Good morning, human brains. Welcome back to your daily munch of AI news.

Here’s what’s on the menu today:

• AI reads your mind 🧠 

  Scientists use AI to recover text from brain scans.

• FDA approves in-brain computer chips 💉

  Neuralink gains approval for human testing.

• Paralyzed man walks again 🙏

  Thanks to an AI-powered device.

Sponsor Bot Eat Brain | New here? Subscribe!

APPETIZER

Mind-Reading AI? 🧠

Well, not quite — but close.

Researchers at the University of Texas used fMRI data and GPT-1 to figure out what words a patient was thinking based on activity in their brain.

Quick Definitions:

fMRI is a type of MRI scan used to measure changes in the brain. If a normal MRI is a picture, fMRI is a movie.

GPT-1 is an earlier version of the technology which powers ChatGPT.

To make the experiment work, the team first had to gather over 20 hours of training data for the specific patient whose mind they were trying to “read” by scanning their brain while the subject listened to specific audio recordings.

After training OpenAI’s GPT-1 model on the scans, it was able to accurately guess the words he was hearing in any given sample of brain activity.

So… it isn’t really “mind-reading”, is it?

Correct. What’s more, the model can only decipher audio from the select brains it’s been trained on.

But! This tech is a proof of concept that would be extremely useful for communicating with people who can’t speak, such as stroke victims.

Our Take: Can we extract confessions from prisoners or suspicious spouses? Thankfully, no. But for any data-heavy scientific fields, like brain imaging, we’re just beginning to see the impact of AI.

See also: Japanese scientists used Stable Diffusion to retrieve image data from brain scans, which we covered here.

MAIN COURSE

Elon’s Neuralink Wins FDA Approval 💉 

Neuralink has gotten the thumbs up from the FDA to begin testing its brain-computer interface on humans.

Musk famously believes that merging with machines is the best way to guarantee alignment between humanity and AI. FDA approval has brought Neuralink one step closer to making the unification of humans with AI a reality.

Neuralink’s brain chips read electrical signals directly from the brain using microscopic wires, then relay the data to a phone or computer via Bluetooth.

Monkeys implanted with the interface have demonstrated fine-grained control playing video games like Pong — all with the power of thought. Neuralink’s first mission will be to empower those disabled by lack of sight or movement.

However, the company has frequently overpromised and underdelivered. When Elon started the company in 2016, he claimed brain chips would be in humans by 2020. When that didn’t happen, they moved the goalpost to 2022.

Spoiler alert, it’s now 2023. There’s that, and the controversy surrounding primate testing at Neuralink.

Despite the setbacks, Neuralink has promised to prioritize “safety, accessibility, and reliability” in its engineering.

Our Take: Enhancing human capabilities with AI is tantalizing, but repeated delays and ethical concerns suggest a bumpy road ahead.

BUZZWORD OF THE DAY

A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA

AI helps paralyzed man walk again 🙌

Gert-Jan lost his ability to walk after a motorcycle accident in 2011. Today, more than a decade later, a medical procedure incorporating AI has him back on his feet.

Researchers at Lausanne University Hospital implanted a “digital bridge” between his brain and spinal column.

Oskam’s brain implant reads his brain activity, deciphers it with the help of AI, and communicates wirelessly to the implant in his spine — in a method similar to Neuralink. The spinal device, in turn, generates electrical impulses which fire his leg muscles.

Take: This breakthrough is a major stride in treating paralysis and other neurological conditions, but until the tech is widely available and proven safe we’ll remain cautiously optimistic.

MEMES FOR DESSERT

YOUR DAILY MUNCH

Think Pieces

VIDEO: Elon Musk talks AI, Tesla, and China at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit in London.

AI In Medicine: Superbug menace meets its match. Artificial intelligence finds a powerful new antibiotic.

Cybersecurity: Are prompt injections a new form of cyberattack?

Startup News

NVIDIA hits a $1 Trillion market cap. It’s now the fifth publicly traded US company to achieve the milestone.

Hugging Face releases Falcon-40B: An open-source LLM that outperforms LLaMA, StableLM, and RedPajama.

Research

RedPajama: A complete guide on fine-tuning RedPajama, an open-source clone of LLaMA.

From Console to AI: Saving Space and Time with QLoRA (University of Washington).

Google DeepMind: A paper on the importance of model evaluation, plus how to apply it to identify and mitigate extreme AI risks.

Tools

FlowX.AI Modernization for Enterprise Apps.

HelpHub: Add custom ChatGPT to your website. AI chat + search for any website or web app. [Sponsored]

TWEET OF THE DAY

Neuralink announces FDA approval for human testing of their in-brain device:

AI ART-SHOW

Until next time 🤖😋🧠