The WEF’s annual meeting in Davos held a very important and exciting seminar discussing “Brain Transparency.” It featured new but working technology that allows scanning of the human brain via wearable devices (no electrodes needed). Such scans allow AI-enabled computers to read and interpret the wearer’s state of mind by instantly understanding recorded brain waves.
The devices they are discussing already exist.
Artificial intelligence systems paired with such devices allow unprecedented insight into the mental and emotional state of the wearer.
The picture above shows a female worker having amorous thoughts about a new male coworker (02:02 in the video). A wearable brain-scanning earpiece instantly notifies the company office about such forbidden desires, which could impair her productivity. The message “INTRA-OFFICE ROMANCES ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN” immediately pops up on her screen, returning her to a productive mindset and reminding her who the boss is.
A cartoonish illustration of such machinery is here:
The WEF presenter, Nita A. Farahany, is not describing future technology. She explains at 3:30 that all of the above capabilities already exist and are developing rapidly.
This is the future that has already arrived. Everything in that video that you just saw, is based on technology that is already used. Artificial intelligence has enabled advances in decoding brain activity that we never before thought possible.
You heard a lot about AI over the last few years, here at Davos it’s been the talk of the hour. But I want to talk about it in a different way, which is the ability to decode brain wave activity. All that you think, you feel, is all just data. Data, that in large patterns, can be decoded using artificial intelligence.
Consider this: the average person thinks thousands of thoughts each day. As a thought takes form, (a math calculation, you are happy, you are tired, you are hungry), neurons are firing in your brain, in tiny electrical discharges. A particular thought takes hundreds of thousands of neurons firing in characteristic patterns that can be decoded with electroencephalography and AI powered devices.
The wearable thought-reading devices Nita discusses do not look weird or unwieldy. I put two of them into one picture for convenience.
Closer to the end of the video, she talks about how important it is to “preserve safeguards.” But watch Nita laugh at 27:30 at the tongue-in-cheek moderator’s suggestion that “All CEOs will use this technology completely responsibly.”
She knows how funny it is to think this technology will be used responsibly. I do not need an AI brainwave scanner to see how hilarious the “responsible use” remark is to her!
Nita reports (6:10) that Facebook and tech companies are “investing heavily in these devices.”
Big Tech expects us to give up keyboards and computer mice.
In near term future, these [brain-scanning] devices will be the primary way in which we interact with all of the rest of our technology.
Think about this for a minute. You will need to wear a brain scanner to integrate with Big Tech’s new shiny gadgets (which will likely be supplied for free). The scanner will send your brainwave activity to Big Tech’s AI engines. AI is bulky and cannot be placed into a tablet or a phone, so your brain waves will be collected centrally by Facebook or another Big Tech company.
While being in the Metaverse’s virtual reality or doing something else using the brain scanner human interface, random thoughts may enter your mind. Perhaps you’d momentarily want to buy yourself a comfy pillow?
The brain scanner would communicate this thought to the AI. The AI would decode it and show you relevant ads, perhaps BEFORE your thought process would even be complete!
The possibilities for abuse are endless. For example, let’s say that a woke designer of such an AI, or a “disinformation governance board” bureaucrat, would decide that they need to stop people from thinking climate change-denying thoughts. (Just an example.)
If so, as soon as my train of thought wanders off Zuckerberg’s fantasyland and starts turning towards skeptical opinions on climate change, the AI would proactively show me an attractive, skimpily-clad female, a cute cat slapping a farting dog, or some other distraction to disrupt thought development.
At 21:37, Nita discusses brain wave disruption and how it could be accomplished, which confirms such a possibility.
