Computers are getting closer to reading your mind
What if you could paint a picture by simply imagining something?
"Imagine a reality where computers can visualize what you are thinking," said Catherine Clifford at CNBC. Over 10 months, scientists at Kyoto University scanned the brain activity of subjects who were shown images — of animals and objects, geometric shapes, and letters of the alphabet — and later when subjects were asked to recall the images. Both sets of brain scans were then used to train a neural network to "decode" the data and recreate what the person had been thinking about.
Pixel by pixel, the AI was able to reconstruct images of insects, owls, and even a man in a cowboy hat — far more sophisticated visualizations, with more layers of color and structure, than AI has previously been able to do. The potential applications are "mind-boggling": We could one day draw or paint "by imagining something," and hallucinations or dreams could "be visualized by a computer."
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Senegal's Bassirou Diomaye Faye: from prison to Africa's youngest elected leader
Why everyone's talking about The 44-year-old has resonated with young people by promising to shake up the establishment and enact economic reforms
By Richard Windsor, The Week UK Published
-
How social media is limiting political content
The Explainer Critics say Meta's 'extraordinary move' to have less politics in users' feeds could be 'actively muzzling civic action'
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
'Unthinkable tragedy'
Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
By The Week Staff Published