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Speaker 1: In five years, we'll legally own our own thoughts. That's

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Speaker 1: a premise of today's conversation. I'm Asimazar. Welcome to the

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Speaker 1: Exponentially podcast. In the past five years, over a billion

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Speaker 1: dollars has been invested in developing new devices that can

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Speaker 1: read or even manipulate our mental states. They can help

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Speaker 1: us relax, learn, or reduce pain, and as they do,

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Speaker 1: they harvest data. So how can we make use of

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Speaker 1: this technology without firms taking advantage of us? Do we

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Speaker 1: need a new fundamental human right, a right to our

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Speaker 1: mental privacy? To discuss the ethics of this emerging neurotechnology.

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Speaker 1: There's no one more qualified than Professor Nita Farahari. Nita,

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Speaker 1: you're a professor of law and philosophy, and you got

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Speaker 1: there by way of genetics and cell biology. Did you

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Speaker 1: have much fun at college?

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Speaker 2: I did.

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Speaker 3: I probably had too much fun at college, But you know,

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Speaker 3: I came into college already really enamored with genetics and

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Speaker 3: behavioral sciences, and while I was there, ended up doing

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Speaker 3: a lot in both genetics but also neuroscience and government

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Speaker 3: as an odd pairing between my interests.

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Speaker 1: Also, how did you show up to college with a

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Speaker 1: deep interest in those quite different subjects.

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Speaker 3: As a high school student, had taken a genetics class

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Speaker 3: and found that not only was I really interested in biology,

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Speaker 3: but I really enjoyed the mathematics, the modeling, but especially

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Speaker 3: the behavioral ties.

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Speaker 2: I found that fascinating.

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Speaker 3: But I also was a policy debater in high school,

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Speaker 3: and I was recruited to college for policy debate. And

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Speaker 3: I had spent summers as a geeky nerd at debate

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Speaker 3: camps and about debate camps.

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Speaker 2: I mean, they were fun.

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Speaker 3: I enjoyed it, but it's a geeky endeavor. And the

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Speaker 3: result was I was very passionate about policy. I was

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Speaker 3: thinking about the implications of policies for society and for humanity,

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Speaker 3: thinking about the broader implications and applications of technology and science.

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Speaker 3: I think I sort of didn't realize it at the time,

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Speaker 3: but was destined to follow the path that I ultimately did.

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Speaker 1: You've turned your attention to one of science's remaining frontiers. It's,

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Speaker 1: in a sense, the last bastion of our freedom. It's

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Speaker 1: the nature of our brain, our cognition, and our mental state.

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Speaker 1: And I wanted to share a story with you. A

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Speaker 1: few years ago, I was sent a headset from a

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Speaker 1: startup that was meant to stimulate your brain to improve

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Speaker 1: your cognitive performance, and you put it on your hair

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Speaker 1: and it would zap you with some direct current, and

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Speaker 1: you know, I was too scared to use so I

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Speaker 1: put it.

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Speaker 2: That's probably a good thing.

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Speaker 1: I put it back in its box and I now

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Speaker 1: use it as a shelf for my print up.

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Speaker 3: It's probably a good thing that you didn't use that

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Speaker 3: one back in the day, because we don't really have

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Speaker 3: a very good understanding of the zapping your brain. So

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Speaker 3: as you think, as you do anything, neurons are firing

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Speaker 3: in your brain. They give off tiny electrical discharges. And

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Speaker 3: when you're doing anything from feeling to smiling, to thinking

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Speaker 3: to doing a math problem in your head, hundreds of

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Speaker 3: thousands of neurons are firing in your brain giving off

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Speaker 3: concurrent electrical discharge.

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Speaker 1: And so we can measure those electrical signals. I guess

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Speaker 1: that approach is the EEG. And if anyone is old

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Speaker 1: enough to remember Ghostbusters, Rick Morana's character wears he's wired

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Speaker 1: up to one. That's right early on, and yes, we

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Speaker 1: can we can measure those electrical impulses and also their

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Speaker 1: waveform and whereabouts in the brain that's right, they're happening.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 3: Now, if you're using consumer grade electro and sepilography or EEG,

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Speaker 3: you're going to have far fewer electrodes, and so it's

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Speaker 3: really the average across the entire brain rather than picking

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Speaker 3: up from a specific brain region. You might have it

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Speaker 3: in the form of earbuds or headphones or headbands, and

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Speaker 3: they're picking up the averages of those waveforms, and then

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Speaker 3: those averages, through software and advances and artificial intelligence, can

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Speaker 3: then say Okay, this is happy, this is sad, this

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Speaker 3: is paying attention, this is fatigue, this is mind wandering.

