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Within five years, IBM believes we'll begin to see early applications of mind reading technology that up to now have been little more than science fiction fantasies. The geeks in blue are, at this very moment, researching ways to link your brain to electronic devices so, for example, you could simply think about calling someone on your smartphone and it would happen. And looking longer term, IBM believes brain control will take over manual typing.
Mind reading is just one of five bold predictions IBM announced this morning as part of its "5 in5" initiative, an annual forecast of future innovations. The others include:
As far fetched as some of these sound, IBM has been issuing 5 in 5 predictions for the past six years and has been doing "pretty well" up to this point, IBM says. Two that were made in the first year and have pretty much come true are:
Others predictions have partially panned out, such as:
Predicting future technologies is no easy task, and while mind reading might sound particularly far fetched, we've already seen some related consumer applications, like OCZ's Neural Impulse Actuator, a device that translates electrical biosignals of your body directly into computer commands.
Do you think any of IBM's 5 in 5 predictions will pan out?
Comments are closed on this article
warptek2010
December 22, 2011 at 12:57am
Anyone ever read Asimov's Foundation series? There is a form of Seldon's 'Psychohistory' being tested and researched in various think tanks that predict the patterns of large groups of people...
Arlips
December 20, 2011 at 4:04am
IBM is not only definitely correct about this, but most people don't realize a primitive form of it is already for sale:
http://gear.ocztechnology.com/products/description/OCZ_Neural_Impulse_Actuator/index.html
This lets you do basic control functions with your mind in PC games. You still use your mouse to aim and look around, but you can assign keys to biosignals. I haven't tried it and it seems like the learning/adjustment would take time, but it's legitimate and seems pretty incredible if you can get it to work well.
10 years from now is going to be amazing. Mind-controlled computers, cars that drive themselves (How else do you think Volvo can make a claim of 100% accident free driving in 10 years? Google's auto-driving system is closer to the market than you think...), and photorealistic games.
There is also the fact that genuine sentient AI is being developed and likely coming around 2020-2025, and not long after that we'll reach the Technological Singularity (google it). By 2050 the world may be an unfathomably different place.
Supfresh
December 19, 2011 at 3:38pm
the precurser to this is already in development/ highly researched. look up brain computer interface (non invasive BCI) or an example -> brain ball or emotiv. Obviously this is still a long ways off from mind reading (probably more than 5 years imo, since basic computer control is still not perfected) but pretty interesting stuff.
frizzly
December 19, 2011 at 3:23pm
minority report... nuf said.
p.s. We already can read thought. 8-)
yammerpickle2
December 19, 2011 at 2:50pm
How in the heck do they plan on reading my mind when voice recognition is not 100% yet. I’m an native Midwestern speaker and still can’t get voice recognition to work reliability enough so that it can replace my mouse and keyboard. They have been predicting flying cars for 50 years now and I still don’t have one and don’t think I ever will.
I would love the ability to have a virtual reality experience like in the matrix, but jacking into a computer just seems like too much of a security risk. Bozo statements like this from big blue are just creepy.
dgrmouse
December 19, 2011 at 4:04pm
I can understand your skepticism, so please don't take offense... With your voice recognition problems, I'd bet money that you're doing something wrong. Get a good microphone and some good software, like Dragon's suite, and you should be good to go with relatively minimal training. This is pretty mature and robust technology.
Rooke
December 19, 2011 at 2:02pm
Just remember...
Only think good thoughts.
Or else the brain police will be at your door.
VraiChevalier
December 19, 2011 at 1:05pm
Seems more like a "cybernetics" thing to me. Just another way to interface with electronic devices, much like a mouse or keyboard.
What is wayyy more scary is the predictive behavoir algorithms using the massive data base being collected on everyone which can accurately predict what an individual will do next before the person even knows it for themselves!
Cool.
rorrr
December 19, 2011 at 11:17am
humans from our top spot in the "food chain" seems more and more probable every day. sad thing is, it's getting harder and harder to think of it as being a bad development.
praetor_alpha
December 19, 2011 at 10:09am
Just make sure you hire lawyers so you can sue them. Oh the EULA says you can't sue them? Damn it.
Holly Golightly
December 19, 2011 at 9:45am
Say whaaaaaaaaaaat??? I can see how this mind reading will be permanently recorded onto their own servers. Man, our privacy will be breached under a whole new level. No thanks IBM, you guys can rot.
