Can They Spy On What You Think About?

Now even the voices in your head are no escape for Stanford engineers. They built an interface that can read your inner speech mental. So they've created a module. It is an implant. It works by capturing neural signals from the motor cortex and interpreting both attempted and imagined speech using AI. You know, I said about the wristband kind of can be slightly ahead because you give those subtle clues before you do something in your muscle. It's the same thing in your motor cortex. So, it can you can basically just think and it will just it will read what you're saying. Oh, and by the way, this is great for people with motor neuron um deficiencies and things like that. People who can't speak and whatever. So, it's a speechtoext thing. Uh speech, sorry, speechtoext thing. So you can just display some, you know, messages and stuff like that. So it doesn't just listen to your um thoughts all the time. It listens for a mind password. So something like chitty chitty bang bang. If you think the word chitty chitty bang bang, that's when the device activates and that's when you'll start to get the thing. So it's it's pretty cool. I think I saw some stats somewhere. Uh 70% of people or something like this found like it's not it's not great for everyone. N well 98% accuracy in detecting correct password and rejecting imposters which is crazy. It's super cool. Crazy. The only thing I think of this is that you know if you know your password like if I could I convince you to say your password. Do you know how you say like don't think of a pink elephant and then it just forces you to think of a pink elephant? Like what if I like what can I hijack this by like telling you not to think of your password like whatever your password is just don't think about it and then it unlocks then then I've unlocked all your thoughts exact well um fun so password is a funny example because I don't know my master password it's muscle memory I can I can think about it but it's rather harder for me just to get on my keyboard and just use my fing so my fingers know my password better than my thumb. Yeah, kind of it feels that way. So this device it sounds creepy and the examples that you said are like insane like uh thinking about something will reveal it to the the third party trying to read it. And yeah, it's kind of it's it's kind of like a nightmare, but at the same time, it's super advanced. Of course, it's going to help so many people and in good cases I'm, you know, optimistic in general. Hey, we can do telepathy. It's called telepathy, right? Yeah. We'll be able to just But it will be awkward. We'll be just looking at each other and just nodding and just finally I don't have to move my mouth to open to to talk or to say something. I can just look at you and be like, "Yeah, because effectively, if you've got something reading your thoughts to to know what to type, you you've got to send that through to a display, an interface or something, all you really need to do is intercept that with with a Bluetooth, send that over to another Bluetooth, and I suppose you need a way to actually inject it into someone's brain." Yeah. To So, it's the read and write. And this is the same thing with Neurolink. Um the one from uh Elon Musk with Neurolink you can do read and write because right yes that's that's how they do it. Oh my god I didn't know that. Yeah. So the the writing is um when you see like you can install cameras for people who are blind uh and you know they can receive. So it's not just reading what the brain thinks. the brain can receive can be a a receiver. And it's the same with uh they actually have humans, they tested it on humans that can uh type on their phone on their like just their iPhone, their regular iPhone with Neurolink faster than any human can do with finger. Yeah. Because I I think quicker than I can speak and I stumble over my words quite often. So it's like, yeah, it's crazy. Surely MVP would be just a little Bluetooth thing in your ear that it is text to speech. So I think and it just projects it into your kind of thing. Why do we need it to inject? I mean, by the way, this will solve the learning problem. If I can just like inject a frigin how to fly a plane into my head, I would absolutely Well, we're talking about uh what's it called? Neo downloading how to Yeah, exactly. Right. do certain things in you can write if your brain becomes as an ingest uh mechanism then well that's the thing can can it hold the information after receiving it because when I said writing it's not it's not permanently writing it it's the neurons in your brain capturing whatever that is transmitted to them reading it but it's not you know internalizing it for lack of better words so I don't know how that will work and a and a big part of learning is literally you doing it and the process of learning is how it remains. So it will be it will be interesting when they figure it out like how many people actually remember it. It could be dead in the water because the very act of learning cannot be simulated. You know it can't be bypassed. It needs