This new AI system will make you forget the creeps that the Boston Dynamics robot gave you. People are skeptical when it comes to the idea of giving machines more intelligence. Even Elon Musk made it clear that he is not approving the idea of having a future that fully depends on AI. Despite all the criticism and fear about AI, a group of Japanese computer scientists has successfully developed a new AI which is capable of visualizing human thoughts. This technology is capable of reading human thoughts and can convert them into pictures. The thought of a person reading your mind is frightening enough, let alone having an AI tech which can know what you are thinking.
The core of this technology has the ability to scan the human brain. The scientists used Functional MRI (fMRI) to scan the brain over the traditional MRI. fMRI is capable of tracking the blood flow in the brain and the brain waves as well. Traditional MRI on the other hand, can scan the brain activity only. The system uses this data obtained from the scan to decide what the subject of the thoughts is. The resultant data is then converted into an image. The image is created by sending the data through a complex neural network that performs all the coding.
The tech is not able to grasp everything from the beginning. It needs to be trained first to learn the functioning of the human brain. It needs to get used to tracking the blood flow in the brain. When the machine understands the process, it begins to project the images which have quite a resemblance to what the subject was thinking about. This was made possible by using multiple layers of Deep Neural Networks (DNN). When DNN is processing the image, a Deep Generator Network (DGN) is used to create images with more precision and accuracy. The difference in the images which are created with or without the DGN is very different.
Testing the method has two steps. In the first step, the subject is shown an image and then the AI works to recreate the image. In the next part, the subject visualizes the images in their head and the AI recreates the images in real time.
This technology can have a future in different ways and can also be scary. No one wants to see their thoughts displayed on a board. For this, the machine needs to record the brain waves wirelessly which is not possible for now. In future, a technology might be developed which can remotely see our thoughts. The imaging technology will also develop and become better in the coming years as well. It is difficult to ignore the advantages of the system since it is designed to help people. It can be used to scan the brains of criminals and convicts to see the images of their past instead of making them talk about the crimes they committed. It is yet to be determined where and how this technology can be made use of. Till then, we will keep our fingers crossed!
