60 Minutes: Mind Reading For Real (VIDEO)

60 Minutes has a report that seems like science fiction: mind reading for real. Neuroscientists at Carnegie Mellon University used a computer and a functional MRI to read the mind of a CBS producer.

Watch the report below.

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Comments

[ACTORartistPOET]

All the above is absolutely what is happening and will happen. I have written a screenplay titled TELEPATHY TECH ... have gone researching this topic extensively and I'm here to tell you what with technological downsizing and an approximation of MOORE'S LAW (irrespective of whether it stays purely a doubling in size/power, etc.,), the accessibility of thought energies will only improve. The day will come when society's fabric (based on human communication and interaction) will be wholly re-organized as a result of the accessing thoughts and intentions through computer sensitivity. Believe it or not. [Realizing how quaint just 20 years ago seems today, future technology will render similar quaintness for today's society.]

Vince Williams
[e-mail]

[RBN]

Am getting a tin foil hat.

[cantstopme2019]

This is sick! These people need to be stopped!

[kimskams80]

Ouuu LaLaaaa.... It would be interesting to read the mind after watching a sexy girl on New Year Night

[Cashcarry]

I don't believe it for a minute! Seemed like a bad attempt at a Magic routine. Very transparent as to method. The mindreading computer mentalism trick. Yawn...Let's NOT use those pictures, the volunteer uses his own instead. Bet it wouldn't work then!

[cantstopme2019]

This should not be allowed!!!!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coyote2012/3151544645/

[GAPriebe]

I just wonder if it detects her thinking about the WORD knife, the OBJECT knife, or the ACT of usingt a knife.
I would suppose that each has a distinct mental signature.

[hark]

My God, if this technology progresses too far, our waterboarders will be out of a job, and we'll have to bail them out.

[Fraugher]

Every answer pair is spatial/conceptual versus an action object... so every question is testing, is it in this lobe or that lobe... this is a far cry from being able to identify individual items, which is what this little video is trying to suggest.

A 2 year old child could tell you which made the noise when shown pictures- a house or a hammer, an apartment or a knife?

[shel3364]

So when we see snow on the TV, are they broadcasting Palin's thoughts?

[rubinoff]

lmao

[Axekick]

What practical use could this have, anyone know ?

[cimon]

I bet Sarah Palin could make the computer go 0 for 10.

[SwingVoter]

come on. lol

[gurukalehuru]

It;s obviously still early stages, but I think criminal investigations and trials in the future may look very different from today. Also psychoanalysis.
I find it both frightening and beautiful.

[davidly]

I agree with gurukalehuru: Like so many things, frightening and beautiful.

We could, on the one hand, pinpoint certain thoughts and how they lead to various neuroses or depression, maybe even develop a better treatment for schizophrenia. On the other hand, if one were confined unlawfully to a sanitarium, and thinking about breaking out through the window with a hammer...

[brummie]

The practical (and already experimented and applied) use is that of "thought controlled" computers.

The science behind it is that our brain generates tiny currents of electrical activity depending on what or how we're thinking and what part of the brain we're using.

Each part of the brain or each type of thought/brain activity would generate some electrical activity readable by probes/sensors and then fed into a computer.

So imagine a thought controlled wheelchair, imagine if each direction we thought of gives a different electrical current - think left go left, think right go right.

If you Google for "thought controlled" (exact phrase, in quotes) you'll see a few very interesting articles within the first 10 results. These articles will explain it much more clearly than I could. They'll also give other examples of potential real life applications.

[bushgirlsgone]

.

Require every republican politican to be connected to the device while campaigning.

[Truthseeker55]

Why not have EVERY politician hooked up to this thing? Are you saying that no democrat has ever lied or been deceitful? This is what believing in the false left/right paradigm does to your logic bone.

[xenoploid]

This is just pattern recognition at this point. It is just comparing two electrical patterns 1) from the visual display of the symbol 2) the mental recollection of the symbol.

[pdxoutsider]

This technology will "just" be pattern recognition at any level of sophistication. What'll be interesting is when the computer is sophisticated enough to temper pattern recognition with context -- you know, like we do.

[RRK70]

did anyone notice the video shot of the screen? The questions presented to the computer regarding what the subject was thinking were 2 answer multiple choice! 1 in 4 of the general public would be able to GUESS the answers in that demonstration! WOW. The use of cue cards and 2 possible answers is a FAR cry from mind reading. To say the machine is reading peoples minds is preposterous and misleading.

60 Minutes can be rather disappointing at times. There are MUCH more promising and interesting medical and scientific breakthroughs that could have been covered.

[thelindyhopper]

I am not sure what you are referring to by 1 in 4 of the general public being able to GUESS.

There were 10 questions with two possible answers. To be able to guess all of the correct answers by chance would be 1/2^10. That is 1 in 1024. That is, we can say with 99.9% confidence that it wasn't by chance and that in fact the computer was successfully able to analyze, albeit very simple, brain activities.

Do you not think that this is a significant achievement? What is disappointing about it?

[RTIII]

What's disappointing?

Frankly, I don't like the direction this is taking... However, if you ask; "What problems are there between what the science really does and what the media is telling us it does?" is pretty easy.

Clearly, the vocabulary is pretty small. Clearly, the subject has to focus on the "word." The problem here is the use of the term / concept of "mind reading" which the machine can only be said to be doing in a very superficial way. I'm not saying it's not remarkable - it's very remarkable, but it's only the first baby steps of a beginning - if even that - toward the goal of "mind reading."

[davism97]

There is very little chance that the computer could've guessed right 10 times in a row (1 in 2^10 chance actually)

[ReHoover51]

we can finally get the truth out of O.J. ...
i know they spent 10s of millions, and all I can think of is the O.J. trial ... but this could actually be the solution to absolute truth

[ExRepublican]

Sarcasm.........or at least I'm hoping it was sarcasm.

If not, I have a few things I'd like to sell to (unload on) you .......... just to you, nobody else.

[ReHoover51]

its called being facetious, but if i have to explain it 2 u, then u still wouldnt get it ... stay a repug it suits u ...

[FreedomAgain]

At least he can stop looking for the killer now.

[deepfreezevideo]

We got yer MK/Ultra swingin right here.
I can see the CIA licking its chops right now, and wait till Homeland Security gets their hands on it.
Talk about a Minority Report...

[kreoth]

i agree with you about the immediate appeal of this technology for big brother; but then, this made me think of "firefox", a very old clint eastwood movie where the main character steals a soviet state-of-the-art plane that is controlled by thought; in the climactic scene, as eastwood is about to escape with the plane, he remembers that he needs to think in russian, not in english, for the mental scanner to work; mind-reading technology should be easy to defeat

so, before homeland security decides to invest (i.e. waste) billions on thought scanners to protect us from "the enemy" at the airport, maybe they could invest some cash on training their security people on the "intrincacies" of body language (just imagine a 5 year old girl getting arrested because a mind-scanner thinks she's a terrorist); maybe they could also stop congress from sending 4 billion dollars each year to a certain country currently blowing the hell out of azag strip refugees with u.s. artillery)

[davidly]

"I'm only gonna ask you one more time! Why were you thinking about a hammer!?"

[pdxoutsider]

Ahhhh, suspicion of progress. Is there any grand human achievement it can't tarnish?

[JohnDewey]

If they're showing it to us on 60 Minutes, chances are near-certain that the military/intelligence complex already has the technology - someone funds this research. I'd wager $$$ that this is DARPA all the way.