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nashashmi 2 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
frereubu 1 hours ago [-]
This area of ethics should be considered seriously, but in this specific instance these consumer-level headsets tell you very little about anything. I'm constantly frustrated by the amount of coverage these get when, if you've ever studied any kind of neuroscience, you realise quite how vague the data is, and how much over-interpretation goes on in the advertising for these products.
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.
close04 39 minutes ago [-]
That’s an interesting project and if you ever succeed it will be massive. What I say shouldn’t stop you but just in case, EEG signals through the scalp are incredibly noisy. You can’t get the level of granularity you need like that. You’re putting a stethoscope on the side of the building and trying to guess what everyone in a few rooms is working on.
gabriel666smith 24 minutes ago [-]
Yeah! Super super noisy - and maybe harder than you've described. At least you might overhear some meetings with a stethoscope-on-building approach.
That's kind of the motivation for trying a no-MEG, (comparatively) large dataset, ML approach - it strikes me as exactly the kind of problem to which transformer models might be particularly well-suited, if it's even possible to find a hint of anything in that noise at all.
44mkultra69 1 hours ago [-]
how, what? without any input from you, ever? did you feed some personal parameters, first? like "fuck the Yankees, love red, may the Wall Street Soviet live on forever" so it can "map assumptions" bouncing around in your head to all that which you catch on your audiovisual peripheral and/or center of focus while you catch it all at different distances and pitches? Are you a person who feels bloodflow/tension in brain parts more or less specifically temporo-spatially ( pre-, during, release, post-release phases, ... ) or not and you just feel the neuro-chemistry vibe with the brain waves ( tired, awake, confused, intensifying, uuuh me so horny )... ?
If you know that at [timestamp] a certain word was audible in my vicinity, it might be reasonably safe to guess that I also thought this word around that point, because I heard that word.
The EEG signal my brain creates might behave in a unique way when I heard (and thus, thought) that word. Over time, it might be possible an EEG sensor to notice that unique pattern repeatedly.
So my hope is that decoding EEG might be perhaps simpler than people currently assume. Most studies create their datasets using "lots of participants, participating for relatively short periods" rather than "one participant, over an extremely long period".
If it's possible to have my EEG reasonably-well mapped and decoded (this signal previously repeatedly meant I was hearing the words "uuuh me so horny", to use your example) it might then become possible to read mapped words in the EEG signals even when the mapped words were not audible.
This, in turn, might mean it was possible to read (some of) the words I am thinking.
As a sibling commenter pointed out, it's insanely noisy data, so I have no idea whether any of the above will ever prove possible.
But mapping assumptions in the manner you laid out isn't something I would have any idea how to do, not least because I often hate the sports teams I love when they are underperforming.
schiffern 1 hours ago [-]
>Are you a person who feels bloodflow/tension in brain parts
Feeling the brain is biologically impossible, since the brain has no nerve endings.
What you're feeling is muscle tension tighten and release in your head/face/neck/scalp, which does effect blood flow.
44mkultra69 13 minutes ago [-]
> is biologically impossible
But there are nerve endings all around the scalp, everywhere in the face and neck, ears, that organ that picks up sound, eye nerves? So some hypersensitivity might create some cerebral geolocationish triangulation of where vessels dilate and constrict? Or are blocked by clots, which gives the flow and dilation a different shape and timing, which also changes clock sync of what usually fires together at much more specific rates than during the blockade.
I'm asking. I'm curious and have not done a preliminary consultation with AI, yet ( why do I feel the need to say this? Probably the sustained increased oxygen supply. Lot's of additional neurogenesis going on in my head atm--19 months on nose plasters )
I used to have annoying TLE attacks which changed thinking patterns and nudged inner dialogues in and out of conversations with people. Even when I was super smooth after weeks of continuous stretching and mobility exercises ( hold two minutes, don't be a noob ) ... but that's about the only somewhat relatable example which I mentioned elsewhere some time in the past. Oh, I felt the TLE like I felt pinching or stuffed sinuses or swallowing unchewed chunks of food for the duration of the TLE.
Some people report tensions on the inside of their forehead even though the particular and surrounding facial nerves are quantifyably ( there's probably a correct term for that ) chill, when taking certain medications.
adrianN 4 hours ago [-]
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.
Eridanus2 3 hours ago [-]
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).
keyringlight 53 minutes ago [-]
I think a big difference is that now we have a lot of examples of what certain types of technology is likely to get used for, and how that affects our daily lives.
andai 2 hours ago [-]
> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.
