Business Insider | July 18, 2011

By Dylan Love

The NSA is working on a computersystem that can predict what people are thinking.

“Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable character, HAL 9000, having a conversation with David. We are essentially building this system. We are building HAL. The system can answer the question, ‘What does X think about Y?'”

These are the words of an unnamed researcher who discussed an amazing artificial intelligence system she was building at the NSA.

It sounds like something right out of science fiction — a system that can literally read thoughts like a magician.