AlterEgo: The Voice in Your Head

If speaking actual words to your digital assistant is just too much of a hassle, MIT Media Lab graduate student Arnav Kapur has you covered. His AlterEgo prototype "reads your mind" and does your bidding. According to its website, “AlterEgo is a closed-loop, non-invasive, wearable system that allows humans to converse in high-bandwidth natural language with machines, artificial intelligence assistants, services, and other people without any voice—without opening their mouth, and without externally observable movements—simply by vocalizing internally.”

Whether you want to change the channel on your TV or order a pizza, you can do it all with the power of your thoughts. “The wearable captures electrical signals, induced by subtle but deliberate movements of internal speech articulators (when a user intentionally vocalizes internally), in likeness to speaking to one's self,” explains the site.  

AlterEgo is still just a prototype, but it has lofty goals: “AlterEgo aims to combine humans and computers—such that computing, the internet, and AI would weave into human personality as a “second self” and augment human cognition and abilities.”