When will it be possible to read computer thoughts?

Keyboards and mice are a classic and familiar way of interacting with computers. Nevertheless, the use of computers that interact directly with the electrical activity of the brain is approaching every year. Computer keyboards and touchscreens are very convenient. But just as we see the paper office obsolete and uncomfortable, today's users see an inconvenient need for keyboards. Future users will prefer to communicate with the computer in more convenient ways.

Technology is moving forward, and engineers are looking for ways to develop more efficient systems for entering information into the computer - hence the increasingly popular speech recognition systems. However, the true interface of the future computer is in reading thoughts. Speech input has great potential, because it is a rapidly developing technology. Reading thoughts is in its infancy, although it is developing rapidly. Most people have already experienced a robotic answering machine. Systems of the beginning of the 21st century asked you to say "yes" or "no", for example, or to press a number from zero to nine. It's simple, but similar systems are constantly growing and improving. This tendency will continue until it reaches human understanding capabilities of speech - and will exceed it (for example, by adding a multilingual functional) - because it is necessary and because it is technically feasible.

The economy of demand and the decline in the cost of computer cycles will push technology to its limits. These limits are high, as people can distinguish tens of thousands of words under good listening conditions. But it's worth starting, of course, with individual words and given commands. A true understanding of the natural language (PEU) - or at least the possibilities that create the illusion of the PEU's presence - on the human level of possibilities, is only the beginning. Voice technology will improve until computers can understand human speech as well as people. Then they will improve further, because there are very few polyglots in the world, but it is not so difficult to solve the problem of understanding many languages ​​at the computer level. The progress of the 20th century gradually gave way after a rapid take-off, which led to widespread disappointment and a lack of funding for research. But the waves of discovery are growing, and scientists continue to please more and more. There are enough grounds for optimism and not a single reason for pessimism.

Speaking is more convenient than typing. After all, people learn to speak without much effort at an early age. And although the seal may seem easy after enough practice, in fact it is burdensome, and at times improves with the usual circumcision of the nails. The microphone in the headset is cheaper and smaller than the keyboard for printing. In addition, mobile phones already have built-in microphones, and smartphones are becoming natural successors to laptops, as computing devices continue to decrease.

But given that the technology of the printed keyboard becomes more sophisticated (for example, the holographic projection of the keyboard, which can lie on any surface), most likely, they will disappear without a trace. Speech can do everything the same as a keyboard can, and the fact that a keystroke can be voiced, and not vice versa, proves that the keypad is not needed.

But why stop at the speech?

Reading thoughts

The technology of reading thoughts is on the horizon, because the need for more and more convenient input of information on a computer can not be limited to speech alone. Devices reading brain waves and allowing paralyzed people to turn off the light without moving at all appeared on the market back in 1997. This device, MCTOS Brain Switch, is still on sale in 2014. In 2008, a group of researchers led by Junichi Ushiba from Keio University in Japan for the first time proved that a paralyzed person can walk around in Second Life, computer simulation of the world using brain waves.

A patient at the age of 41 could walk and communicate with another character. Bruising and other researchers have achieved this by equipping his brain with a wave detector and writing software that read brain waves associated with thoughts of certain movements. For the first time this principle for digital keys was demonstrated in 2009, and it will definitely improve over time.

A keyboard or voice recognition system is in fact a device that reads thoughts, only requiring the transfer of the electrical impulse of the brain to an intermediate movement like sound or finger-clicking.

Like computer understanding of speech, it is economic demand that should accelerate progress in the development and creation of different computer concepts for reading thoughts. In 2008, using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), it was possible to observe the activation of brain patterns associated with nouns. The computer was trained to recognize the patterns of 60 different nouns with "very high accuracy". The same ability was demonstrated in the example of pictures, that is, words depicted visually. The similarity of these concepts lies deep in the human brain. You can call it a modest beginning, but it is.

Commercialization is the main stimulus of technological progress, and the computer games market is a ready platform for hardware and software that reads thoughts. In 2008, NeuroSky Corporation released the first device, sensitive to brain activity, to the user market.

Military applications of various technologies were historically forced by various technological developments of the mass market. Here, for example, the ancient catapults worked on springs, artfully made of human hair. Quite recently, in 2008, the US Army dropped millions of dollars to develop a future "thought-dream". He would have to read the soldiers' thoughts and send them on the radio to fellow soldiers. Soldiers should think "in a clear, formal manner, as they are used to saying." Civil use is prohibited.

In 2010, the brain wave reader was introduced as part of a mobile phone. He determined who the user wants to call and gave out the number; True, in this he was helped by a physical movement, a wink, for example. On the other hand, the "clear formular" way of thinking will not be very convenient in an intimate setting. Fortunately, other ways of reading thoughts are being developed, not so narrow-minded.

Back in 2009, the technique of reading thoughts and issuing them in a blurry film was described, which corresponds to which film the object was scanning at the time of the device's operation. Regarding music, another project read Beethoven's interpretations from the human brain and lost results using a full orchestra at the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival in February 2013. Progress seems to continue and continue.

Thought-reading devices should be lightweight, portable and convenient until they can be put on with a cap or device like Google Glass. Let them be glasses or caps, and their electrodes will be attached to the temples or ears. If someone does not want the device to work, he will put the cap back on. And women who do not wear hats will also be easy. They simply can strengthen the electrodes in the hair, hiding them deep in strands.

What will happen next?

Many of us would like to know how fast the technology of reading thoughts will develop in order to know when and what to prepare for. To assess the pace of progress and achieve the future, technology forecasters can do more accurate quantification of the state of technology, reading thoughts, and the speed of their development. Otherwise, you may be caught unawares by stealing all your most secret ideas.

Progress, as a rule, includes scientific, engineering and commercial factors. In a quantitative sense, technologies that do not destroy the brain but scan it, multiply twice every six years, and the time they need to work is reduced by half every year.

One thing is worth knowing for sure. To date, natural telepathy, which you know well in science fiction, is impossible. MRI and EEG will help in reading unless the most primitive thoughts - they are in a complex way distributed throughout the gray matter. But the possibilities of science to penetrate the head of a person by a non-invasive way should grow exponentially. Starting with the dictionary of thoughts, thought forms and ending with the correlation of the brain's reaction to the pictures, it is possible to deepen the understanding of how the head works in the course of time. Perhaps, after ten years, science will be able to say exactly which neurons work at the time of the genius idea, and which ones - at the moment of divine insight.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/computers/kogda-stanet-vozmozhno-kompyuternoe-chtenie-myslej.html.