Researchers have developed a non-invasive speech decoder that can translate brain activity into words in real time.
This ability to read minds may be a step forward that could help those who are mentally aware but unable to speak physically, such as those who have suffered strokes or those with motor neuron disease, to communicate clearly again.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a team from the University of Texas at Austin has created a brain-computer interface capable of creating complete sentences based on what people are thinking.
And unlike other language decoding systems under development, this system does not require people to have surgical implants, making the process non-invasive. Participants also do not need to use only words from a specific list.
Brain activity is measured using an fMRI scanner after extensive decoder training, in which the individual listens to hours of audio broadcasts in the scanner. Later, of course, provided the participant is open to decoding their thoughts, listening to a new story or imagining telling a story allows the new technology to generate text that matches brain activity alone.
"For the non-invasive method, this is a real leap forward compared to what has been done before, which is single words or short sentences," says Alex Huth, assistant professor of neuroscience and computer science at the University of Austin.
The researchers put three people into MRI machines and had them listen to the stories.
The team claims to have produced, for the first time, a transcript of the participants' thoughts, rather than just single words or sentences, without the use of a brain implant.
The mind-reading technique didn't exactly replicate the stories, but it captured the main points.
This hack raises concerns about "mental privacy" as it could be the first step in being able to eavesdrop on other people's thoughts.
Using technology similar to ChatGPT, the developed technology also interpreted what people were seeing when they watched silent films, or their thoughts as they imagined telling a story.
But the researchers note that it took 16 hours of training, with listening to podcasts in an MRI machine, for the computer model to understand their brain patterns and interpret what they were thinking.
Participants were able to 'sabotage' the technology's abilities, using methods such as mentally listing the names of animals, to prevent it from reading their thoughts.
Jerry Tang, lead author of the study from the University of Texas at Austin, said he could not establish a "false sense of security" that the technology might not have the ability to eavesdrop on people's thoughts in the future, and said it could be and be "misused".
He added: "We take very seriously the concerns that it could be used for bad purposes. And we want to take a lot of time going forward to try to avoid that."
He continued: "I think, right now, while the technology is in such an early state of development, it's important to be proactive and start, for example, enacting policies that protect people's mental privacy, and give people the right to their thoughts and their brain data."
Silicon Valley is very interested in mind-reading technology that might one day allow people to type by simply thinking of the words they want to communicate.
Elon Musk's company Neuralink, for example, is developing a brain implant that can provide direct communication with computers.
But the new technique from the University of Texas is relatively unusual in its field, in reading thoughts without the use of any kind of brain implant, so that no surgery is required.
While it currently requires a bulky and expensive MRI machine, in the future people may wear patches on their heads that use waves of light to penetrate the brain and provide information about blood flow.
The new study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, used a 'decoder' comprising a computer model to interpret people's brain activity and language processing technology similar to ChatGPT to help generate potential words.
After hours of training, the decoder was able to capture what people were thinking half the time.
The system is currently impractical for use outside the laboratory because of its dependence on fMRI time. But the researchers believe this work could carry over to other, more portable brain imaging systems.
"The largest in years" Palestinian economic institutions are subjected to cyber attacks
The Palestinian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announced that a number of commercial and economic institutions have recently been subjected to a massive series of cyber attacks. While the specialized teams are working to address these attacks.
The Palestinian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said, on Wednesday, that a number of institutions were subjected during the past three days to a series of cyber attacks, which are the "largest" in years.
And the ministry stated in a press statement that, "The attacks targeted a large group of Palestinian commercial and economic establishments and institutions, and reached their climax in one hour (which it did not specify)."
And she indicated that "the attacks led to flooding these institutions with a huge flow of data and information, in an attempt to impede their work."
The statement said, quoting the Palestinian Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Yitzhak Sidr, that "the recent cyber attacks were among the largest attacks that Palestine witnessed during the past years."
The minister explained that these attacks "work by flooding the companies' servers with meaningless data, which naturally affects their performance."
The Palestinian minister expressed his "confidence" in the ministry's staff, saying that it "works around the clock, in coordination with the telecommunications company's staff, and will spare no effort to confront it."
This is the first time that Palestine has announced that it has been subjected to a cyberattack of this kind, while major Israeli websites and companies are subjected to many cyberattacks.
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