An Inventor of Apple’s FaceID Wants to Analyze Your Brain’s Health With AI

苹果 FaceID 发明者之一希望利用人工智能分析大脑健康

The co-inventor of Apple’s FaceID and Vision Pro technology has spent the past six years building a frontier artificial intelligence model that could one day help decode electrical activity in the brain to diagnose cognitive disorders. 苹果 FaceID 和 Vision Pro 技术的共同发明人过去六年来一直在构建一种前沿人工智能模型，该模型有朝一日可能有助于解码大脑中的电活动，从而诊断认知障碍。

Now Gidi Littwin’s startup, Hemispheric, has raised $52 million in funding after gathering data on 100,000 people’s brains to train deep-learning models to examine the brain without the need for invasive procedures. 目前，Gidi Littwin 的初创公司 Hemispheric 已筹集到 5200 万美元资金。此前，该公司收集了 10 万人的大脑数据，用于训练深度学习模型，旨在无需侵入性手术即可检查大脑。

Littwin left Apple in 2020, looking for a change. He found it when his Hemispheric cofounder, Hagai Lalazar, cold-messaged him on LinkedIn. Lalazar had begun to develop artificial intelligence to study the brain without the need for surgery, and was looking for a commercially minded cofounder to drive the company forward. By the time he found Littwin, he had spoken to around 75 candidates. Littwin 于 2020 年离开苹果，寻求改变。当他的 Hemispheric 联合创始人 Hagai Lalazar 在 LinkedIn 上向他发送私信时，他找到了方向。Lalazar 当时已开始开发无需手术即可研究大脑的人工智能，并正在寻找一位具有商业头脑的联合创始人来推动公司发展。在找到 Littwin 之前，他已经接触过大约 75 位候选人。

Littwin had helped develop FaceID, and at that time was working on hand-tracking for an augmented reality product, the Vision Pro. As part of this, he had to collect what he told WIRED were “hundreds of thousands of subjects’ worth of data” to train the deep learning models powering the technology. Littwin 曾参与开发 FaceID，当时正致力于增强现实产品 Vision Pro 的手部追踪技术。作为工作的一部分，他必须收集他告诉《连线》(WIRED) 杂志的“数十万受试者的数据”，以训练驱动该技术的深度学习模型。

“There were massive data collection operations behind these projects, and we knew we had to build something very similar at Hemispheric,” Littwin says, “and we have.” “这些项目背后有大规模的数据收集行动，我们知道必须在 Hemispheric 建立类似的东西，”Littwin 说，“而且我们已经做到了。”

Because each individual’s brain activity looks different, doctors have largely had to rely on subjective questionnaires and behavioral observations to diagnose depression, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. To get around that, Littwin and Lalazar collected their “most prized possession”: a quarter of a million hours of brain data from 100,000 paid volunteers across Asia, as well as in Tel Aviv and Boston. Subjects undertook a series of activities that looked like games but activated different parts of their brains. 由于每个人的大脑活动各不相同，医生在诊断抑郁症、阿尔茨海默病和帕金森病时，很大程度上不得不依赖主观问卷和行为观察。为了解决这个问题，Littwin 和 Lalazar 收集了他们“最宝贵的财富”：来自亚洲、特拉维夫和波士顿的 10 万名付费志愿者总计 25 万小时的大脑数据。受试者进行了一系列看起来像游戏但能激活大脑不同部位的活动。

That data helped train a frontier model, which infers brain function from electrical activity within the skull in the same way that large language models deduce meaning by statistically analyzing text. They then tested the generalized model on subsets of people, including those diagnosed with PTSD, schizophrenia, and depression, and said the model made accurate deductions about the individuals’ brain health. The team is currently working on a clinical study to test whether its model can diagnose and even predict Alzheimer’s. 这些数据有助于训练一个前沿模型，该模型通过颅内电活动推断大脑功能，其原理与大语言模型通过统计分析文本来推导含义的方式相同。随后，他们在特定人群（包括被诊断患有创伤后应激障碍、精神分裂症和抑郁症的患者）中测试了该通用模型，并表示该模型对个人的大脑健康做出了准确推断。该团队目前正在进行一项临床研究，以测试其模型是否能够诊断甚至预测阿尔茨海默病。

Littwin and Lalazar will submit their first product, which will be used to study PTSD, to the FDA for approval early next year. They hope that will allow them to roll out the product to the public later in 2027. Littwin 和 Lalazar 将于明年初向美国食品药品监督管理局 (FDA) 提交其首款产品（用于研究创伤后应激障碍）以供审批。他们希望这能使该产品在 2027 年晚些时候向公众推出。

To help diagnose a cognitive disorder, a patient wears a lightweight EEG headset that measures electrical activity in the brain for around 15 minutes while interacting with an app on a tablet. Hemispheric says its AI model will then help clinicians decode the signals to make diagnoses, select the most effective intervention by making predictions about treatment, and monitor progress. 为了帮助诊断认知障碍，患者需佩戴轻便的脑电图 (EEG) 耳机，在与平板电脑上的应用程序交互的同时，测量约 15 分钟的大脑电活动。Hemispheric 表示，其人工智能模型随后将帮助临床医生解码这些信号以进行诊断，通过对治疗效果进行预测来选择最有效的干预措施，并监测病情进展。

“The future that we envision is one where this is akin to a blood test,” Lalazar says. “The device is going to be very, very cheap; it will be able to be sold and distributed throughout mental health clinics, hospitals, and even psychologists’ offices.” “我们设想的未来是，这就像验血一样简单，”Lalazar 说，“该设备将非常非常便宜；它可以在心理健康诊所、医院甚至心理学家的办公室里销售和分发。”

AI-assisted diagnostic tools for conditions like lung cancer are already in clinical use and speeding up access to treatment across Europe. Meanwhile, AI giants, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are expanding into health care, intensifying competition for the raft of startups in the space. 用于肺癌等疾病的人工智能辅助诊断工具已在临床使用，并正在加速欧洲各地的治疗进程。与此同时，包括 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 在内的人工智能巨头正在向医疗保健领域扩张，加剧了该领域众多初创公司之间的竞争。

Hemispheric has raised early-stage funding from American and Israeli venture capital firms and individual investors, including early Uber-backer Howard Morgan. It will use the money to advance partnerships with governments, health care organizations, and pharmaceutical firms, to hire more in the US, and work toward regulatory approval. It also plans to measure more brain data from millions of people in an effort to improve its model. Hemispheric 已从美国和以色列的风险投资公司及个人投资者（包括 Uber 的早期支持者 Howard Morgan）处筹集了早期资金。该公司将利用这笔资金推进与政府、医疗机构和制药公司的合作，在美国招聘更多员工，并致力于获得监管部门的批准。它还计划测量数百万人的更多大脑数据，以改进其模型。

The team is also developing its own brain scanners to obtain information that the company believes can provide more useful data for its models than traditional EEGs. “These devices were never built for machine learning and definitely not deep learning,” Littwin says. 该团队还在开发自己的脑部扫描仪，以获取公司认为比传统脑电图更能为其模型提供有用数据的信息。“这些设备从来不是为机器学习，更不是为深度学习而设计的，”Littwin 说。