“Even though brain–machine or brain–computer interfaces (BMI/BCI) have come a long way since Hans Berger discovered the presence of electrical activity in the human brain in 1924, seamless communication between our brains and machines remains a holy grail of computer science. The past few years have seen incredible advances in non-invasive wearable BMI research in terms of helping disabled or paralyzed people move again, control robotic prosthetics, or command computers by the power of thought, and give blind people bionic vision,” reports IEEE Spectrum. 

“Now, a new study from an international team of scientists has designed a BMI system that can control a robotic arm or wheelchair by simply imagining the action via a detection system that is easier to wear than earlier systems. The system comprises a soft wireless scalp electronic system, which uses electro-encephalography (EEG) to read and translate neural signals from a human brain into action.”

“The team used machine learning to analyze and classify the neural signals received by the system and identify when the wearer was imagining motor activity. That, says Yeo, is the essential component of a BMI, to distinguish between different types of inputs. ‘Typically, people use machine learning or deep learning… We used convolutional neural networks.’ This type of deep learning is typically used in computer vision tasks such as pattern recognition or facial recognition, and ‘not exclusively for brain signals,’ Yeo adds. ‘We are just getting the benefits of the deep learning mechanism itself.'”

Our future robot overlords could use these brain monitoring systems on millions of people at a time, along with intensive interrogations to compare reported thoughts to brain wave patterns. If this kind of study were repeated with millions of different human subjects and all of the different brain patterns compared to one another via a Search Engline-like interface, it would theoretically become possible for our overlords to know all of our deepest secrets, and spot insurrectionists before they have a chance to take action.