Former Google[X] exec is building a MRI hat that will make telepathy possible in 8 years
This former Google[X] exec is building a high-tech hat
that she says will make telepathy possible in 8 years
By Catherine Clifford July 7, 2017
Imagine if telepathy were real. If, for example, you
could transmit your thoughts to a computer or to another person just by
thinking them.
In just eight years it will be, says Openwater founder
Mary Lou Jepsen, thanks to technology her company is working on.
Jepsen is a former engineering executive at Facebook,
Oculus, Google[x] (now called X) and Intel. She's also been a professor at MIT
and is an inventor on over 100 patents. And that's the abbreviated version of
her resume.
Jepsen left Facebook to found Openwater in 2016. The San
Francisco-based start-up is currently building technology to make medical
imaging less expensive.
"I figured out how to put basically the
functionality of an M.R.I. machine — a multimillion-dollar M.R.I. machine —
into a wearable in the form of a ski hat," Jepson tells CNBC, though she
does not yet have a prototype completed.
So what does that hat have to do with telepathy?
Current M.R.I. technology can already see your thoughts:
"If I threw [you] into an M.R.I. machine right now ... I can tell you what
words you're about to say, what images are in your head. I can tell you what
music you're thinking of," says Jepsen. "That's today, and I'm
talking about just shrinking that down."
One day Jepsen's tech hat could "literally be a
thinking cap," she says. Jepsen says the goal is for the technology to be
able to both read and to output your own thoughts, as well as read the thoughts
of others. In iconic Google vocabulary, "the really big moonshot idea here
is communication with thought — with telepathy," says Jepsen.
Traditional M.R.I., or magnetic resonance imaging, uses
magnetic fields and radio waves to take images of internal organs. Openwater's
technology instead looks at the flow of oxygen in a person's body illuminated
with benign, infrared light, which will make it more compact and cheaper.
"Our bodies are translucent to that light. The light
can get into your head," says Jepsen, in an interview with Kara Swisher of
Recode.
If Jepsen is right and one day ideas will be instantly
shared or digitized, that would significantly speed up the process of creating,
learning and communicating. Today, it takes time to share an idea, whether by
talking about it or writing it down. But telepathy would make all of that
instantaneous.
"Right now our output is basically moving our jaws
and our tongues or typing [with] our fingers. We're ... limited to this very
low output rate from our brains, and what if we could up that through
telepathy?" asks Jepsen.
Instant transfer of thoughts would also speed up the
innovation process. Imagine being a filmmaker or a writer and being able to
download the dream you had last night. Or, she suggests, what if all you had to
do was think of an idea for a new product, download your thought and then send
the digital version of your thought to a 3-D printer?
"That makes our iteration cycle so much
faster," says Jepsen.
Jepsen is not the only one dreaming of communication by
thought. Earlier this year, Elon Musk launched Neuralink, a company aiming to
merge our brains with computing power, though with a different approach.
"Elon Musk is talking about silicon nanoparticles
pulsing through our veins to make us sort of semi-cyborg computers," says
Jepsen. But why not take a noninvasive approach? "I've been working and
trying to think and invent a way to do this for a number of years and finally
happened upon it and left Facebook to do it."
Talk of telepathy cannot happen without imagining the
ethical implications. If wearing a hat would make it possible to read thoughts,
then: "Can the police make you wear such a hat? Can the military make you
wear such a hat? Can your parents make you wear such a hat?" asks Jepsen.
What if your boss wanted you to wear a telepathy hat at
the office?
"We have to answer these questions, so we're trying
to make the hat only work if the individual wants it to work, and then
filtering out parts that the person wearing it doesn't feel it's appropriate to
share."
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