{"id":25266,"date":"2018-04-06T05:58:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T05:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/?p=311407"},"modified":"2018-04-13T18:17:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T18:17:03","slug":"intelligence-augmentation-device-lets-users-speak-silently-with-a-computer-by-just-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2018\/04\/06\/intelligence-augmentation-device-lets-users-speak-silently-with-a-computer-by-just-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligence-augmentation device lets users ‘speak silently’ with a computer by just thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MIT Media Lab researcher Arnav Kapur demonstrates the AlterEgo device. It picks up neuromuscular facial signals generated by his thoughts; a bone-conduction headphone lets him privately hear responses from his personal devices. (credit: Lorrie Lejeune\/MIT)<\/p><\/div>\n

MIT researchers have invented a system that allows someone to communicate silently and privately with a computer or the internet by simply thinking — without requiring any facial muscle movement.<\/p>\n

The AlterEgo system consists of a wearable device with electrodes that pick up otherwise undetectable neuromuscular subvocalizations — saying words \u201cin your head\u201d in natural language. The signals are fed to a neural network that is trained to identify subvocalized words from these signals. Bone-conduction headphones also transmit vibrations through the bones of the face to the inner ear to convey information to the user — privately and without interrupting a conversation. The device connects wirelessly to any external computing device via Bluetooth.<\/p>\n

A silent,\u00a0discreet, bidirectional conversation with machines. <\/strong>\u201cOur idea was: Could we have a computing platform that\u2019s more internal, that melds human and machine in some ways and that feels like an internal extension of our own cognition?,\u201d says Arnav Kapur, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab who led the development of the new system. Kapur is first author on an open-access paper<\/a> on the research presented in March at the IUI ’18<\/a> 23rd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces.<\/p>\n

In one of the researchers\u2019 experiments, subjects used the system to silently report opponents\u2019 moves in a chess game and silently receive recommended moves from a chess-playing computer program. In another experiment, subjects were able to undetectably answer difficult computational problems, such as the square root of large numbers or obscure facts. The researchers achieved 92% median word accuracy levels, which is expected to improve.\u00a0 \u201cI think we\u2019ll achieve full conversation someday,\u201d Kapur said.<\/p>\n