this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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[–] amki@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

About half the time, the text closely – and sometimes precisely – matched the intended meanings of the original words.

Don't be surprised but about half of the time I can predict the result of a coin flip.

I'm not saying it's not interesting but needing custom training and an fMRI is not "an AI can read minds"

It can see if patterns it saw previously reappear in a heavily time delayed fMRI. Looking for patterns you already know isn't such an impressive feat Computers have done this for ages now.

It litterally can't read minds.

[–] sfgifz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Later, the same participants were scanned listening to a new story or imagining telling a story and the decoder was used to generate text from brain activity alone. About half the time, the text closely – and sometimes precisely – matched the intended meanings of the original words.

You left out the most important context about "half of the time". Guessing what you're thinking of by just looking at your brain activity with a 50% accuracy is a very very good achievement - it's not pulling it out of a 1 or 0 outcome like you're with your coin flip.

You can pretend that the AI is useless and you're the smartest boy in the class all you want, doesn't negate the accomplishments.

[–] amki@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Being close (and "sometimes" precise) to the intended meaning is an equally useless metric to measure performance.

Depending on what you allow for "well close enough I think" asking ChatGPT to tell a story without any reading of fMRI would get you to these results. Especially if you know beforehand it's gonna be a story told.