New Delhi, May 3: Artificial intelligence (AI) tech is developing rapidly, and it seems to encompass all spheres of the human life. In a recent breakthrough, scientists have developed an AI-powered decoding tool that can essentially read the human mind.

This process is non-invasive and is done with the help of brain scans, which shows the human brain activity, that is then decoded and translated into a stream of texts by the AI tool. This is essentially reading the human brain, which can have several of thoughts being processed all the time.

So, is it really possible for artificial intelligence to read the thoughts of the complex human mind so easily? Is it even ethical to read someone’s mind with AI tech? Where is the AI tech going to take the world with its impact on the human race? Let’s dig deeper into these questions. ChatGPT and Other AI Tools Banned by Samsung; Here’s What Made the Tech Giant Take This Decision.

What Is This Mind Reading AI System?

The wonderous AI tool that is making headlines has been developed by neuroscientists at the University of Texas. This new AI-powered system can translate brain activity into a continuous stream of text with the help of a brain scanner. It is reportedly the very first non-invasive technique that can effectively read a person's thoughts. As per the reports, this new AI-powered decoder is actually accurate in its process of analysing the brain activity that translates into thoughts of human beings, which is then presented in text form by the tool. SpaceX Starship To Be Launched for Another Orbital Test Flight in 6 to 8 Weeks, Says CEO Elon Musk.

This AI system has been seen effectively translating people’s thoughts while they listened to stories or just thought or imagined of something. Moreover, the scientists say that this new invention overcomes a fundamental limitation of the fMRI, which is time lag. While MRIs offer high-resolution image of brain activity, it cannot track neural activity in real-time.

How Does The New Mind Reading AI System Work?

For this study by the researchers, three participants were made to spend 16 hours inside an fMRI machine, while listening to narratives of stories.

This processed allowed the scientists to track and map out how words prompted responses in some particular regions of the human brain that are known to process language.

Then they fed the gathered data into an artificial neural network language model that is based on GPT-1, which is the predecessor of the AI tech that was used to develop Microsoft owned OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The large language model was taught to predict how each person's brain could respond to perceived speech, and then narrow down to those options to find the most appropriate response.

The study found out that the AI-powered decoder could make out the gist of the stories and that the participants were listening to. The language model was able to decipher the meanings of the stories heard by the human participants successfully.

Existing Similar Technology

There have been some existing language decoding systems. However, these require invasive procedures involving surgical implants. The system that was launched back in 2019, was aimed to help people who lost their voice through paralysis or other diseases such as throat cancer, Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

This technology uses the implanted electrodes to identify the relevant neural signals from the brain activity, and then the signals were decoded to estimate the intended movements of lips, tongue, larynx and the jaw, which finally translated into synthetic speech.

Worrisome AI Future? Here’s What Researchers Say

While several scientists and researchers have expressed their concerns about the new mind reading tech, others say that it is quite safe, at least for now. A bioethics professor at Spain's Granada University David Rodriguez-Arias Vailhen, who was not a part of this research, said that it is far more advanced than the previous brain-computer interfaces. He said this is getting closer to the time when any thought process can be transcribed by AI tech, and it is concerning, as this could go against the human will to keep things to oneself. It other words, this tech could be used in a negative way.

However, the researchers of the mind reading AI tech said that these concerns were anticipated and taken into account. They have assured that this system or decoder doesn’t not work on a person when not trained previously on that particular person’s brain activity.

Moreover, all the three study participants could easily confuse the decoder. When the users were told to count in patterns, imagine random names and animals or imagine a different story in their minds, the AI decoder was totally scattered in deciphering any proper meanings of their thoughts.

Hence, humans can easily fool their artificially intelligent friends, or at least for now. Will the AI tech become immensely efficient and change human lives for good, helping in all fields needed? Or will it become an abominable menace? Will time can tell.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 03, 2023 01:29 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).