Protecting our thoughts from Big Tech
“Neural data can offer unparalleled insight into the workings of the human mind,” says The New York Times Magazine.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink company is moving to eventually connect the neural networks inside our brains to artificially intelligent ones on the outside, creating a two-way path between mind and machine, says the Times.
At the same time, neuroethicists have criticized Neuralink for ethical violations in animal experiments, for a lack of transparency, and for moving too fast to introduce the technology to human subjects, the Times says.
And the possibility that therapeutic neurotechnologies eventually could be weaponized for political purposes “looms heavily over the field,” the Times says. For example, Musk has expressed a desire to “destroy the woke mind virus.” Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue in a forthcoming book that it doesn’t require a great logical leap to suspect that he sees Neuralink as part of a way to do that, according to the Times.
What are known as brain-computer interfaces currently range from neural implants to wearable devices such as headbands, caps and glasses that are available for purchase online, where they’re marketed as tools for meditation, focus and stress relief, the Times says.
Sam Altman founded his own BCI start-up, Merge Labs, this year, as part of his effort to bring about the time when humans “merge” with machines. And Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are investors in Synchron, a competitor of Neuralink’s, the Times says.
In 2023, Apple patented an AirPods prototype to monitor brain activity and other so-called biosignals. Last month, Meta unveiled a pair of new smart glasses and a “neural band,” which enables users to text and surf the web using small gestures.
China is fast-tracking development of the technology for medical and consumer use, and BCIs are among the priorities of its new five-year plan for economic development, the Times says.
“What’s coming is AI and neurotechnology integrated with our everyday devices,” says Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, TED speaker and author of the book “The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.”
“Basically, what we are looking at is brain-to-AI direct interactions,” she says. “These things are going to be ubiquitous. It could amount to your sense of self being essentially overwritten.”
Farahany says we need to recognize a fundamental right to “cognitive liberty,” which scholars have defined as “the right and freedom to control one’s own consciousness and electrochemical thought process” — to protect our minds. She says this kind of liberty “is a precondition to any other concept of liberty, in that, if the very scaffolding of thought itself is manipulated, undermined, interfered with, then any other way in which you would exercise your liberties is meaningless, because you are no longer a self-determined human at that point.”
Some countries and U.S. states have passed neural privacy laws. California, Colorado, Montana and Connecticut each have passed laws to protect neural data, the Times says.
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