• Question: Would reading minds be ever possible?

    Asked by anon-181153 on 8 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Joanne Sharpe

      Joanne Sharpe answered on 8 Jun 2018:

      I don’t think so, because we don’t really understand what “thoughts” really are. It’s all to do with signals in the brain, but at the moment it is not possible to “decode” these signals into thoughts. It’s all so complex! Besides, I’m not sure I would ever want it to be possible..

    • Photo: Daniel Rhodes

      Daniel Rhodes answered on 8 Jun 2018:

      so it’s sort of already be done – in a way. There is a team at MIT that have created a device that can listen to subvocalisations, i.e. saying something in your head:

      http://news.mit.edu/2018/computer-system-transcribes-words-users-speak-silently-0404

      However, this requires the user to actively think the thoughts as if they were going to speak them. So it isn’t the same as someone eavesdropping on private thoughts. It totally blew me away that even this is possible though!

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 8 Jun 2018:

      That is so cool, Daniel! I was not aware of that!

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 9 Jun 2018:

      I did not think so but the link Daniel posted does make you think (well not too hard when in MIT and people have put a cap on your head!… )

    • Photo: Hannah Farley

      Hannah Farley answered on 10 Jun 2018:

      I think we will be able to, both via the link that Daniel posted and because we are getting quite good at training computer programmes to learn. So I think that eventually mind reading would be possible for example if you gave a computer all the information about a particular person, then the computer would be able to accurately predict their reactions/responses to particular situations.

Comments