13 ms·

Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recording

132 points by Ninjinka 4y ago

alphabetting 4y ago
Our study demonstrates that continuous language can be decoded from non-invasive brain recordings, enabling future multipurpose brain-computer interfaces. Super cliché but definitely getting "singularity is near" thoughts seeing the insane papers coming out in AI recently.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  Cross this with dalleee And should be super freaky
  - throwaway14356 4y ago
    typing prompts seems so primitive all of a sudden.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Ninjinka 4y ago
A thread on the paper: https://twitter.com/jerryptang/status/1575846939543076865?s=20&t=bVyGf3b3krDbkVy9fbOlzA https://twitter.com/jerryptang/status/1575846939543076865?s=...
KidComputer 4y ago
Nice, it can also work on non-linguistic semantic tasks. How long till we have to report into government thought screening centers that check our responses to propaganda?
layer8 4y ago
> subject cooperation is required both to train and to apply the decoder. I suspect that subject-specific training will always remain necessary (due to individual differences in how brains encode any given concept), and probably also their cooperation. But the quantified-self crowd will now be able to record their every thought, at least to some approximation.
Animats 4y ago
Wow, they got that from fMRI data with an individual signal bandwidth of maybe 0.1Hz. This is like blurred image reconstruction. It's amazing that it works. It's also like figuring out what a CPU is doing by looking at at heat dissipation images of the chip. fMRI is reading blood flow, not electrical signals. If someone figures out how to read electrical activity deep in the brain without electrodes, it looks like decoding will be possible.
- layer8 4y ago
  One general limitation is that the decoder can only recognize concepts (“semantic features”) it has been trained for with the particular subject. The paper mentions that “we recorded responses while the subject listened to sixteen hours of naturally spoken narrative stories”. If the training material didn’t contain (say) the concept “grandmother”, the decoder probably won’t be able to decode that concept. And the more abstract the concept, the more training is probably needed. You likely also have to retrain each year or so because your brain changes. Nevertheless, if it could somehow be commoditized into an affordable appliance, it could be very useful.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    You just need to find a small spanning set of concepts for all of human experience and then just train the decoder on those. (I'm being serious but do not have time to elaborate as I normally would on a serious comment).
    - fritolaid 4y ago
      Not a finite set of concepts per se, but a finite set of patterns that hides behind the near infinite set of all possible concepts.
    - lawrenceyan 4y ago
      A vector basis set for all human experience sounds like it’d be pretty neat.
turnsout 4y ago
Does anyone with domain knowledge know how big of a leap it would be to apply this research beyond fMRI? The results are incredible.
- Ninjinka 4y ago
  Certainly makes you wonder what something like Neuralink will be capable of if these kinds of results can be had from something as low-resolution as fMRI.
dqpb 4y ago
Can we pipe this into a diffusion model and generate a persons dream sequence while they sleep?
- throwaway14356 4y ago
  sounds like an epic movie generator. Who knows, maybe if one wrote enough stuff and/or spend enough time in front of cameras we can generate the dreams too - from people long gone.
- infradig 4y ago
  Until The End Of The World (from memory) a film [1991-ish] by Wim Wenders.
  - infradig 4y ago
    Oops, that film went the other way, I think. Hard to really know what it was about.
cosmobot 4y ago
Imagine the possible benefits such technology could allow to those suffering from Locked-in syndrome or similar conditions making regular speech impossible.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Imagine having locked-in syndrome and having the computer everyone trusts misinterpret your attempts at expression.
  - semitones 4y ago
    "computer everyone trusts" - I'm pretty sure people would take the computer in question with a grain of salt for _many_ years to come
    - IIAOPSW 4y ago
      I'm reading your comment on my screen, OR AM I?
    - morelisp 4y ago
      Yes, people are exceptionally critical and skeptical of things promising them they’ll get to speak to loved ones again. That’s why nobody ever fell for seances or facilitated communication.
gpderetta 4y ago
Dixie Flatline construct getting closer every day.
elliekelly 4y ago
This is SO cool but also a little bit terrifying. And while there are tons of very important and practical (and potentially dangerous) human implementations my first thought was: one step closer to being able to talk to dogs!
entwife 4y ago