to be ingested in multiple different mediums and stuff like that. But it goes down to what I was saying that about that video last week. We just don't know the societal impact of some of this stuff until it's really embedded itself and it it it will manifest itself in weird and wonderful ways. It's crazy. Do you have like visual thinking? Can you can you imagine something in your head in 3D render it? Yeah, me too. Like when I talk to like uh our 3D guy on on our team like uh when he says something, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I I I love this. I'm rendering this real time in my head." And now imagine being able to to communicate this with some people can't do that at all. Many people can't do this. Imagine stuff. I wonder if it's a not disability, but you know what I mean? I wonder if that's actually I don't how widespread is that inability to to recognize whether it's a a normal thing to imagine things. But crazy wild there is a very interesting episode of um Mindfield from Visas. You know Visas? Hey Lisa, Michael here. Where? Down here. I don't know that. That's That's a bit too a bit too nerdy. That that was a bit It's a bit too nerdy. Yes. That's how I learned English with Visas. So there's an episode of Mindfield where he has one of these like receptors basically reading his brain and he has like two buttons or like one button to push and he has to push the button before it becomes red. So the button is green and if he pushes it while it's green he wins. That's okay. But the moment the button become uh turns red, if he pushes pushes it, he loses. He he must push the button when it's still green. So So when when does the button go red? The button goes red when he thinks about pushes it pushing it. So it's very frustrating because he thinks of pushing it and sometimes he tries to not think about it to actively think about something else and push it anyway. But before pushing it, the brain gives the cue, the device reads it and the button turns red and he cannot win. He cannot pushes the button while it's green even if he tries to not think about it. So yeah, that's crazy. How how how did they what what device was this to to read his brain? Ah I I I believe it's just like something that they put on his head. It's one of the episodes of uh Mindfield. I can send it later on. It's amazing. Like Minefield uh I'm watching re-watching some of the episodes. I I love it. Vis is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That reminded me as well like have you seen the videos of the orangutans how amazing their memory recall is? They can be shown basically there's this thing that a screen that will show just all over it will just be numbers one to 16 or something one to 20. Yeah. And it will flash all of these numbers will appear and if they they got to tap it in order one two three four five all the way up to 20. And if they get it right they get a a nut or whatever bit of food. Yeah. I watched it last week. You've seen it? Yeah. The the the one from Visas. I don't know. I'm just I'm just saying this is something has an episode on that as well on Minefield and he goes to against a monkey and he loses it to to the monkey. He has no Is this memory recall though? Is this memory? Is this the memory? Yes. Uh so there is this um this idea that we we gained uh we we gained this like long form memory where we can remember things and even like transfer it to the next generation, right? We can tell a story, we can write a book and information can can live through generations. monkeys and chanies they they didn't evolve this because they stayed on the trees and we left the trees. We left the trees and we needed to deal with the new challenges. That's how we uh essentially ended up having this me long-term memory. Um and chimpanzees they they they kept the short form. So they have a very strong short form memory. Cognitive tradeoff hypothesis. Yes. Yes. Well, this was six years ago. This wasn't last week. This was six years. I watched I rewatched it last week. Okay, fine. Fine. Well, anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It's just amazing like uh literally a flash of a screen and it remembers all the order and gets it gets us nut. Yeah, you got to get your It's really difficult like for a human to get even numbers. Yeah. And and now people are uh talking in the chat about the space odyssey 2001. Oh, what? You've seen that, right? I can't do that for you, David. Uhhuh. Is that good? Yeah. I'm sorry. I can't do that for you, David. That That's really good. That's really That's actually like goosebump level. Yeah, that movie is insane. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Long though. It's a long film. That's my only thing. Yeah, it it has like one of the longest intros. I think it's like five or six minutes with even a word being. Yeah. They're dancing around the the obelisk or whatever it's called. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Great. This is part of a larger conversation on my show, Command AI, which we stream live every single week. 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