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Speaker 3: So they're kind of big brain states. They're not very

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Speaker 3: precise kind of mind reading, right.

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Speaker 1: So those are all emotional states that you could imagine

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Speaker 1: matter to students who are studying as people who are

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Speaker 1: working in desk based jobs are actually in non desk

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Speaker 1: based jobs in the field.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: So already this particular company has partnered with a number

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Speaker 3: of corporations as an enterprise solution where if it's offered

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Speaker 3: as part of a brain wellness program, for example, to

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Speaker 3: allow an employee to be able to train their focus.

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Speaker 3: People are really distracted in today's world, right, and they

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Speaker 3: have so much context switching. You're on your computer, you

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Speaker 3: then quickly go buy something for your kid's birthday party.

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Speaker 3: You remember you get a notification on social media, and

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Speaker 3: that context switching is costly for your ability to focus.

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Speaker 1: And it's very hard to judge in the moment or

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Speaker 1: even after the fact, when you were concentrating well and

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Speaker 1: actually whether you were genuinely in a moment of flow

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Speaker 1: or a moment where you've blocked out the rest of

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Speaker 1: the world. So what you have here is a more

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Speaker 1: objective measure of where you might be actually, in the

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Speaker 1: same way that smart watches can really give you a

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Speaker 1: sense of whether you actually did walk the ten thousand

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Speaker 1: steps or not.

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Speaker 3: I was talking with a company that has used this

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Speaker 3: technology on employees where they were trying to make managerial

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Speaker 3: level decisions about work from home policies versus work in

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Speaker 3: the office, and they were looking at some of the

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Speaker 3: brain data to see the extent to which people were

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Speaker 3: more distracted or better able to focus in a home

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Speaker 3: based environment versus in the office environment. Or you know,

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Speaker 3: you think that you're really a morning person, but that's

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Speaker 3: when you're in the best data flow, and it turns

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Speaker 3: out your best working hours are like three to five

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Speaker 3: in the afternoon.

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Speaker 1: What happens to people when they get told that, after

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Speaker 1: years of thinking that they were a morning person, they

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Speaker 1: turn out to be a light out? I mean, how

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Speaker 1: do they feel?

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Speaker 2: You know?

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Speaker 3: I think for some people it's helpful, right, Oh, that's

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Speaker 3: why I'm stuck. That insight is so incredibly powerful for me.

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Speaker 3: For other people, it causes self doubt, a bit of

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Speaker 3: an existential crisis. To what extent can you trust your

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Speaker 3: gut instinct, your so called inner voice when the data

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Speaker 3: doesn't stack up or measure up with what your own

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Speaker 3: sense of self is. And then for others there's just doubt. No, no,

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Speaker 3: the technology must be wrong because my own perception of

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Speaker 3: self is much more accurate than any technology could ever measure.

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Speaker 1: So these are all consumer grade devices that are in

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Speaker 1: a way leaking into the workplace. But of course there

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Speaker 1: are a whole range of different neurotechnologies, some of which

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Speaker 1: are much more complex and sophisticated used in healthcare, some

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Speaker 1: of which are just not as portable as these devices.

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Speaker 3: These right now primarily or entertainment or very low stakes

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Speaker 3: decision making. They're not diagnosing a concussion on the football

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Speaker 3: field or for a person with epileptic seizures, maintaining real

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Speaker 3: time information about what's happening in their brains, or for

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Speaker 3: diagnostic purposes for Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's or other kinds

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Speaker 3: of conditions, and a lot of the other more sophisticated neurotechnology.

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Speaker 3: And by sophisticated, I just mean it has better signal

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Speaker 3: to noise. It's able to more precisely pinpoint in the

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Speaker 3: brain where something is happening. You know, you have something

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Speaker 3: that gives you clinical grade information about brain activity or

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Speaker 3: brain disorder. And you know those really run the gimmut

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Speaker 3: from electrical stimula or implanted neurotechnology, where there's been tremendous

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Speaker 3: advances in the past few years. Companies that are investing

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Speaker 3: in the ability for somebody who's a paraplegic to be

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Speaker 3: able to navigate their environment, or a person who has

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Speaker 3: lost the ability to communicate to be able to speak

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Speaker 3: their mind by using implanted neurotechnology.

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Speaker 1: To these are the so called invasive neurotechnology. In other words,

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Speaker 1: they're physically in the brain. They probably require you to

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Speaker 1: go into surgery to fit them.