The claims in the abstract are inconsistent with what was previously known about the limits of functional MRI. (e.g. [0]). I am skeptical of this result. [0] https://acnp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CH26_343-356.pdf https://acnp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CH26_343-356.pdf Bandettini, PA. "THE SPATIAL, TEMPORAL, AND INTERPRETIVE LIMITS OF FUNCTIONAL MRI" in Neuropsychopharmacology: The Fifth Generation of Progress. Edited by Kenneth L. Davis, Dennis Charney, Joseph T. Coyle, and Charles Nemeroff. American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. 2002.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  What limitation exactly? This one uses a language model to predict likely next words in the sequence so it doesn't have to identify an isolated word from the whole dictionary. Considering these models can construct valid English passages from absolutely no information, it's not a stretch to imagine something meaningful being generated from even small hints.
- JPLeRouzic 4y ago
  Since 2002 as a layman I would expect some progress has been achieved?
  - morelisp 4y ago
    fMRI has fundamental limits due to measuring blood flow as a proxy for neural activity. The resolution remains on the order of millimeters and seconds.
woojoo666 4y ago
Obviously tons of cool futuristic applications. But lots of dystopian ones too. Luckily it seems like the "right to remain silent" also often includes the right to deny brain-reading devices [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Europe
TOMDM 4y ago
Here's a question to terrify the AI ethicists. What if we took a much larger language model and far more invasive brain scans. We train it on what the person is thinking and doing and their senses too. Pressure sensitive suit for touch, cameras in glasses for sight, mic for sound, voice recognition for what they're saying and in depth mo-cap for what they're doing. We can now train the model on a good chunk of actions a human could take, and a decent chunk of their sensorium. Now we take a lesson from the diffusers and apply noise to the brain scan data until the AI can do a decent job simulating a human on it's own. Is a model good enough at that an agi? It still has no memory, but could we repurpose what is now noise but used to be brain scans to retrofit memory back into this model? Maybe a vector retrieval on the models old attention outputs? Could the mo-cap data be finetuned to a robot body? The voice to sound synthesis?
- saghm 4y ago
  > Now we take a lesson from the diffusers and apply noise to the brain scan data until the AI can do a decent job simulating a human on it's own. Honest question: how close are we to actually being able to do this now? Obviously the answer depends a bit on how you define "decent", but as someone pretty unfamiliar with most learning techniques beyond a very rudimentary high level, I have absolutely no idea if this is something that we can do now, will be able to do in months/years/decades, or if it's unlikely to happen in my lifetime at all. It seems like it's worth at least having some sort of answer there before spending a whole lot of time thinking about it. (Not saying it's not worth thinking about at all if the answer is that we aren't likely to ever see it in our lifetimes! But there's a difference between a pressing ethical issue and an interesting but hypothetical philosophical discussion)
  - extr 4y ago
    There's nothing theoretically impossible about the suggestion, giving it a shot would be doable today if someone with resources really wanted to. I'm sure people at Neuralink or similar companies talk about stuff like this all the time. But there's a big difference between "it wouldn't be theoretically impossible" and "the resulting model would actually work and be useful for anything". I would bet with p80 if you literally tried this with a lot of good researchers and resources, you would get a model that outputs a bunch of mashed up electrical brain data that, hey, actually looks pretty damn realistic. Maybe you could use that to better understand how the brain works, and improve the model. But I would almost guarantee you wouldn't suddenly be talking to a man in the computer. The compute isn't there. Maybe in 50 or 100 years. Obligatory link to the very cool wiki-article-from-the-future style fiction that talks about this exact thing: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
germinalphrase 4y ago
https://www.openwater.cc/ https://www.openwater.cc/ One of the founders spoke at the Long Now F lunatic some years back. Speculated that the tech could somedaymsybesomehow be used to both “read” and “write” sensory experiences.
firecall 4y ago
So the machine can read thoughts? Is that what I'm understanding from this?
yosito 4y ago
> subject cooperation is required both to train and to apply the decoder How do they define "subject cooperation"? Is there a cookie consent form that pops up in by brain before they can read my mind?

