The research is still a ways away from helping people who can’t communicate through speech.
An artificial intelligence can decode words and sentences from brain activity with surprising — but still limited — accuracy. Using only a few seconds of brain activity data, the AI guesses what a person has heard. It lists the correct answer in its top 10 possibilities up to 73 percent of the time, researchers found in a preliminary study.
Most existing technologies to help such patients communicate require risky brain surgeries to implant electrodes. This new approach “could provide a viable path to help patients with communication deficits … without the use of invasive methods,” says neuroscientist Jean-Rémi King, a Meta AI researcher currently at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
The AI decoded information of participants passively listening to audio, which is not directly relevant to nonverbal patients. For it to become a meaningful communication tool, scientists will need to learn how to decrypt from brain activity what these patients intend on saying, including expressions of hunger, discomfort or a simple “yes” or “no.” Source: science news
