The Unthinkable

The far-fetched concept of automated tacit knowledge transfer is a little nearer following a report from Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto, neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley. They claim that they can reconstruct visual images through scans of neural activity. Their Bayesian decoder uses MRI signals from visual areas to reconstruct complex natural images. Visual responses to stimuli and hours of YouTube images are used to train the model. Semantic encoding then characterizes responses and recreates the image. As the Sunday Times suggests, it's not quite 'Minority Report' but the possibilities as another tool for tacit knowledge transfer are fascinating - and a bit scary.

Image by alles-schlumpf via Flickr