132 points by Ninjinka 4y ago

Our study demonstrates that continuous language can be decoded from non-invasive brain recordings, enabling future multipurpose brain-computer interfaces. Super cliché but definitely getting "singularity is near" thoughts seeing the insane papers coming out in AI recently.

cyanydeez 4y ago
Cross this with dalleee And should be super freaky
- throwaway14356 4y ago
  typing prompts seems so primitive all of a sudden.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Ninjinka 4y ago

A thread on the paper: https://twitter.com/jerryptang/status/1575846939543076865?s=20&t=bVyGf3b3krDbkVy9fbOlzA https://twitter.com/jerryptang/status/1575846939543076865?s=...

KidComputer 4y ago

Nice, it can also work on non-linguistic semantic tasks. How long till we have to report into government thought screening centers that check our responses to propaganda?

layer8 4y ago

> subject cooperation is required both to train and to apply the decoder. I suspect that subject-specific training will always remain necessary (due to individual differences in how brains encode any given concept), and probably also their cooperation. But the quantified-self crowd will now be able to record their every thought, at least to some approximation.

Animats 4y ago

Wow, they got that from fMRI data with an individual signal bandwidth of maybe 0.1Hz. This is like blurred image reconstruction. It's amazing that it works. It's also like figuring out what a CPU is doing by looking at at heat dissipation images of the chip. fMRI is reading blood flow, not electrical signals. If someone figures out how to read electrical activity deep in the brain without electrodes, it looks like decoding will be possible.

layer8 4y ago
One general limitation is that the decoder can only recognize concepts (“semantic features”) it has been trained for with the particular subject. The paper mentions that “we recorded responses while the subject listened to sixteen hours of naturally spoken narrative stories”. If the training material didn’t contain (say) the concept “grandmother”, the decoder probably won’t be able to decode that concept. And the more abstract the concept, the more training is probably needed. You likely also have to retrain each year or so because your brain changes. Nevertheless, if it could somehow be commoditized into an affordable appliance, it could be very useful.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  You just need to find a small spanning set of concepts for all of human experience and then just train the decoder on those. (I'm being serious but do not have time to elaborate as I normally would on a serious comment).
  - fritolaid 4y ago
    Not a finite set of concepts per se, but a finite set of patterns that hides behind the near infinite set of all possible concepts.
  - lawrenceyan 4y ago
    A vector basis set for all human experience sounds like it’d be pretty neat.

turnsout 4y ago

Does anyone with domain knowledge know how big of a leap it would be to apply this research beyond fMRI? The results are incredible.

Ninjinka 4y ago
Certainly makes you wonder what something like Neuralink will be capable of if these kinds of results can be had from something as low-resolution as fMRI.

dqpb 4y ago

Can we pipe this into a diffusion model and generate a persons dream sequence while they sleep?

throwaway14356 4y ago
sounds like an epic movie generator. Who knows, maybe if one wrote enough stuff and/or spend enough time in front of cameras we can generate the dreams too - from people long gone.
infradig 4y ago
Until The End Of The World (from memory) a film [1991-ish] by Wim Wenders.
- infradig 4y ago
  Oops, that film went the other way, I think. Hard to really know what it was about.

cosmobot 4y ago

Imagine the possible benefits such technology could allow to those suffering from Locked-in syndrome or similar conditions making regular speech impossible.

morelisp 4y ago
Imagine having locked-in syndrome and having the computer everyone trusts misinterpret your attempts at expression.
- semitones 4y ago
  "computer everyone trusts" - I'm pretty sure people would take the computer in question with a grain of salt for _many_ years to come
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    I'm reading your comment on my screen, OR AM I?
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Yes, people are exceptionally critical and skeptical of things promising them they’ll get to speak to loved ones again. That’s why nobody ever fell for seances or facilitated communication.

gpderetta 4y ago

Dixie Flatline construct getting closer every day.

elliekelly 4y ago

This is SO cool but also a little bit terrifying. And while there are tons of very important and practical (and potentially dangerous) human implementations my first thought was: one step closer to being able to talk to dogs!

