Can you imagine if a message that takes time to type would appear on the screen the moment you think it? It may sound strange, but in the world of AI, it’s about to become a reality. Automation and chatbots have long dominated the tech industry, but now an AI startup is betting on mind-reading technology called telepathy. The most important thing is that to understand your thoughts, this company needs your brain data and is paying you in return.
American tech startup Conduit is now working on direct telepathy, a technology that can control machines through thoughts alone. To do this, the company is developing a model that can convert human thoughts directly into text.
However, training this model requires a lot of brain data. To collect this data, the company is offering to read the thoughts of ordinary people by paying them. Researcher Naomi Bashkansky, who recently joined Conduit, explained that her team is developing a thought-to-text model using non-invasive neural data.
Instead of implanting a chip or performing surgery in the brain like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, Conduit is using non-invasive technology. For data collection, people will have to go to the company’s office, where they will be fitted with a helmet weighing approximately 2 kilograms equipped with electrodes.
People are being paid approximately ₹5,200 for talking or typing with the AI for 2 hours while wearing the helmet. The only condition for this is that people should be able to type without looking at the keyboard. A person can participate in a maximum of 32 sessions. During the sessions, one can talk or type on any topic, so that maximum neural data can be recorded. Currently, this service is available only in America.
It is worth noting that Meta has also recently introduced a new version of its Brain2Qwerty system, which can convert brain scans directly into text. Its purpose is to help people suffering from neurological diseases. On the other hand, with the help of Neuralink’s chip implant, patients have already been successful in playing games and typing just by thinking. This new experiment of Conduit is being considered a big step towards making this technology available to the general public without any surgery.