Kapur says, “This work is about enabling people and extending human intelligence. Can we weave artificial intelligence and computing into the human condition, as an extension of our cognition -- combining human creativity and intuition with the power of AI, computation and information? 

Can we build technology that enables us, not distracts us; that augments us, instead of replacing us; that disappears into the background of the human experience, raising us to new levels of curiosity and creativity?” Listening to Ted Fellow Arnav Kapur confirms one thing – truth will always be stranger than fiction. 

And it’s the stuff that sci-fi dreams are made of, that comprises Kapur’s stock in trade. He is the inventor of a device called Alter Ego, which in the most simplistic terms, picks up speech signals transmitted from the inside of one’s mouth and converts it into text or audio signals that can then be read and comprehended. The idea is basically to speak softly, without even moving one’s lips, and using the signals from within the mouth to make conversation. 

Kapur explains this as, “What I want to do is I want to weave computing, AI and internet as part of us. As part of human cognition, freeing us to interact with the world around us. Integrate human and machine intelligence right inside our own bodies to augment us, instead of diminishing us or replacing us.” 

The AlterEgo, is wearable device that gives one the experience of a conversational AI that lives inside one’s head, that you could talk to in likeness to talking to yourself internally. Kapur makes it clear first hand that the device does not read or record one’s thoughts. 

The information communicated to the device is done so consensually, and deliberately through the engagement of one’s internal speech systems. So, what could be the implications and applications of such a far-reaching technology? Kapur informs us that there are millions of people around the world who struggle with using natural speech. 

“…People with conditions such as ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, stroke and oral cancer, amongst many other conditions. For them, communicating is a painstakingly slow and  tiring process.” 

From perfectly memorising things, where you perfectly record information that you silently speak, and then hearing them later when you want to, to internally searching for information, crunching numbers at speeds that only computers are used to, silently texting other people. 

Suddenly turning multilingual, so that one internally speaks in one language, and hears the translation in the head in another. The potential could be far-reaching. 

Of course, the moderator of the talk also raises questions of ethics, to which Kapur says. “Our first design principle, before we started working on this, was to not render ethics as an afterthought. 

So, we wanted to bake ethics right into the design. We flipped the design. Instead of reading from the brain directly, we’re reading from the voluntary nervous system that you deliberately have to engage to communicate with the device, while still bringing the benefits of a thinking or a thought device. The best of both worlds in a way.”

SOURCE: https://bit. ly/2YQpfb1 

SYNOPSIS: Try talking to yourself without opening your mouth, by simply saying words internally. What if you could search the internet like that – and get an answer back? In the first live public demo of his new technology, TED Fellow Arnav Kapur introduces AlterEgo: a wearable AI device with the potential to let you silently talk to and get information from a computer system, like a voice inside your head. Learn more about how the device works and the farreaching implications of this new kind of human-computer interaction.

NOTEWORTHY: At the MIT Media Lab, Kapur invented the device called AlterEgo, which lets users converse with machines, AI assistants and other people by articulating words internally. Utilising bone conduction to transmit and receive streams of information, the result is a totally discreet and completely internal method of communication.