Technology News Roundup - Reading Your Intentions Before You Act
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This story is a little older than the others, but still relevant. A team of neuroscientists used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of brain activity. The team was able to translate these patterns into meaningful thoughts that showed what a person planned to do in the near future.
Before you panic about machines being able to read your mind, you need to know that the circumstances were fairly well controlled. The scientists conducted a study in which volunteers were asked to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers that they would later be shown on a screen. Before the numbers flashed, each volunteer was given a brain scan using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The researchers then used a program designed to spot subtle differences in brain activity. A small part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex shows different kinds of activity depending on whether the person intends to add or subtract.
This could imply certain controversial uses, however. One example is interrogation. What if you could tell when your subject intended to lie? Ian Sample, the Guardian reporter who described the technology, noted that it could “even usher in a ‘Minority Report’ era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.”
The study was led by John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany. Other colleagues who helped on the study came from University College London and Oxford University. It’s worth noting that the scientists are fully aware of the hazards – and potential benefits – of their research. Professor Haynes pointed out that forbidding developments of this technology may prevent unscrupulous uses of it, but such a prohibition would also prevent someone who had been wrongly accused of a crime from clearing his or her name.
Thought-reading technology could also help severely disabled people communicate with their environment and perhaps tend to some of their own needs in ways that are impossible now. Imagine wheelchairs or artificial limbs that respond to a person’s thoughts. Or consider computer interaction for someone who can’t type or speak clearly, as can happen with certain motor-affecting diseases. It can be tedious to try to write a letter using current techniques; users in these situations would find it much easier to simply think their commands and the text they want to write.
I hope you’ve found these items interesting, and that they’ve made you think. Sometimes the future is a lot closer that you expect it to be.
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