A new study carried out by researchers at Osaka University in Japan has generated controversy in the scientific community.
It is about the use of an Artificial Intelligence to decode brain patterns of individuals and transform them into images. In practice, AI can “read a person's mind”.
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In an interview given to Al Jazeera TV, the researcher who conducted the experiment, Yu Takagi, said he was astonished with the result of the tests he carried out.
“I still remember when I saw the first images generated by AI”, he began. “I walked into the bathroom, I looked in the mirror, I saw my face and I thought, ‘Okay, this is normal. Maybe I'm not going crazy,'” added the 34-year-old neuroscientist.
The Artificial Intelligence used by Takagi and his team was Stable Diffusion (SD), developed in Germany in 2022.
This AI is coupled to an MRI device to capture information collected from the brains of individuals who use it. From there, she decodes brain patterns and describes what she "saw" in 3D images.
It is worth noting that SD was only able to create the images in this case because Yu Takagi and his partner, fellow researcher Shinji Nishimoto, created a support system for the AI to “tell” what it had “seen”, even without having been trained to do so. previously.
The research raised concerns
After the controversy generated in the case, Yu Takagi stated that in fact the Artificial intelligence cannot read minds and that this would be a “misunderstanding”.
“This is not mind reading. Unfortunately, there are many misunderstandings about our research.”
Takagi also said that he understands the concerns of the international scientific community, as, according to him, technologies such as Stable Diffusion could fall into the wrong hands.
“For us, privacy issues are the most important thing. Whether a government or institution can read people's minds is a very sensitive issue. (…) There needs to be high-level discussions to make sure this doesn’t happen,” he pointed out.
On the other hand, the researcher reported some good expectations about the future of this AI. “We cannot decode imagination or dreams; we think this is too optimistic. But, of course, there is potential in the future.”
Advances in neuroscience
Also during their speeches, Yu Takagi and Shinji Nishimoto stated that, despite the problems existing technologies, the use of Artificial Intelligence in neurological examinations will benefit many patients in the future.
The researchers point out that nowadays an MRI scan is time-consuming and expensive, which would be resolved by the use of AIs in the near future.
One of the alternatives to this bottleneck would be the use of other brain scanning technologies, such as those being developed by the company Neuralik, owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
This type of technology would be very useful in the early detection and even in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, for example.
Despite criticisms and cautions from the scientific community, Takagi and Nishimoto claim that will not stop research and are seeking to improve it for beneficial scientific use and not for personal interests. excuses.
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