While everyone is busy talking about how awesome Elon Musk’s Neuralink is, and its first human implant, calling it Telepathy and whatnot, AlterEgo creator Arnav Kapur, who ordered a pizza with just a thought five years ago, seems to have already surpassed its purpose. Simply put, it’s mind control without implants. 

“The idea was conceptualised 10-12 years ago, but I got to build a business in hardware around it in 2015-16. It became public only in 2018,” said Kapur, in an exclusive interview with AIM, sharing the details about his AI-enabled invention, AlterEgo, that uses neuromuscular signals to produce speech through a sensory and auditory feedback system. 

It was easier said than done. “We were doing this from scratch, because nothing like this had been built,” he added, attributing the delay to the integration of multiple features such as signal processing hardware, AI, and NLP engine into the device. 

Arnav Kapur demonstrating AlterEgo on the show 60 Minutes. Source: CBS News

Accessibility in Tech

While the device may have manifold uses, AlterEgo was primarily built to help people with speech disabilities. “The project is close to my heart. At the time, I didn’t know about the number of people that were suffering from unusual speech pathologists, and there are a range of conditions that are not even categorised properly. Everybody’s speech is very different. We could augment their ability to communicate,” said Kapur, saying how his device would assist people with disabilities. 

In his TED talk in 2019, Kapur spoke about an old patient who had been diagnosed with ALS for over 12 years and had lost the ability to speak. Using AlterEgo, the patient was able to convey his surprising first message of wanting to reboot his existing computer system. 

Doug, who has been diagnosed with ALS for 12 years, uses AlterEgo. Source: TED

Speaking about the efforts in bringing accessibility in tech, Kapur wishes there was more enthusiasm, and vigour around it. “There are a lot of challenges working with such devices and patients and I think big tech could do a lot more in looking at these problems,” he said. 

Having worked with visually impaired people, Kapur believes that the tech that is built for them needs to be inclusive. “A lot of people don’t like to use something that’s specially designed for them. People with different conditions want to feel included rather than have a different lifestyle,” he said. 

Bringing Seamless AI Integration to the World

Contrastingly different from Musk’s concept of BCI hardware, Kapur’s concept of AI involves seamless integration, the most important being non-invasive, “nothing that requires surgery,” he said. “I always thought of AI as an extension, and something that would complement human intelligence. AI should be seamlessly integrating and also complementing you. It should not unplug you from the world.” 

The team at AlterEgo is looking to scale the product and make it commercial. They have collaborated with a number of labs and individuals; however, they are taking the time to refine the device to ensure a release that people can use very intuitively. “I think you have to get it right in terms of the actual interface,” he said. 

Aligns with OpenAI

Interestingly, OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati also held a similar belief; she hoped to make interacting with computers ‘as intuitive as playing with a ball.’

Kapur, who looks at technology and AI under different lenses, believes that in terms of science of AI, there is still a big piece to be solved. “I think the fundamental behind ChatGPT is that it’s found a very efficient compression scheme of the internet. It’s trained to do question answering very well, instead of just decoding text, but I think there’s still a huge puzzle piece missing,” he said. 

Kapur’s take on gadgets and devices are quite different too. “Even though smartphones and computers are great, they’re not exactly designed to augment you. We don’t test, we are hunched, we are sort of interfacing. It’s designed as an external box, and I think we tend to give AI and computers way more personality than we ought to.”  

A Free Soul 

Born and raised in Delhi, Kapur, has always been interested in science and arts while growing up, and he has never distinguished between the two. Having dabbled with different streams, including computational biology at Harvard Medical (prior to joining MIT for his Masters and PhD), Kapur’s fascination with both the medical and tech world has always fueled his future research projects. “I love to code. I like working on hardware interfaces, and I like reading theory as well,” said Kapur, who is also amazed with Calculus which he believes is the base for AI. 

He is currently working with a number of independent projects where he helps companies with their AI infrastructure.“I’m sort of like a nomad, so I go from place to place, and part-time sort of work on those projects, and the idea is to fund my research,” he said. Kapur has also done a short alternative stint with an aerospace company in Bangalore too.