Friday, March 07, 2008

Brilliant idea, huge potential for disaster

A device reads brain signals and converts them to speech to help people with disabilities communicate.

But how does it know which of your thoughts you want to say? I certainly wouldn't want my interior monologue broadcast for the world to hear!

3 comments:

Fran said...

“If you don’t want to say it, we have no signal to detect and nothing is able to be communicated. But if person does actually want to say it, we’re able to capture the instruction signal that your brain sends.”

I agree with your thought about the interior monologue being broadcast. I think the repeated awkwardness of that happening might trump even the tremendous utility of the device, in many cases.

But, wow, if the technology actually can detect and filter out the monologue so that only what you want to say comes through, that really is brilliant, and then some.

laura k said...

Hey, I know these guys! Very cool. I think the person has to tell the device "this is speech" or something that means that.

impudent strumpet said...

You know them? Like personally??? Because they're, like, superheros from the future or something!