Facebook wants to read your mind.<\/p>\n
At least, when it comes to what you\u2019d like to say or type.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The social network giant, at its annual developers conference, unveiled Wednesday projects aimed at allowing users to use their minds to type messages or their skin to hear words.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpeech is essentially a compression algorithm, and a lousy one at that,\u201d Facebook executive and former DARPA director Regina Dugan told a packed audience at the Silicon Valley event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why we love great writers and poets, because they are just a little bit better at compressing the fullness of a thought into words. What if we could type directly from our brain into a computer?\u201d<\/p>\n
The project grew from being an idea six months ago to being the focus of a team of more than 60 scientists, engineers, and system integrators, according to Dugan, who heads a Building 8 team devoted to coming up with innovative hardware for the social network\u2019s mission of connecting the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are just getting started,\u201d Dugan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a goal of creating a system capable of typing 100 words-per-minute straight from your brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Video played during her presentation showed a woman with an advanced neurodegenerative disease using her mind to move a cursor on a computer screen, slowly typing words.<\/p>\n
Such brain-computer interface technology currently involves implanting electrodes, but Facebook wants to use optical imaging to eliminate the need to surgically intrude on brains, according to Dugan.<\/p>\n
Facebook is looking at creating \u201csilent-speech interfaces\u201d based on sensors that could be worn, and made in quantity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not talking about decoding your random thoughts; that is more than many of us want to know,\u201d Dugan quipped.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are talking about thoughts you want to share. Words you have decided to send to the speech center of the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such technology could let people fire off text messages or emails by thinking, instead of needing to interrupt what they are doing to use smartphone touchscreens, for example.<\/p>\n
It would also have the potential to capture concepts and semantics associated with words people are thinking, making language differences irrelevant by enabling sharing of what is in mind, Dugan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike other approaches, ours will be focused on developing a noninvasive system that could one day become a speech prosthetic for people with communication disorders or a new means for input to AR,\u201d Dugan said in a post on her Facebook page, referring to augmented reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven something as simple as a \u2018yes\/no\u2019 brain click, or a \u2018brain mouse\u2019 would be transformative.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Building 8 group is also working on sensors that let people \u201chear\u201d through their skin, with what they feel being converted into words in a variation on how the ear turns vibrations into comprehensible sounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur brains have the ability to construct language from components,\u201d Dugan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suggest that one day, not so far away, it may be possible for me to think in Mandarin and for you to feel it instantly in Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such technology remains years away, according to Dugan.<\/p>\n
Work under way in Building 8 \u201cwill one day allow us to choose to share a thought, just like we do with photos and videos,\u201d Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his page at the social network.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually, we want to turn it into a wearable technology that can be manufactured at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Facebook started the Building 8 group last year, and put it in the hands of Dugan, who had previously led an advanced-technology projects group at Google.<\/p>\n
Before joining Google, Dugan ran the Defense Department\u2019s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, devoted to developing technology for the US military.\u2014AFP<\/p>\n
Image: Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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