entwife 4y ago

The claims in the abstract are inconsistent with what was previously known about the limits of functional MRI. (e.g. [0]). I am skeptical of this result. [0] https://acnp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CH26_343-356.pdf https://acnp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CH26_343-356.pdf Bandettini, PA. "THE SPATIAL, TEMPORAL, AND INTERPRETIVE LIMITS OF FUNCTIONAL MRI" in Neuropsychopharmacology: The Fifth Generation of Progress. Edited by Kenneth L. Davis, Dennis Charney, Joseph T. Coyle, and Charles Nemeroff. American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. 2002.

sacrosancty 4y ago
What limitation exactly? This one uses a language model to predict likely next words in the sequence so it doesn't have to identify an isolated word from the whole dictionary. Considering these models can construct valid English passages from absolutely no information, it's not a stretch to imagine something meaningful being generated from even small hints.
JPLeRouzic 4y ago
Since 2002 as a layman I would expect some progress has been achieved?
- morelisp 4y ago
  fMRI has fundamental limits due to measuring blood flow as a proxy for neural activity. The resolution remains on the order of millimeters and seconds.

woojoo666 4y ago

Obviously tons of cool futuristic applications. But lots of dystopian ones too. Luckily it seems like the "right to remain silent" also often includes the right to deny brain-reading devices [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Europe

TOMDM 4y ago

Here's a question to terrify the AI ethicists. What if we took a much larger language model and far more invasive brain scans. We train it on what the person is thinking and doing and their senses too. Pressure sensitive suit for touch, cameras in glasses for sight, mic for sound, voice recognition for what they're saying and in depth mo-cap for what they're doing. We can now train the model on a good chunk of actions a human could take, and a decent chunk of their sensorium. Now we take a lesson from the diffusers and apply noise to the brain scan data until the AI can do a decent job simulating a human on it's own. Is a model good enough at that an agi? It still has no memory, but could we repurpose what is now noise but used to be brain scans to retrofit memory back into this model? Maybe a vector retrieval on the models old attention outputs? Could the mo-cap data be finetuned to a robot body? The voice to sound synthesis?

saghm 4y ago
> Now we take a lesson from the diffusers and apply noise to the brain scan data until the AI can do a decent job simulating a human on it's own. Honest question: how close are we to actually being able to do this now? Obviously the answer depends a bit on how you define "decent", but as someone pretty unfamiliar with most learning techniques beyond a very rudimentary high level, I have absolutely no idea if this is something that we can do now, will be able to do in months/years/decades, or if it's unlikely to happen in my lifetime at all. It seems like it's worth at least having some sort of answer there before spending a whole lot of time thinking about it. (Not saying it's not worth thinking about at all if the answer is that we aren't likely to ever see it in our lifetimes! But there's a difference between a pressing ethical issue and an interesting but hypothetical philosophical discussion)
- extr 4y ago
  There's nothing theoretically impossible about the suggestion, giving it a shot would be doable today if someone with resources really wanted to. I'm sure people at Neuralink or similar companies talk about stuff like this all the time. But there's a big difference between "it wouldn't be theoretically impossible" and "the resulting model would actually work and be useful for anything". I would bet with p80 if you literally tried this with a lot of good researchers and resources, you would get a model that outputs a bunch of mashed up electrical brain data that, hey, actually looks pretty damn realistic. Maybe you could use that to better understand how the brain works, and improve the model. But I would almost guarantee you wouldn't suddenly be talking to a man in the computer. The compute isn't there. Maybe in 50 or 100 years. Obligatory link to the very cool wiki-article-from-the-future style fiction that talks about this exact thing: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

germinalphrase 4y ago

https://www.openwater.cc/ https://www.openwater.cc/ One of the founders spoke at the Long Now F lunatic some years back. Speculated that the tech could somedaymsybesomehow be used to both “read” and “write” sensory experiences.

firecall 4y ago

So the machine can read thoughts? Is that what I'm understanding from this?

yosito 4y ago

> subject cooperation is required both to train and to apply the decoder How do they define "subject cooperation"? Is there a cookie consent form that pops up in by brain before they can read my mind?