Decoding silent reading from non-invasive EEG
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
You might possibly convince decent democratic countries to not do it, but if you think China, Russia, etc, would hesitate to get hold of this power we don't live in the same universe.
I agree! The technology to read the thoughts and intentions of the human brain has some positive applications. I am sure Stephen Hawking would have appreciated significant improvements in this space when he was still alive. The right to private thought does not revoke the right to subject oneself to mind reading technology. Research could still proceed, and positive, lawful application of the technology could still benefit those in need.
> You might possibly convince decent democratic countries to not do it, but if you think China, Russia, etc, would hesitate to get hold of this power we don't live in the same universe.
I agree! The independent governance of countries has consequences, but I believe its advantages outweigh those of global governance. I would rather that there always be a tension between many democracies and dictatorships, than a single governing authority.
As long as we don't we have to choose between explicit and repetitive or implicit but concise. The advantage of implicit but concise is that individual citizens can grasp larger sets of axioms & principles, but the we run the risk of having lawyers, judges etc. be confused, confusable, or feigning "innocent confusion" about the law and the spirit of the law. The advantage of explicit but repetitive is that its much harder to confuse if a party can point to a literal sentence stating exactly the situation in one place, but the law easily bulks up exponentially.
On the other hand using a formal system, you can clearly distinctly mark the axioms and normative postulates, and include example theorems ("yes a black citizen is also a citizen", "yes the gypsy is a human", etc...). Even when cases haven't been covered as explicit theorems, the formalized aspect means parties can derive unambiguously the sentences they need to shove in the face of a judge.
Plus it's important that the law can be read by the average citizen as well. Not that current US laws are, but, it's an ideal to strive towards...
We laugh hearing that the library of Alexandria was noisy with people reading the texts out loud, thinking 'how dumb were they?' -- just as they considered it a miracle when they came upon one who read silently. But though there is training the difference is slight; the advance to keeping one's mouth shut pretty much boils down to keeping one's mouth shut and doing everything else the same.
MIT’s AlterEgo project does that. It’s been spun off into a private company (with no shipping product yet.) Discussed here, with 130 comments, 11 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45174125
The paper is also missing a critical control of feeding Llama the preceding ground-truth text and asking how well it ranks the current word among the same candidate set.
I wonder whether a subject could poison the process by consciously thinking about something unrelated in the same way that public speakers used to get past stage-fright. As you look out across the audience picture something funny, like your boss in a pink tutu.
Can you imagine the sheer horror of being stuck in your body and unable to communicate? Being literally incapable of telling someone that you're in pain or where it hurts, for every waking second? Or, knowing that the end is near, not being able to tell your children that you love them? Or that you're sorry for not being a better parent?
May none of us ever need such technology.
We can all see how it can be used for good but we should never blind ourselves to the reality that it will also be used for evil without firm guardrails and tight controls.
It's probably best in the current environment if you refrain from making any more of the "think of the children" type of arguments. We all understand where that leads.
Alas, propaganda playbooks don't update that often.
Deemphasizing the humanities in STEM education is turning into a disaster.
Second, quite a few of the current tech moguls with STEM degrees had their education ages ago, when there was still some attention for the humanities in studies (at least at my school), and some of the worst people around have studied economics or law. Just teaching Philosophy 101 to CS students or getting neuroscientists to write an essay on Pride and Prejudice doesn't prevent this kind of thing.
Like… how can you be planning a 401k at a time where humanoid robots and *mind reading* are suddenly possible? We’re going to have to redesign our whole society if we want to survive.