Huh, interesting. The company has amassed 50k hours of training data - that’s a very large dataset.
A side-project of mine recently has been building out this stack:
- Recording audio in proximity to me, and transcribing it
- Grabbing EEG data from cheap sensors on my own head
- Mapping it against the transcription
With a view to eventually train transformer models which might reliably understand, from EEG signals, what words I am thinking. The existing studies on this method don’t seem to show any drop off in efficacy at mind-reading (lol) as the dataset gets larger.
(If anyone wants to invest some seed money so I can justify spending more time strapping things to my head, do hit me up.)
Crucially, the Muse headband the article talks about doesn’t have a microphone. This seems (slightly!) better for user privacy, but it seems like it would hamper training somewhat, depending on your aims.
A less privacy-respecting company in this space with a popular wellness device could do some pretty dark stuff - it doesn’t really bear thinking about. A sleep tracker app with companion EEG sensor device, for example, could reasonably request microphone access without most users batting an eye.
Right. I don't recall where I read it: two decades ago geeks were defined by being eager early adopters while the rest looked on dismissive or dismayed, whereas now it's inverted, the geeks are on the verge of retreating to the woodlands, while the general body is tapping into every new, ever more invasive technovelty (sic).
I finally got around to firing up the Neurosity Crown I bought some years ago to experiment with BCI. Lights are on, but nobody is home; it knows the position of my head, but no actual EEG data is coming into the system.
Multiple attempts to contact any kind of support have gone unanswered, and according to Reddit the founders appear to have quietly disappeared, which pisses me off more than a little bit. This thing was not cheap.
Reading someone's mind is just the beginning, that paper was 14 years ago, and they've likely advanced far beyond it. Buried behind private orgs and dark government agencies, the real objective has always been mind control.
Peter Thiel and his ilk would use it to reprogram anyone who doesn't conform to there thinking. He even bragged about it before being indirectly called the antichrist in his interview with Ross Douthat.
One upside to the incredible power and influence of the US billionaire class is that they enjoy the position they are in. Please don’t clamp down on them too hard.
Thiel organised a bolt hole down here in New Zealand and we really don’t want him.
That's what I see in the article body, but the <title> tag is "Wearable device makers are harvesting brain data to train AI—without telling users" for me. It's not clear to me if the submitter changed the title on submission or if the site's doing some form of A/B testing.
This is an extremely common practice among publishers. They put a more SEO friendly headline in the <title> and I'd say the "real headline" is always in the <h1>.
Quit your job, apply at DHL, Flink or as Über-Driver and you will never have problems falling asleep again.
Also working as a storeman, commuting by bus and tram will surely guarantee an early bed time.
No expensive gyms needed, just go by bike to your office, the entire year.
Also, ask your employer if you could help out in production or warehouse.
Problem solved.
not to worry, privacy was just a primitive concept, wrapped up in other ridiculous notions like personal autonomy and agency, along with silly ideas like rights and responsibilities, and soon that whole way of thinking can be edited in order to release your true potential as a happy meat bot
Huh, interesting. The company has amassed 50k hours of training data - that’s a very large dataset.
A side-project of mine recently has been building out this stack:
- Recording audio in proximity to me, and transcribing it
- Grabbing EEG data from cheap sensors on my own head
- Mapping it against the transcription
With a view to eventually train transformer models which might reliably understand, from EEG signals, what words I am thinking. The existing studies on this method don’t seem to show any drop off in efficacy at mind-reading (lol) as the dataset gets larger.
(If anyone wants to invest some seed money so I can justify spending more time strapping things to my head, do hit me up.)
Crucially, the Muse headband the article talks about doesn’t have a microphone. This seems (slightly!) better for user privacy, but it seems like it would hamper training somewhat, depending on your aims.
A less privacy-respecting company in this space with a popular wellness device could do some pretty dark stuff - it doesn’t really bear thinking about. A sleep tracker app with companion EEG sensor device, for example, could reasonably request microphone access without most users batting an eye.
Every day my urge to just disconnect from modern society becomes stronger, but alas it is impossible to live outside of it when you have a family.
Right. I don't recall where I read it: two decades ago geeks were defined by being eager early adopters while the rest looked on dismissive or dismayed, whereas now it's inverted, the geeks are on the verge of retreating to the woodlands, while the general body is tapping into every new, ever more invasive technovelty (sic).
I finally got around to firing up the Neurosity Crown I bought some years ago to experiment with BCI. Lights are on, but nobody is home; it knows the position of my head, but no actual EEG data is coming into the system.
Multiple attempts to contact any kind of support have gone unanswered, and according to Reddit the founders appear to have quietly disappeared, which pisses me off more than a little bit. This thing was not cheap.
That sounds like the perfect use case for Reverse Engineer Anything, and it's totally justified..
Guy is currently working as a engineer at 1X so if anyone works there and can ping him, that will be useful
"On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces" (Martinovic et al. 2012)
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...
Reading someone's mind is just the beginning, that paper was 14 years ago, and they've likely advanced far beyond it. Buried behind private orgs and dark government agencies, the real objective has always been mind control.
Peter Thiel and his ilk would use it to reprogram anyone who doesn't conform to there thinking. He even bragged about it before being indirectly called the antichrist in his interview with Ross Douthat.
One upside to the incredible power and influence of the US billionaire class is that they enjoy the position they are in. Please don’t clamp down on them too hard.
Thiel organised a bolt hole down here in New Zealand and we really don’t want him.
The real title of the article is : "The scramble for your brain data"
That's what I see in the article body, but the <title> tag is "Wearable device makers are harvesting brain data to train AI—without telling users" for me. It's not clear to me if the submitter changed the title on submission or if the site's doing some form of A/B testing.
This is an extremely common practice among publishers. They put a more SEO friendly headline in the <title> and I'd say the "real headline" is always in the <h1>.
Clean url: https://www.science.org/content/article/wearable-device-make...
That title is one hell of an understatement.
Quit your job, apply at DHL, Flink or as Über-Driver and you will never have problems falling asleep again. Also working as a storeman, commuting by bus and tram will surely guarantee an early bed time. No expensive gyms needed, just go by bike to your office, the entire year. Also, ask your employer if you could help out in production or warehouse. Problem solved.
not to worry, privacy was just a primitive concept, wrapped up in other ridiculous notions like personal autonomy and agency, along with silly ideas like rights and responsibilities, and soon that whole way of thinking can be edited in order to release your true potential as a happy meat bot