Stephen Hawking, who was a theoretical physicist, and had ALS, lost his ability to speak, and was able to “talk” through a speech synthesizer program. He used a hand clicker and later a “cheek switch” to speak, write e-mails, and surf the web.
With the advancement in technology, neuroscientists at California University, San Francisco, have come up with an artificial intelligence program that can turn thoughts into texts. With the help of Artificial Intelligence technology similar to that of translating one language to another, Neuroscientists aim to help millions of people with speech disabilities communicate easily. Though the technology is limited to recognizing verbal speech, it has the potential to help those with muscle paralysis in the future.
Researchers tested their program on people who have epilepsy. They monitored the brain activity and inputted the data into the machine learning algorithm that could switch the brain waves to a string of numbers that encoded the sentences.
Initially, the system gave out illogical and grammatically incorrect outputs. Gradually, based on the updated data, the system’s results improved. In one instance, 97% of the sentences were correct; it had fewer errors as compared to that of human transcription.
The algorithm is currently processing short sentences compared to the actual need of the user. Still, with constant growth in the AI sector, the researchers aspire to improve the accuracy and speed of the generated speech.
#AIMonks #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #ML #Neuroscience #CaliforniaUniversity #SpeechSynthesizer
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