Machines of future will be able to read human mind

London: Humans are set to increasingly integrate with machines, it has been suggested.

According to a report backed by software and internet giant Microsoft, which draws on the discussions of 45 academics from a range of fields, the terms "interface" and "user" will be obsolete by 2020 as people and machines merge ever closer, the BBC reports.

Called Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the Year 2020, the study also suggested that, by this time, computers will be able to anticipate what we want from them.

According to the report authors, this will require new rules concerning people's relationships with machines.

Commenting on the research, Bill Buxton from Microsoft Research said: "It is about how we anticipate the uses of technology rather than being reactive. Currently, the human is not considered part of the process."

Boundaries between humans and computers will become blurred over the next decade as devices are embedded in objects, our clothing or, in the case of medical monitoring, in our bodies.

However, this ever more intimate relationship between humans and computers will be a double-edged sword, the report suggests.

It compares the widespread introduction of the calculator - widely blamed for a fall in the standard of mental arithmetic - with what may happen as computers become more intelligent and take on new responsibilities.