Key Points
- Arnav Kapur developed AlterEgo, a headset that allows users to search the internet using thought
- The device picks up brain signals associated with words and uses them to query the internet
- It can answer questions, solve math problems, and access information discreetly and silently.
- Beyond personal use, it aims to help people with speech disorders like ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and MS (multiple sclerosis).
Media Lab Links
Here’s the actual news release without the clickbait farm. https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/alterego/overview/
Press X to doubt, though. It’s probably nowhere near as accurate or adaptable as MIT implies. University PR depts are infamous for blowing hot air.
Edit: It’s from 2019. It’s definitely hot air
Great. Now I can find pinterest and quora spam with my very mind.
No dirty thoughts! No dirty thoughts!
You can tell it’s bullshit right away because it’s not anywhere near the brain. How do you pick up brain signals from the jaw? Compare this to what you need for an EEG and all of that gear is there to just record responses to pulses of light.
IIRC, when you think about words, you also emit weak signals to your face like if you were actually pronouncing those words, but too weak to actually activate your muscles…
This device would pick up those signals.
EDIT: not saying this thing works, but the principle is valid.
Shame on me. It’s a jaw controlled interface. Like speech. Not brain controlled like… telepathy.
From the project’s page:
The wearable system captures peripheral neural signals when internal speech articulators are volitionally and neurologically activated, during a user’s internal articulation of words.
It doesn’t capture the central signal, but peripheral, most likely from the nerves running around your face and your neck used to produce speech.
it’s the same bs as facebooks “brain armband” which just picks up signals from muscle activity and not really from the brain. but because the brain is triggering those signals they call it “brain interface”. it’s just bs.
“ I typed my own name into an internet search engine
And all I got was boobs
There goes my day again
There goes my day again
What’s a man supposed to do? “
For any fans of Tripod out there :)
Yeah but how many monkeys were violently murdered to make the product?
Oh, none?
Oh. okay.
