Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty
It felt like magic: As I moved my head and eyes across the computer screen, the cursor moved with me. My goal was to click on pictures of targets on the display. Once the cursor reached a target, I would blink causing it to click on the target—as if it were reading my mind.
Of course, that’s essentially what was happening. The headband I was wearing picked on my brain, eye, and facial signals. This data was fed through an AI-software that translated it into commands for the cursor. This allowed me to control what was on the screen, even though I didn’t have a mouse or a trackpad. I didn’t need them. My mind was doing all of the work.
“The brain, eye, and face are great generators of electricity,” Naeem Kemeilipoor, the founder of brain-computer interface (BCI) startup AAVAA, told The Daily Beast at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show. “Our sensors pick up the signals, and using AI we can interpret them.”