A HEADSET THAT READS

Summary:
The main purpose of this TEDTalk was to demonstrate how does an electronic
and software brain mapping system works.
First, the speaker showed us the neural activity that our brain does to
understand complex communications and feelings such as emotions and facial
expressions. That is basically the key difference between humans and
machines, because the machines only understand and respond to basic
commands and are not able to comprehend body language or facial
expressions. Secondly the speaker talked about the difference between the
brains of people including identical twins, and that is because of the folds which
are like a fingerprint in each person. This is the main problem in the algorithm
design because each brain is different, so a universal algorithm was not
possible. On the second part of the conference, she introduced Evan, who was
a test subject for this brand-new technology and gave a demonstration of this
new product. He was able to pull a box and make it disappear using his mind.
Finally, the speaker gave us examples where this technology could be
implemented in order to help or improve people’s lives.

In my opinion this is a great improvement for the disabled ones and for some
videogames, however I do not trust in this system and it is potentially dangerous
for the majority because firstly you are giving your brain data to a company,
secondly because you actually don’t have any insurance that those who run the
company will not use it against your own interest or sell your private data to a
government for example. On another hand there is the continuous advance of
the Artificial Intelligence and that is a big issue because it can learn using the
data of millions of human brains. Multiple AIs built in these past years gave
horrible examples of their response to the future of humans and the common
factor of each AI was the termination of the mankind, so giving the machines the
ability to read our minds and control us is probably not the best idea, at least for
now. However, using this headset for disabled ones, giving them the chance to
control their wheelchairs or help them with their needs is a good thing.