Big Tech Wants to Harvest Your Thoughts (wired.com) 35
Wired reports that consumer neurotechnology is rapidly moving from the lab into workplaces and homes, with companies including Apple, Meta, and Snap developing products that can monitor or interpret brain activity. Researchers warn that as these systems improve, neural data could become the next major privacy battleground. Some neuroscientists are already calling for a series of core rights, coined "neurorights," that protect "mental privacy," "identity," and personal "agency." Here's an excerpt from the article: Over the past two decades, researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which tracks the iron in the hemoglobin supplying oxygen to neurons, have been building up increasingly detailed maps and inventories of the mammalian cortex. Thanks to huge advances in machine-learning artificial intelligence -- computer algorithms that are able to sort through enormous amounts of information and use statistical methods to make classifications and predictions -- fMRI scans can now be used to identify everything from depressive thoughts to the nuanced feelings of envy and schadenfreude. Other algorithms have been able to accurately piece together reconstructions of movie clips watched by subjects, just by analyzing their brain scans; or have detected, in probing the brain activity of swing voters in the US presidential election, responding to photographs and videos of presidential candidates, which candidates provoked anxiety or even disgust, and which elicited positive responses or feelings of empathy.
In just the last few years, neuroscience researchers have progressed from decoding images and emotions as they play across the cortex to sounds, words, phrases, and even language. In 2023, in a remarkable demonstration of this emerging technology, a woman called Ann Johnson, who had been paralyzed for 18 years by a brain-stem stroke, was able to speak again through the insertion of a grid of 253 electrodes onto the surface of her brain, which translated her neuronal signals into sentences, in real time, at a rate of 78 words per minute (just about half the speed of standard conversation). The research team at the University of California, led by neurosurgeon Edward Chang, had combined this brain-computer interface with an animated avatar of Johnson's head, which spoke in her own voice, as reconstructed from a recording of a 15-minute toast she had given at her wedding. Just as the avatar's mouth spoke Johnson's words as she thought them, so its expressions were similarly influenced by the nuances of her brain activity, which turned her thoughts about facial gestures into displays of emotion -- from smiles to pursed lips and frowns.
[...] The more invasive the recording equipment, the richer and more detailed the data. Surgical interventions are at the vanguard of neuroscience and remain very rare -- fewer than 100 people on the planet have brain-computer interfaces like Johnson's embedded beneath their skulls. Yet almost inevitably, a concerted trickle-down effect is occurring. In the summer of 2023, a team at the University of Texas demonstrated that they could use fMRI to translate brain scans into words and sentences, after subjects listened to 16 hours of the storytelling podcasts The Moth Radio Hour and The New York Times' Modern Love to train an AI model. When the subjects then listened to new podcasts, the algorithm was able to convert the gist of what they heard, as it manifested in their brains, into words, phrases, and sentences that roughly captured the stories. As the team's lead computational neuroscientist, Alexander Huth, put it in an interview with Science, "Our thought when we actually had this working was, 'Oh my God, this is kind of terrifying.'" Now noninvasive, wearable brain scanners are beginning to proliferate beyond the lab, making their way into our workplaces and, through the vast global consumer market, into our homes too.
In just the last few years, neuroscience researchers have progressed from decoding images and emotions as they play across the cortex to sounds, words, phrases, and even language. In 2023, in a remarkable demonstration of this emerging technology, a woman called Ann Johnson, who had been paralyzed for 18 years by a brain-stem stroke, was able to speak again through the insertion of a grid of 253 electrodes onto the surface of her brain, which translated her neuronal signals into sentences, in real time, at a rate of 78 words per minute (just about half the speed of standard conversation). The research team at the University of California, led by neurosurgeon Edward Chang, had combined this brain-computer interface with an animated avatar of Johnson's head, which spoke in her own voice, as reconstructed from a recording of a 15-minute toast she had given at her wedding. Just as the avatar's mouth spoke Johnson's words as she thought them, so its expressions were similarly influenced by the nuances of her brain activity, which turned her thoughts about facial gestures into displays of emotion -- from smiles to pursed lips and frowns.
[...] The more invasive the recording equipment, the richer and more detailed the data. Surgical interventions are at the vanguard of neuroscience and remain very rare -- fewer than 100 people on the planet have brain-computer interfaces like Johnson's embedded beneath their skulls. Yet almost inevitably, a concerted trickle-down effect is occurring. In the summer of 2023, a team at the University of Texas demonstrated that they could use fMRI to translate brain scans into words and sentences, after subjects listened to 16 hours of the storytelling podcasts The Moth Radio Hour and The New York Times' Modern Love to train an AI model. When the subjects then listened to new podcasts, the algorithm was able to convert the gist of what they heard, as it manifested in their brains, into words, phrases, and sentences that roughly captured the stories. As the team's lead computational neuroscientist, Alexander Huth, put it in an interview with Science, "Our thought when we actually had this working was, 'Oh my God, this is kind of terrifying.'" Now noninvasive, wearable brain scanners are beginning to proliferate beyond the lab, making their way into our workplaces and, through the vast global consumer market, into our homes too.
I can't wait (Score:2, Offtopic)
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Futurama did a joke on beaming commercials into your dreams while you sleep.
And letting us hear Bender's dreams [youtube.com] - I think we're in them. :-)
(Can't decide if they would/wouldn't want to harvest those thoughts...)
Zero chance of success (Score:2)
If big tech think they can turn this into a commercial, everyday product they are in for a big surprise. Because let's be honest - who would ever wear this kind of equipment outside a lab?
In a few years this whole idea will be seen as another useless scientific toy that wasted copious amounts of money for nothing, and that is written off on the tax statement.
Or it could be the next Aerogel (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology is not a one-way Street it's a complicated mess of back roads and by roads.
We have a lot of major disasters we are ignoring. Climate change, boomers dying and taking all the money with them causing a collapse in disposable income spending, AI taking all the water and electricity, fascism, etc etc etc.
But just for fun le
Re: Or it could be the next Aerogel (Score:2)
You need professional help, dude.
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What if the cops or some judge orders you to wear one in order to extract information or control behavior?
In the U.S. this would probably violate the 5th Amendment clause against self-incrimination. ... /s
That said, let's just hope this isn't available in the next 2.5 years
Hey. At least they're trying, damn it! (Score:1)
They're trying to workshop the next hype train for investors because they can smell the AI bubble bursting, you insensitive clod!
What are you doing? Ignoring these schemes completely and continuing on with life as normal? You're supposed to be contributing to the 5%!
Re: Zero chance of success (Score:2)
Re: Zero chance of success (Score:2)
Re: Will it work... (Score:2)
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Copilot:
"You're describing preference-matching, but a lot of advertising is preference-shaping. I publicly state I'm vegetarian and still get meat ads -- not because the system thinks I want meat, but because the advertiser wants to change my preference. Collaborative filtering doesn't handle ethical constraints well, so it treats them as noise rather than boundaries."
Have I already hit my limit? How many posts do I get this week?
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All my thoughts would be about guillotines.
Braains! (Score:3)
/zombie
The next frontier .... in Ad targetting! (Score:2)
I think I will pass.
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Thanks, Musk! (Score:2)
This is not just about ads. This is an ad. (Score:2)
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Re: Here, I will help ... (Score:1)
animals (Score:3)
Put one on a dog.
I'm thinking of ... (Score:2)
probably not (Score:2)
Money Grubbing (Score:2)
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