable experiment.”
Now, “the research also raises concerns that such mind-reading technology could be used to interrogate the enemy,” says AP.
But, “John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia-based defense research firm, said the technology is still too nascent to be of practical use for the military.
“A message left with the Army was not immediately returned Friday.”
Just imagine the possibilities if we could read Homer Simpson’s mind.
Or maybe George W. Bush’s?
.
.Stumble It!
Associated Press - Military wants to study mind-reading, August 15, 2008
ComputerWorld - Scientists build mind-reading computer, June 2, 2008
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August 18th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
this shows how facist the US army has become.
hitler would love this kind of thing…..
NOW anyone not with us or who wishes to bring concerns can be found out and TERMINATED.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I don’t quite get why this is such breaking news. The science of trying to read minds has been going on since World War II (with absolutely zero success, by the way).
August 18th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Yup.
Turns out the brain is far more complicated than anybody dreamed. And every new thing they discover about the brain multiplies our understanding of its complexity.
That doesn’t make any sense. People with brain injurys are HARDER. Their language centers are disrupted. This magic neuron where the word rabbit lives has been destroyed, and the brain re-wired itself to compensate so now its in the temporal lobe on the other side of the brain entirely or something. You start by reading the minds of neurologically intact people, because their brains are nice and healthy and normal and predictable, then you try to see what you can do for the stroke victims.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
^^ You start by reading the minds of neurologically intact people, because their brains are nice and healthy and normal and predictable, then you try to see what you can do for the stroke victims.
You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?
Meanwhile, if you can pin down certain aspects of certain functions, you’d perhaps end up with a higher-tech lie-detector which would be, you might say, a kind of mind reading.
Cheers!
August 18th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I keep waiting for them to make a machine that can record and play back a person’s experiences like they had in the movies Brainscan and Strange Days. It would give a whole meaning to the phrase “celebrity sex tape”.
August 19th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Time to put on my tin-foil hat!
August 19th, 2008 at 11:37 am
There was a really good book called “The Truth Machine” where everybody ran around with brain monitors, but only they had access to it, unless it was subpoenaed by the courts. That way you could prove your innocence (or prove yourself guilty) and there was no question of “lying” anymore. It was a good book that kinda pointed out the pros and cons of this kind of thing. I forget who wrote it though, it’s been 6 or 7 years since I read it.