By
Godfrey Benjamin
May 13th, 2024
Expectations are high for the continued work that Meta is putting into unraveling the mysteries of the brain.
Meta may be on the verge of a groundbreaking achievement with its AI-powered system that scans the human brain. According to a recent blog post by Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META), the artificial intelligence system employs a brain scanning method called magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Meta explains MEG as a non-invasive neuroimaging process that takes thousands of brain activity measurements per second. The AI system, according to Meta, is able to make visual representations of brain activity, translating them into vivid images. Part of the post read:
“This AI system can be deployed in real time to reconstruct, from brain activity, the images perceived and processed by the brain at each instant.”
Confirming the progress, the official X (formerly Twitter) account of Meta’s AI unit shared a post demonstrating the capabilities of the model in a real-time scenario. An individual was shown an image for a second, while the AI system was on hand to MEG-generate what they saw.
Today we're sharing new research that brings us one step closer to real-time decoding of image perception from brain activity.
Using MEG, this AI system can decode the unfolding of visual representations in the brain with an unprecedented temporal resolution.
More details ⬇️
— AI at Meta (@AIatMeta) October 18, 2023
Meta AI Says There’s Still Much Work to Do on Its Brain-Related Project
Despite the huge progress that Meta has made thus far, the company has admitted that its work is still a long way from being over. For one, an experimental AI system like this would require pre-training on an individual’s brainwaves. So, essentially, Meta is not trying to create a system that would outrightly read people’s minds. Rather, the team of developers would train a system that can interpret specific brain waves to specific images.
So far, there hasn’t been any official word to suggest that the system could produce images for thoughts that are totally different from the pictures that the model has been trained on. However, expectations are high for the continued work that Meta is putting into unraveling the mysteries of the brain.
It is also worth mentioning that the system is yet to show any privacy invasion capabilities. Instead, there are reasons to believe that it could potentially help people live a more quality life, Meta suggested. In line with this, the company wrote:
“We hope that one day it may provide a stepping stone toward non-invasive brain-computer interfaces in a clinical setting that could help people who have lost their ability to speak.”
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