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02 May 2023
Mind-reading machines are here: is it time to worry?
Neuroethicists are split on whether a study that uses brain scans and AI to decode
imagined speech poses a threat to mental privacy.
Sara Reardon
Twitter FacebThe little voice inside your head can now be decoded by a brain
scanner — at least some of the time. Researchers have developed the first non-
invasive method of determining the gist of imagined speech, presenting a possible
communication outlet for people who cannot talk. But how close is the technology —
which is currently only moderately accurate — to achieving true mind-reading? And
how can policymakers ensure that such developments are not misused?
Next, the researchers recorded the participants’ fMRI activity while they listened
to a story, imagined telling a story or watched a film that contained no dialogue.
Using a combination of the patterns they had previously encoded for each individual
and algorithms that determine how a sentence is likely to be constructed on the
basis of other words in it, the researchers attempted to decode this new brain
activity. The video below shows the sentences produced from brain recordings taken
while a study participant watched a clip from the animated film Sintel, about a
girl caring for a baby dragon.
The researchers also found that it was easy to trick the technology. When
participants thought of a different story while listening to a recorded story, the
decoder could not determine the words they were hearing. The encoded map also
differed between individuals, meaning that the researchers could not create one
decoder that worked on everyone. Huth thinks that it will become even more
difficult to develop a universal decoder as researchers create more detailed maps
of individuals’ brains.
Determining how the brain creates meaning from language is enormously difficult,
says Francisco Pereira, a neuroscientist at the US National Institute of Mental
Health in Bethesda, Maryland. “It’s impressive to see someone pull it off.”‘
‘Wake-up call’
Neuroethicists are split on whether the latest advance represents a threat to
mental privacy. “I’m not calling for panic, but the development of sophisticated,
non-invasive technologies like this one seems to be closer on the horizon than we
expected,” says bioethicist Gabriel Lázaro-Muñoz at Harvard Medical School in
Boston. “I think it’s a big wake-up call for policymakers and the public.”
Tang agrees. “The polygraph is not accurate but has had negative consequences,” he
said in a press conference. “Nobody’s brain should be decoded without their
cooperation.” He and Huth called for policymakers to proactively address how mind-
reading technologies can and cannot be legally used.
Lázaro-Muñoz says that policy action could mirror a 2008 US law that prevents
insurers and employers from using people’s genetic information in discriminatory
ways. He also worries about the implications of the decoder for people with
conditions such as obsessive–compulsive disorder, who can experience unwanted,
intrusive thoughts about harming people that they would never act on.
Pereira says the matter of how accurate decoders could become is an open question,
as is whether they could eventually become universal, instead of being specific to
an individual. “It depends on how unique you think humans are,” he says.
Although the decoder could eventually become good at predicting the next word in a
series, it might struggle to interpret metaphors or sarcasm. There’s a big step,
Pereira says, between putting words together and determining how the brain encodes
the relationships between the words.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01486-z
References
Tang, J., LeBel, A., Jain, S. & Huth, A. G. Nature Neurosci.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01304-9 (2023).
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