new delhi an aienabled mindreading headset designed by arnav kapur an mit graduate who grew up in delhi has been named as times 100 best inventions of 2020a postdoctoral student at mit the 25yearold kapur has made the list in the experimental category for alterego an aienabled headset designed by him his brother shreyas and fellow researchers at the mit media lab the wearable device can be a boon for those with communication problems such as those with cerebral palsy and als by letting them communicate with the computer without saying a word just by thinking of the instruction in their mindbasically if you want to know if its going to rain tomorrow all you have to do is formulate the question in your mind then the headsets sensors read the signals from the areas facial and vocal cord muscles that would be triggered had you said it out loud according to a report by time then the device carries out the action on your laptop using a bone conduction speaker you receive the relevant information the device has 92 accuracy in terms of being able to understand peoplethe idea is that even when we dont speak out loud the thoughts we dont utter are still going through our internal speech system this means that your tongue still moves ever so slightly even if you dont say the words out loud in a video demonstrating the scope of the innovation kapur navigates a smart tv finds out the time calculates how much he spent at the grocery store all without ever uttering a word the current system is not commercially available and is being tested in hospital settings for patients with ms and alsa primary focus of this project is to help support communication for people with speech disorders including conditions like als amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and ms multiple sclerosis reads the overview of the project on mits website beyond that the system has the potential to seamlessly integrate humans and computerssuch that computing the internet and ai would weave into our daily life as a second self and augment our cognition and abilities an example is that you can play chess with alterego on and instantly become an expert it has the potential to augment human decision making through machine intelligenceand for those concerned that this is the first step of machines knowing your every thought dont worry alterego doesnt read your thoughts just the commands that you specifically articulate in your head and because it reads signals based on your facial and vocal cord muscles it doesnt have any access to your brain activity in the first placewatch delhiborn mit grads aienabled headset named as times 100 best inventions of 2020