The_One_Who_Slays t1_jdn2ac5 wrote on March 25, 2023 at 4:57 PM

Reply to comment by elehman839 in A recently submitted paper has demonstrated that Stable Diffusion can accurately reconstruct images from fMRI scans, effectively allowing it to "read people's minds". by iboughtarock

I mean, Rome wasn't built in a day. Just the fact that it's possible to do speaks volume. As for seeking press coverage, it's understandable: could be them trying to secure more funding by getting more publicity, could be them being genuinely passionate about their tech, could be both. The time will tell.

Still, it's an interesting application for the image gen technology, it's never even crossed my mind to my surprise.

elehman839 t1_jdollr0 wrote on March 25, 2023 at 11:42 PM

If anyone cares: I found Appendix B, but there wasn't much more helpful information. In particular, I don't understand how the randomly-generated images in their evaluation process were produced. And, as far as I can tell, the significance of the paper comes down to that detail.

If the randomly-generated images were systematically defective in any way, then the 80% result is meaningless.
On the other hand, if these randomly-generated images are fairly close to the image shown to the person in the fMRI-- but just differing in some subtle ways-- then 80% would be absolutely amazing.

Sooo... I think there's something moderately cool here, but I don't see a way to conclude more (or less) from than that from their paper. Frustrating. :-/

The_One_Who_Slays t1_jdoodjv wrote on March 26, 2023 at 12:03 AM

Yeah, some public trials would come in handy there. Show, don't tell, and all that.