Researchers have created an AI that can convert brain activity into text

The machine-learning algorithm could eventually help patients in communication who are unable to speak or type

We might still be far off from the time when computers can actually read our minds as we saw in the Hollywood Scifi thriller “Transcendence,” but we have already taken the first steps in that direction. Elon Musk started a company called Neuralink (2016), which is working on a long-term goal of developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) called Neural Lace.

The company recently announced the next phase where fine threads, thinner than the human hair will be implanted in a human brain to detect the activity of neurons. Neuralink plans to start human trials in the second quarter of 2020. While this process is invasive in nature, scientists have been working on parallel models where brain activity could be read by non-invasive means.

Taking this a step further, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco have developed an AI system that could provide the basis of a speech prosthesis eventually. The model involved recruiting four participants with electrode arrays implanted in their brains to monitor epileptic seizures.

“We are not there yet but…