Machines can read your brain. There’s little that can stop them.
Technology is giving access to the inner workings of the brain, and policymakers are scrambling to regulate it.
BY MELISSA HEIKKILÄ
AUGUST 31, 2021
Neurotech wearables are now entering the market | Ezequiel Becerra/AFP via Getty Images
Excerpts:
In 2019, Rafael Yuste
successfully implanted images directly into the brains of mice and controlled their behavior. Now, the neuroscientist warns that there is little that can prevent humans from being next.
If used responsibly, neurotechnology — in which machines interact directly with human neurons — can be used to understand and cure stubborn illnesses like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and assist with the development of prosthetic limbs and speech therapy.
But if left unregulated, neurotechnology could also lead to the worst corporate and state excesses, including discriminatory policing and privacy violations, leaving our minds as vulnerable to surveillance as our communications.
Now a group of neuroscientists, philosophers, lawyers, human rights activists and policymakers are racing to protect that last frontier of privacy — the brain.
They are not seeking a ban. Instead, campaigners like Yuste, who runs the
Neurorights initiative at Columbia University, call for a set of principles that guarantee citizens' rights to their thoughts, and protection from any intruders, while taking advantage of any potential health benefits.
But they see plenty of reason to be alarmed about certain applications of neurotechnology, especially as it attracts the attention of militaries, governments and technology companies.
China and the U.S. are both leading research into artificial intelligence and neuroscience. The U.S. Defense department is
developing technology that could be used to tweak memories.
It's not just scientists; firms, including major players like Facebook and Elon Musk's Neuralink are making advances too.
Neurotech wearables are now entering the market. Kernel, an American company, has developed a headset for the consumer market that can record brain activity in real time. Facebook
funded a project to create a brain-computer interface that would allow users to communicate without speaking. (They pulled out this summer.) Neuralink is working on brain implants, and in April 2021 released a video of a
monkey playing a game with its mind using the company’s implanted chip.
“The problem is what these tools can be used for,” he said. There are some scary examples: Researchers have used brain scans to
predict the likelihood of criminals reoffending, and Chinese employers have monitored employees' brainwaves to
read their emotions. Scientists have also managed to
subliminally probe for personal information using consumer devices.
“We have on the table the possibility of a hybrid human that will change who we are as a species, and that's something that's very serious. This is existential,” he continued. Whether this is a change for good or bad, Yuste argues now is the time to decide.
Inception
The neurotechnology of today cannot decode thoughts or emotions. But with artificial intelligence, that might not be necessary. Powerful machine learning systems could make correlations between brain activity and external circumstances.
“In order to raise privacy challenges it’s sufficient that you have an AI that is powerful enough to identify patterns and establish correlative associations between certain patterns of data, and certain mental states,” said Marcello Ienca, a bioethicist at ETH Zurich.
Researchers have already managed to use a machine learning system to
infer credit card digits from a person’s brain activity.
“[W]hen, for example, lie detection or the detection of memory appears accurate enough according to the science, why would the public prosecutor say no to such kind of technology?” said Sjors Ligthart, who studies the legal implications of coercive brain reading at Tilburg University.
With brain implants in particular, experts say it's unclear whether thoughts would be induced, or originate from the brain, which poses questions over accountability. “You cannot discern which tasks are being conducted by yourself and which thoughts are being accomplished by the AI, simply because the AI is becoming the mediator of your own mind,” Ienca said.
Where is my mind?
People have never needed to assert the authority of the individual over the thoughts they carry, but neurotechnology is prompting policymakers to do just that.
Neurotech wearables are now entering the market. Kernel, an American company, has developed a headset for the consumer market that can record brain activity in real time. Facebook
funded a project to create a brain-computer interface that would allow users to communicate without speaking. (They pulled out this summer.) Neuralink is working on brain implants, and in April 2021 released a video of a
monkey playing a game with its mind using the company’s implanted chip.
https://www.politico.eu/article/mac...-neuroscience-privacy-neurorights-protection/
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