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Mind reading technology: Is it already here?

Mind reading technology: Is it already here?

In a speech at the World Economic Forum last year, Professor Nita Farahany argued that mind-reading technology is not only real but already in use.

She spoke of scenarios where brain metric monitoring could enhance safety, such as preventing accidents caused by driver fatigue.  She also acknowledged the “dystopian” potential of this technology, like mandatory brain signal transmission in China.

Chinese train drivers, for example, are being required to wear brain-monitoring hats to monitor their fatigue levels.  And brainwave-monitoring technology is already in use by companies like Amazon and Walmart.

Has mind-reading technology arrived or is the World Economic Forum fearmongering?  The Gold Report takes a look into how far research into mind-reading technology has actually gone.

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Has Mind Reading Technology Arrived? Or is the WEF Fearmongering?

The following was originally published by the Gold Report on 20 September 2024.

Last year, in Davos, Professor Nita Farahany told an audience at the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) that, “We can’t decode speech and we may never decode full thoughts from the brain, using simple wearable devices.”

This year, in California, a team at UCSF (University of California, San Francisco) is using artificial intelligence to decode words that are consciously thought and turn them into speech, using, “a device that translates brain activity into intended words.”

Next step: Wireless technology that interprets brain signals representing thought and transmits them … to where?

According to Farahany, that next step has already been taken. But has it? Little proof has been offered to back Farahany’s claims and no database has been revealed that matches specific brain signals to specific words, raising the possibility the WEF is fearmongering, making law-abiding citizens worry whether the government knows their thoughts.

Here we present more details about Farahany’s claims, leaving the reader to determine their reliability.

Big Brother is Reading Your Mind

Farahany is a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, whose focus is on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies. The title of her book, ‘The battle for your brain: defending the right to think freely in the age of neurotechnology’, foresees challenges to freedom of thought in the very near future.

In her speech at Davos, she freely admits the pluses and minuses of mind-reading technology but insists that she doesn’t want it banned as she sees in it great potential. Her speech was introduced by Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, who described the technology in glowing terms: “It’s going to make you see and understand a wonderful future where we can use brainwaves to fight crime, be more productive, and find love …”

Farahany’s video opens with an animation of a futuristic office where employees wear brainwave earbuds which transmit their brainwave information to the office computer system. The information is fully accessible to the boss who rewards one employee for her “brain metrics” with a performance bonus.

Things swiftly take a turn, however, when those brain metrics are utilised by law enforcement:

How Can We Swipe “Escape”?

The animation ends there and Farahany begins her talk by stressing that this technology not only already exists but is already being used. She adds that many people are already primed to accept it as part of life, given that so many of us use Apple watches and other wearable devices that monitor certain of our internal processes.

During the Trump-Harris debate, some suspected that the earrings worn by Harris were in fact transmitters, helping her out with her responses. Earring transmitters already exist. So do other wearables such as headbands, hats, earbuds and even what appear like tattoos behind the ears, all of which can not only transmit but also decode brain signals.

“Swiping” with your mind to create a seamless interaction of technology is, Farahany says, part of, “an exciting and promising future. But also a potentially scary one.  We can’t literally decode complex thought yet but there’s already a lot we can decode.”

It’s For Your Own Safety

Her first example of the “promise” inherent in the new technologies is “a safer workplace.” Monitoring brain metrics of truckers, for instance, could potentially avert accidents such as those that occur due to driver fatigue (which would apply to pilots and train drivers too).

It’s noteworthy that Farahany states that it’s the employer gaining access to the brain metrics, not the employee. Society must be protected from reckless truck drivers who keep going for hours on end and cause fatal accidents, is the unstated case for the use of such technology.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that drivers don’t usually keep going for hours and hours for the fun of it, but rather, because their salary depends on getting the goods to their destination on time, and that driving for x amount of hours straight may be the only way to achieve that, if their bosses impose unrealistic targets.

It Will Help Employers to be Even More Considerate of Their Staff

Farahany also describes another scenario in which open access to staff brain metrics could create a safer environment for all – in a warehouse, where workers’ brain sensors reveal that they’re getting over-exhausted and robots deployed by their sympathetic employers adjust conditions to give them enough time and rest to keep going.

Again, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that employers could use the same brain metric information to weed out exhausted employees and replace them with more robust workers.

That said, she admits to the “dystopian” potential of brain monitoring, pointing out that train drivers in China are already required to wear special hats that transmit their brain signals to their employers, who can monitor their fatigue levels.

