Japanese scientists just used AI to read minds and it’s amazing

Scientists scan brain activity before reverse-engineering, or ‘decoding’ the information visualise thoughts

Imagine a reality where computers can visualise what you are thinking. Sound far out? It’s now closer to becoming a reality thanks to four scientists at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. In late December, Guohua Shen, Tomoyasu Horikawa, Kei Majima and Yukiyasu Kamitani released the results of their recent research on using artificial intelligence to decode thoughts on the scientific platform, BioRxiv. Machine learning has previously been used to study brain scans (MRIs, or magnetic resonance imaging) and generate visualisations of what a person is thinking when referring to simple, binary images like black and white letters or simple geographic shapes (as shown in Figure 2 here). But the scientists from Kyoto developed new techniques of “decoding” thoughts using deep neural networks (artificial intelligence). The new technique allows the scientists to decode more sophisticated “hierarchical” images, which have multiple layers of colour and structure, like a picture of a bird or a man wearing a cowboy hat, for example.

http://www.scmp.com/tech/science-research/article/2127413/japanese-scientists-just-used-ai-read-minds-and-its-amazing