The Secret of AlterEgo

Tonight we are traveling at the speed of thought hunting electrical whispers deep into the dark reaches of our heads.  So buckle your seatbelt, grab the oh shit handle, and let's drive into Episode 13: The Secret of AlterEgo

Where does “you” end and the machine begin? If your inner voice can seamlessly merge with artificial intelligence, are your thoughts still purely yours? Or have we just outsourced part of our soul to the cloud? In the long game – decades from now, when this tech is as common as AirPods – we might look back at today’s noisy world the way we look at cave paintings: primitive, loud, inefficient.

But we might also mourn the loss of something sacred: the pure, unfiltered silence of a mind that belongs only to itself.

Disclaimer: These are creative stories. The discoveries are real, and I weave in a lot of the facts, but most of the story is made up fiction. Links to sources included for a deeper dive into the real facts and research.

Sources

• ​MIT Media Lab AlterEgo Project Overview (includes history, spinout note, and redirect to company): https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/alterego/overview/
• ​MIT Media Lab AlterEgo Publications Page: https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/alterego/publications/
• ​2018 Peer-Reviewed Paper – “AlterEgo: A Personalized Wearable Silent Speech Interface” (full PDF): https://dam-prod.media.mit.edu/x/2018/03/23/p43-kapur_BRjFwE6.pdf
• ​2020 Peer-Reviewed Paper – “Non-Invasive Silent Speech Recognition in Multiple Sclerosis with Dysphonia” (full PDF): https://dam-prod.media.mit.edu/x/2019/10/19/ml4h__silentspeech_final.pdfor proceedings page: http://proceedings.mlr.press/v116/kapur20a.html
• ​2019 Master’s Thesis by Eric J. Wadkins – “A Continuous Silent Speech Recognition System for AlterEgo” (full PDF): https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/123121/1128187233-MIT.pdf?sequence=1
• ​Official AlterEgo Company Website (current development status and Silent Sense tech): https://www.alterego.io/
• ​MIT Media Lab Article on the 2025 Startup Launch: https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/exclusive-startup-lets-you-query-ai-with-silent-speech/

Music By:

Luke Orrill

Background Tech