It Will Reduce Workplace Stress

Farahany also cites examples of brainwave-monitoring technology in use in the United States. Amazon has already been experimenting with such devices, testing them on warehouse employees. So have Tesco and Walmart, resulting in employee protests and undermining their morale, given that the aim is to detect time-wasting on the job and employees taking unscheduled breaks.

During the “pandemic,” she adds, many companies that switched to virtual offices used some form of monitoring to keep tabs on their employees. She singles out Microsoft for its study of employees using Zoom for meetings, which revealed that virtual meetings are more stressful than those conducted in person, partly because of the different backgrounds on people’s screens.

Streamlining the backgrounds was an easy and cost-free measure to reduce stress levels. One imagines that it wasn’t the only measure that Microsoft implemented as a result of brainwave monitoring.

And It Will Make You More Productive

Next, as she beams up an image of futuristic-looking earbuds on the screen, Farahany describes how,

She also describes a new technology developed by a laboratory at MIT which “gives a person a buzz, literally, when their mind starts to wander.”

Brain Implants That Grant the Power of Speech

All these developments support Farahany’s assertion that “more and more of what’s in the brain will become transparent.” Things are moving so fast, she added, that related legislation “can’t keep up.” Last year, she stated that “we can’t decode speech,” and yet by now, that is already happening, as reported in an article on JAMA Network (the Journal of the American Medication Association).

The article is based on an interview with Edward Chang MD, co-director of the Centre for Neural Engineering and Prostheses at UCSF. He and his team claim to have succeeded in developing technology that enables people with aphasia (who have lost their power of speech, usually due to stroke) to “speak.”

Chang’s team have used a variety of techniques to decode brain signals, including research conducted during brain surgery:

The next step was to digitalise the decoding process, using electrodes placed on the brain:

From 256 Squiggly Lines to 70 Words per Minute

Central to this process has been machine learning, AI that is capable of processing stupendous amounts of data and finding and interpreting patterns, linking specific brainwaves to words:

Chang stresses that the interpretation is based on brainwaves created by participants actually reading words on a screen, not just thinking random thoughts:

He has worked with several aphasic patients, two of whom had been unable to speak for over 15 years:

From 15 Years as a Mute Quadriplegic to 2 Weeks That Restore Speech

Like Farahany, Chang highlights the incredible leaps the technology has taken during just the past few years.

And also like Farahany, Chang stresses the incredible potential inherent in the technology, which certainly promises a very different type of life for those who regain the ability to express themselves:

Wireless Mind Reading

Farahany was asked at the WEF whether brain metrics could be measured without the use of a wearable device and answered flatly: “No.”

Now, a year later, Chang and his team are working on upgrading the abilities of the technology they have pioneered, with the intention of making it completely wireless:

Asked whether the technology could be used to decode thoughts that are not “mentally verbalised,” Chang distinguished between the type of brain metrics being used:

One reason for this is that “verbalised” thoughts seem to be processed in a different part of the brain than other types of thoughts:

But Chang, like Farahany, predicts that in the future, things will likely go a lot further, which will introduce complex privacy issues:

Who Can Be Trusted With This?

Addressing her audience, Farahany asks, “Are you ready for this?” She presents a future – a very imminent future – in which “more and more of what’s in the brain will become transparent.”

“This can be something that unlocks potential for humanity,” she stresses but adds that:

While she admits that persuading employers to respect freedom of thought and privacy of brain metrics will be a challenge, she seems to believe that encouraging widespread respect of “a fundamental right to what it means to be human” could be enough to protect people: “I believe we have to start by recognising a right to cognitive liberty, a right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences.”

What neither Chang nor Farahany address are inherent limitations in “mind reading” technology, even though the animation Farahany screened introduced very real problems – for instance, how will the innocent coworker of the arrested employee prove that while her brain metrics synch with those of the presumed criminal, she wasn’t actually plotting together with him?

Chang, too, is less than forthcoming about some key aspects of the technology he is developing. When his interviewer asks him how he can verify whether the output genuinely reflects the thoughts projected by his aphasic subjects, he evades the question.

Without doubt, a person who has suffered neurological injury and lost the power of speech will jump at the chance of regaining it, even if the technology is imperfect, and even if it opens up the risk of not only his words but also his thoughts becoming transparent to others.

However, it remains very unclear just how the “dystopian possibility” Farahany describes can be averted, and how we can protect ourselves against a tool that, in her words, “really could become the most oppressive technology we have ever unleashed.”

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