Researchers Have Created a Device That Can Hear Your Inner Voice
MIT researchers have created a wearable device that can read your internal dialogue with 92 percent accuracy. The device allows users to ask questions and remotely control other devices without saying a word.
The device, called AlterEgo, resembles a jawbone hooking around the ear and attaching to the user’s face between the lip and chin. Using a bone conduction system, it can hear and respond to the wearer’s internal voice through electrodes attached to the skin.
Developed by a team at MIT’s Media Lab, the intention of the device is to seamlessly fuse humans and machines, soon allowing access one’s smartphone without having to physically manipulate it. Team leader, Arnav Kapur, described it as an attempt to develop a computing platform as “an internal extension of our own cognition,” and “intelligence augmentation.”
The device seems to be the first major step toward a transhumanist cognitive enhancement as technology increasingly becomes an extension of our bodies.
When we verbalize internally, we trigger subtle neuromuscular signals. AlterEgo can read these signals through electrodes placed on the skin. The device then responds to the wearer through a bone conduction speaker, eliminating the need for earbuds or headphones.
Bone conduction headphones are an existing technology that have gained popularity over the past few years, though the phenomenon is believed to have been discovered as far back as the 1500s.
In a video demonstrating AlterEgo’s capabilities, its designers claim that their goal is to combine humans and computers so that computing, the internet, and AI would weave into one’s personality to create a “second self.”
With just 15 minutes of customizing the device to an individual, AlterEgo can transcribe internal dialogue with 92 percent accuracy – human voice word accuracy is 95 percent on average. Kapur and his colleagues are working on improving the number of words the device can understand, saying eventually it will achieve full conversational capability.
Currently the device is only able to recognize 20 words and can respond to commands pertaining to chess, basic arithmetic, and simple television remote control functions.
But the technology is promising for future use in noisy and silent environments, as well as for people suffering from speech disabilities. The team will continue to develop the technology while also reducing the number of electrodes connected to the skin from seven to four.
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Massive Tesla Tower Suddenly Appears in Field Outside Waco, TX
Drivers traveling east along the I-35 corridor between Waco and Dallas have been intrigued by a tall, oddly shaped tower looming in the middle of a field in the small town of Milford, TX. For many, the tower is a confounding sight, but those familiar with the work of Nikola Tesla have been quick to point out that the lone pylon looks strikingly similar to a Tesla Tower.
Though construction began almost two years ago, it wasn’t for at least a year until the tower began to draw attention from local news outlets and various corners of the internet.
But now that the company behind the project has been uncovered and some of the project’s goals have been elucidated, much of the speculation has been confirmed; the tower is in fact based on the same idea behind Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower constructed on Long Island.
The precise electrical mechanism behind it however, is known as Zenneck surface wave technology, named after electrical engineer Jonathon Zenneck, who discovered that low-frequency electrical waves could be transmitted and received through the curvature of the Earth, to and from a singular location.
Based on the titles and affiliations of those involved in the project, it’s unclear whether this tower will be used to realize Tesla’s dream of transmitting free energy to everyone in the world – if it’s even possible – however, the company behind it claims it intends to bring energy to rural parts of the world that currently have trouble accessing energy efficiently.
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That company is Viziv Technologies and it has partnered with Baylor University in developing methods of wireless electricity distribution over long distances. It also says it plans to develop the technology to transmit navigation and sensing signals for GPS and various communication technologies.
“Currently about 17 percent of the world’s population have no access to electrical power, and for many more people, availability is spotty and unreliable,” Truell Hyde, Baylor’s Vice Provost for Research, said in a press release. “This technology has the potential to raise the standard of living for people around the world. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of something like that?”
With over $50 million in funding from investors, in addition to its university partnership, this may be the first time the technology has had significant investment since Tesla built Wardenclyffe in 1906. Let’s just hope the private interest from those investments doesn’t lead to its demise, like it did for Tesla in 1917.
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For more on the Wardenclyffe Tower and the legacy of Nikola Tesla, check out this biopic Free Energy of Tesla :
