ALS + paralysis patients are getting BCIs for communication: Researchers in California are working on two brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that enable individuals who have lost their ability to speak to regain a form of communication that is up to four times faster than any previous devices, Stanford Medicine reports. “You can record neurons when someone tries to speak and from that activity you can figure out what they are trying to say,” explains Frank Willet, a research scientist in the Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory.

How do the BCIs work? The patient has four sensors implanted via surgery in the areas responsible for speech in the outermost layer of the brain, and ports connected to the sensors are then attached to the BCI. Through a process where the patient repeats several phrases as best they can, the computer begins to store the “39 basic phonemes — units of sound, such as ‘sh’ or ‘t’” in the language to be able to detect the brain waves that are created when the patient is trying to say certain phrases.

AI and an avatar complete the system. To make it more realistic, the scientists used AI to input a spoken recording of the patient’s voice and added an avatar to show their expressions. In the best case scenario, when the user tries to speak, the system will detect the brainwaves and repeat the phrase for the listener, thus, allowing the user to speak at an average rate of 62 words per minute. “This is a scientific proof of concept, not an actual device people can use in everyday life,” Willett said. “But it’s a big advance toward restoring rapid communication to people with paralysis who can’t speak.”

Mushroom poisoning by AI? A range of mushroom foraging guides written by artificial intelligence being sold on Amazon are raising concerns about misleading readers to consume poisonous or deadly mushroom species, 404 Media reported. The New York Mycological Society is alerting people on its X account against AI-generated foraging books, which it referred to as the “deadliest scam” due to being filled with inaccuracies and potentially life-threatening identification mistakes.

There are lots of poisonous mushroom species that can easily be confused as safe, edible types, including False Morels and Death Cap. When left to the amateur eye, these species can be lethal. One guidebook seemed to encourage tasting mushrooms to identify them, which “should absolutely not be the case,” an expert from the Family Foraging Kitchen told the Guardian.

AI published books using false names and aliases. Nowhere on these AI-generated books was it mentioned that they were not authored by people — books written by AI were published under non-existent names, complete with pictures. Only a thorough investigation using detection tools like Reality Defender and ZeroGPT could show that the pictures and text were, in fact, neither of nor by real authors or experts. Amazon stated that all their products “adhere to […] content guidelines, regardless of how the content was created,” one spokesperson told 404 Media. Since then, some of the books in question have been removed.

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