TED Fellow Arnav Kapur invents wearable AI devices that augment human cognition and give voice to those who have lost their ability to speak.

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At the MIT Media Lab, Arnav Kapur is inventing a device called Alter Ego, which lets users converse with machines, AI assistants and other people by articulating words internally. Utilizing bone conduction to transmit and receive streams of information, the result is a totally discreet and completely internal method of communication.

As Kapur says: "This work is about enabling people and extending human intelligence. Can we weave artificial intelligence and computing into the human condition, as an extension of our cognition -- combining human creativity and intuition with the power of AI, computation and information? Can we build technology that enables us, not distracts us; that augments us, instead of replacing us; that disappears into the background of the human experience, raising us to new levels of curiosity and creativity?"

Arnav Kapur’s TED talk

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