Who needs psychics when artificial intelligence (AI) can read minds? New research released in December from Kyoto University in Japan has shown AI can decode thoughts on the scientific platform, BioRxiv, according to a recent report by CNBC.  

According to the report, four scientists at Kyoto University developed a new decoding technique using deep neural networks to analyze more sophisticated images containing multiple layers of color and structure, even more advanced than machine learning techniques used with MRI.   

The research was conducted over a span of 10 months and three subjects were shown images of birds or people, artificial geometric shapes and alphabetical letters while brain activity was being measured and then reverse-engineered or "decoded" by a computer.  

"We have been studying methods to reconstruct or recreate an image a person is seeing just by looking at the person's brain activity," lead author of the study Yukiyasu Kamitani, PhD, told CNBC. "Our previous method was to assume that an image consists of pixels or simple shapes, but it's known that our brain processes visual information hierarchically extracting different levels of features or components of different complexities."