The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.
—Spicy Secret Santa
noduerme 2 hours ago [-]
nothing like the indignity of dying from an ingrown toenail at 26
Kiboneu 6 hours ago [-]
"On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces" (Martinovic et al. 2012)
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.
lostlogin 3 hours ago [-]
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.
az09mugen 7 hours ago [-]
The real title of the article is : "The scramble for your brain data"
ericpruitt 6 hours ago [-]
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.
mikae1 5 hours ago [-]
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>.
peteforde 4 hours ago [-]
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.
chychiu 3 hours ago [-]
Guy is currently working as a engineer at 1X so if anyone works there and can ping him, that will be useful
toonvanvr 3 hours ago [-]
That sounds like the perfect use case for Reverse Engineer Anything, and it's totally justified..
When I saw it was called "Muse headband", I immediately thought it was a Meta thing. Surely, it's just a matter of time until Meta knocks on their door. Especially if they're getting into the AI category with their supposed 'wellness devices'.
tom89999 5 hours ago [-]
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.
FacelessJim 3 hours ago [-]
That title is one hell of an understatement.
andai 2 hours ago [-]
Great, now I need to worry about my brain having libre bootloader, TEMPEST shielding, latest Intel Management Engine update... did I miss anything?
newterminus 52 minutes ago [-]
this stuff is already super advanced bbs stream of direct experience clock your ass to ai type shit
metalman 3 hours ago [-]
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
It's a shame this book by my MSc dissertation supervisor isn't coming out until next June, because I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of stuff in there about this kind of neurobollocks: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/479845/neurobollocks-by-devl...
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.
That's kind of the motivation for trying a no-MEG, (comparatively) large dataset, ML approach - it strikes me as exactly the kind of problem to which transformer models might be particularly well-suited, if it's even possible to find a hint of anything in that noise at all.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65499-0
If you know that at [timestamp] a certain word was audible in my vicinity, it might be reasonably safe to guess that I also thought this word around that point, because I heard that word.
The EEG signal my brain creates might behave in a unique way when I heard (and thus, thought) that word. Over time, it might be possible an EEG sensor to notice that unique pattern repeatedly.
So my hope is that decoding EEG might be perhaps simpler than people currently assume. Most studies create their datasets using "lots of participants, participating for relatively short periods" rather than "one participant, over an extremely long period".
If it's possible to have my EEG reasonably-well mapped and decoded (this signal previously repeatedly meant I was hearing the words "uuuh me so horny", to use your example) it might then become possible to read mapped words in the EEG signals even when the mapped words were not audible.
This, in turn, might mean it was possible to read (some of) the words I am thinking.
As a sibling commenter pointed out, it's insanely noisy data, so I have no idea whether any of the above will ever prove possible.
But mapping assumptions in the manner you laid out isn't something I would have any idea how to do, not least because I often hate the sports teams I love when they are underperforming.
What you're feeling is muscle tension tighten and release in your head/face/neck/scalp, which does effect blood flow.
But there are nerve endings all around the scalp, everywhere in the face and neck, ears, that organ that picks up sound, eye nerves? So some hypersensitivity might create some cerebral geolocationish triangulation of where vessels dilate and constrict? Or are blocked by clots, which gives the flow and dilation a different shape and timing, which also changes clock sync of what usually fires together at much more specific rates than during the blockade.
I'm asking. I'm curious and have not done a preliminary consultation with AI, yet ( why do I feel the need to say this? Probably the sustained increased oxygen supply. Lot's of additional neurogenesis going on in my head atm--19 months on nose plasters )
I used to have annoying TLE attacks which changed thinking patterns and nudged inner dialogues in and out of conversations with people. Even when I was super smooth after weeks of continuous stretching and mobility exercises ( hold two minutes, don't be a noob ) ... but that's about the only somewhat relatable example which I mentioned elsewhere some time in the past. Oh, I felt the TLE like I felt pinching or stuffed sinuses or swallowing unchewed chunks of food for the duration of the TLE.
Some people report tensions on the inside of their forehead even though the particular and surrounding facial nerves are quantifyably ( there's probably a correct term for that ) chill, when taking certain medications.
The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.
—Spicy Secret Santa
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...
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.
Thiel organised a bolt hole down here in New Zealand and we really don’t want him.
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.