A mind–reading brain implant that comes with password protection

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02589-5

by gnabgib • 11 months ago

64 33 11 months ago

LorenDB• 11 months ago

Is there any way to encrypt your brain's traffic and then handshake a decryption key to the implant to ensure that accidental activations merely result in garbage output?

bitwize• 11 months ago

The drawback to that is, if you lose the key you have to hack your own brain, then loop it through Jones.

worthless-trash• 11 months ago

I get that reference.

Melatonic2• 11 months ago

You could invent your own language - then think in that. Go oldschool

neonate• 11 months ago

https://archive.md/8PBtz

Retr0id• 11 months ago

I wonder what happens if you tell the user not to think of their password.

petethomas• 11 months ago

I think that is kinda what Tim Robbins does in the opening scenes of Code46 i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaVXASxNrq4#t=7m35s

throwaway8654bb• 11 months ago

That is like playing The Game

(if you know what that is, you just lost)

Wowfunhappy• 11 months ago

I know what The Game is, but I didn't loose, because I'm not playing.

And before you say "one of the rules of The Game is that you're always playing The Game," I don't have to follow the rules of a game I am not playing.

mrandish• 11 months ago

Having just gone through it today, I'm imagining getting this from my shiny new neural interface:

"Due to unusual account activity, you must change your password. Please enter 12 characters with at least three upper case and four lowercase letters, punctuation, two UTF-16 and one unprintable ANSI character.

Error: You may not use any password you've ever used (or imagined) previously. Please try again."

HappMacDonald• 11 months ago

https://neal.fun/password-game/

tsumnia• 11 months ago

New College Courses in "Critical Thinking", but they really mean "think of a number between 1 and 10"

sudobash1• 11 months ago

When a participant imagined the password ‘Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang’ (the name of an English-language children’s novel) the BCI recognized it with an accuracy of more than 98%.

I wonder how difficult having a conversation about that novel (or film) would be. I imagine you would accidentally start saying your thoughts out loud.

pvtmert• 11 months ago

you could set your password something like "hey siri", which essentially is a keyword to wake siri up.

not often but sometimes, siri wakes up on it's own. i guess people were concerned at early times, but nowadays it's just _another bug_ in the software.

I do not see passphrase (i think the passphrase is a better word for this feature) as a big issue at the moment.

Melatonic2• 11 months ago

This is awesome - when I first read the headline I totally expected something different.

The user has a password to start or stop the BCI from decoding what they are thinking - this way they have control over what is said out loud or translated. Seems like a no brainer.

jilles• 11 months ago

It very much is a brainer

antegamisou• 11 months ago

So it's still not unsettling to you they came up with something that is actually capable of reading your very private thoughts. You're aware the potentially secondary password protection isn't what made this feasible, aren't you.

Muromec• 11 months ago

So... How fast it will start being used to read thoughts nonconsensually? Military and "law enforcement" always wanted something that isn't torture but gets the information out of people.

musicale• 11 months ago

I assume that's a rhetorical question.

Gooblebrai• 11 months ago

Not anywhere fast taking into account that it requires invasive surgery of the microelectrodes

inemesitaffia• 11 months ago

You think that's going to stop the CIA if they plan to kill you after anyway?

randcraw2• 11 months ago

Never. It requires several electrodes to be implanted into the patient first. Then there's an adaptation phase in which the patient trains the system. No spy network is going to be able to surreptitiously tap into your thoughts with this. Ever. The signal available outside the skull is way too weak and blurry.

AnonymousPlanet• 11 months ago

What if you make people do the hard part voluntarily by making the device desirable to them? Including a receptor inside the scull. Then you just have to pick up the pieces.

Ever watched Ghost in the Shell?

Lapsa2• 11 months ago

you are wrong. tech is already here. recent advance has been application of deep learning to decode bioelectrical field of your brains. it's an ongoing telecom company side business

Lapsa2• 11 months ago

thoughts are already being read nonconsensually https://patents.google.com/patent/US3951134A/en perpetrators are even able to communicate back via Frey effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect

IFC_LLC• 11 months ago

Okay, I'll be honest, this looks very finicky. I've tried to understand the premise of this article, but it all look like just a bunch of random facts and promises, none of which could be traced or confirmed.

I can't tell 100% that the text was machine-generated. I won't be too amazed to find out that it was.

But there is no technology explaining how this thing works.

a2128• 11 months ago

Did you see the study linked in the references section? https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00681-6

noduerme• 11 months ago

Oodgay imetay ootay artstay inkingthay ountermeasures, kay.

efitz• 11 months ago

The last thing we need is more people running around with no filter between their inner thoughts and their vocal apparatus.

can16358p2• 11 months ago

TBH 74% accuracy is quite impressive for a device that "reads thought sentences".

randcraw2• 11 months ago

And I'm sure it will improve as the electrode placement and NN is optimized. Accuracy also may improve if the speaker can learn to slow their 'speech' and perhaps add brief gaps between words.

I wonder if trying to enunciate distinctly would help?

Its potential to recognize such a large range of words is also encouraging. That implies the signal is quite rich yet deconvolvable.

can16358p2• 11 months ago

Agreed. It's fascinating to think about (no pun intended) where this could go, but also I can't keep myself imagining a world where this tech is ubiquitous and everyone's wearing those casually and it's all "cloud" connected and how it can be weaponized against users by governments and TLAs.

A mind–reading brain implant that comes with password protection

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