The Battle for Your Brain

 

The professor trying to protect our private thoughts from technology

"Prof Nita Farahany argues in her new book, The Battle for Your Brain, that intrusions into the mind are so close that lawmakers should enact protections"

(Oh yeah, I'm sure they will get right on it.)

"Private thoughts may not be private for much longer, heralding a nightmarish world where political views, thoughts, stray obsessions and feelings could be interrogated and punished all thanks to advances in neurotechnology."

"Or at least that is what one of the world’s leading legal ethicists of neuroscience believes."

(It's like AI, it's already here and farter along than you could ever imagine.)

"It’s been widely noted also that Elon Musk’s Neuralink is working on a brain interface that can read thoughts directly. A new field of cognitive-enhancing drugs – called Nootropics – are being developed. Technology that allows people experiencing paralysis to control an artificial limb or write text on a screen just by thinking it are in the works."

"But aside from the many benefits, there are clear threats around political indoctrination and interference, workplace or police surveillance, brain fingerprinting, the right to have thoughts, good or bad, the implications for the role of “intent” in the justice system, and so on."

"Farahany, who served on Barack Obama’s commission for the study of bioethical issues, believes that advances in neurotechnology mean that intrusions through the door of brain privacy, whether by way of military programs or by way of well-funded research labs at big tech companies, are at hand via brain-to-computer innovations like wearable tech."

“All of the major tech companies have massive investments in multifunctional devices that have brain sensors in them,” Farahany said. “Neural sensors will become part of our everyday technology and a part of how we interact with that technology.”

(Can we just go ahead and leave now honey? :-)

"The brain, Farahany warns, is the one space we still have for reprieve and privacy, and where people can cultivate a true sense of self and where they can keep how they’re feeling and their reactions to themselves. “In the very near future that won’t be possible,” she said.

(It's true...It's already here, just not widespread yet. Basically our future is way more dystopian than you could ever imagine...way more so than any Hollywood movie...It just is.)

"Social media’s ability to read minds is already offered, free of charge, through participation with like and dislike functions, predictive algorithms, predictive text and so on."

(Not what I am talking about when I say it is already here

Conversational AI: Perceptive and invasive

and yes, I've experienced it.)

"But advances in neurotechnologies – exploiting a direct connection to the brain – would offer more precise and therefore potential dangerous forays into a hitherto private realm."

FYI

"This article was amended on 30 March 2023. An earlier version included Meta as a company that is working on brain interfaces that can read thoughts directly. However, Meta announced in 2021 that it was no longer pursuing this research, and was instead concentrating on wrist-based technology which reads signals in the arm. The reference has been removed."