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Speaker 3: They carry for obviously greater risks because they entail surgery.

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Speaker 3: But what you can get from going deep into the

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Speaker 3: brain right now is obviously much more powerful than having

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Speaker 3: to pick up a signal that goes through the scalp,

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Speaker 3: through the skull where it's degraded over time, and far

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Speaker 3: lesson it can be picked up.

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Speaker 1: And what's the role of what I imagine as the gold

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Speaker 1: standard of all of this, the MRI machine. You lie down,

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Speaker 1: you go into this tunnel that these very powerful magnets.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of clanking, but then you get these

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Speaker 1: very small slices of your brain and the blood flow

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Speaker 1: activity within them. And these machines are in big they

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Speaker 1: weigh thousands of pounds, they cost millions of dollars. Is

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Speaker 1: that the gold standard to which we try to reference everything.

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Speaker 3: Functional magnetic resonance imaging machines. They can peer deeply into

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Speaker 3: the brain. They don't have very good what we call

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Speaker 3: temporal resolution, which is they're not fast, they're not measuring

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Speaker 3: rapid changes across the.

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Speaker 1: Brain like high high resolution photographs. Yes, rather than a film.

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Speaker 3: That's right, and so, but the ability to peer deeply

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Speaker 3: into the brain and to be able to see at

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Speaker 3: literally like this is what's happening, or this is what's

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Speaker 3: going wrong. That is the gold standard for at least

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Speaker 3: diagnosing some things.

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Speaker 1: It seems that in recent years we've started to close

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Speaker 1: the loop from lots of different ways to read brain

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Speaker 1: states through to how we can then change those brain states.

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Speaker 1: Talk about some of these implants. It seems like some

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Speaker 1: of the technologies that you've been discussing are as much

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Speaker 1: about reading the brain state as they are about imposing

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Speaker 1: a new brain state on us.

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Speaker 2: That's absolutely right.

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Speaker 3: So, for example, there was a woman who was suffering

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Speaker 3: from severe depression and she described herself as being at

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Speaker 3: the end of her life, no longer in a life

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Speaker 3: worth living, and neuroscientists and physicians were able to track

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Speaker 3: the specific patterns of brain activity and then use electrical

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Speaker 3: stimulation in the brain to reset that brain activity like

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Speaker 3: a pacemaker for the brain. That enabled her to recover

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Speaker 3: her will to live, to overcome depression, and have a

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Speaker 3: typical range of emotions instead. Wow, that's pretty extraordinary.

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Speaker 1: That's extraordinary because right now the disciplines of neuroscience and

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Speaker 1: psychology are are rather different, Yes, and they're separate. And

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Speaker 1: what you've given an example of is using neuroscience to

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Speaker 1: try to tackle something that would have traditionally just been

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Speaker 1: seeing there's a statological problem. That's right, So let me

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Speaker 1: summarize where we are. We've got this fantastic science and

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Speaker 1: engineering which is progressing, and it's giving us a new

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Speaker 1: class of neurotechnologies which we can use for diagnostics, for therapeutics,

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Speaker 1: for augmentation. But these are also dual use technologies. They

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Speaker 1: could be applied in ways that are harmful. Perhaps. I

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Speaker 1: remember reading about a school in China, for example, which

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Speaker 1: for a short period of time was putting on a

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Speaker 1: brain monitor on the kids and allowing the teachers to

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Speaker 1: figure out which ones had drifted off. Now, I think

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Speaker 1: it's a right for a young child to zone out

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Speaker 1: as school. I mean, we all did. What are the

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Speaker 1: other examples that you can think of that are showing

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Speaker 1: the potential drawbacks of this technology?

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Speaker 3: I think anytime you're looking at, for example, coerced use

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Speaker 3: of it that's in the workplace or in a school setting,

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Speaker 3: that it's deeply problematic. And that's because not only do

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Speaker 3: you have a right to have your mind wander, but

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Speaker 3: you have a right to think freely. Right the ability

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Speaker 3: to be able to have a dissident thought or have

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Speaker 3: a creative thought or even fantasize about the coworker in

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Speaker 3: your office, so you have a bit of a crush on,

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Speaker 3: like there's.

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Speaker 1: I work on my own.

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Speaker 2: Well there you know, no crushes, no qrushes for you.

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Speaker 3: But you know these flashes of bad thoughts you have

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Speaker 3: For a moment, somebody cuts you off in traffic and

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Speaker 3: you have a bad thought that pops into your head. Right,

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Speaker 3: being able to think freely without fear of having your

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Speaker 3: feelings or thoughts intercepted or manipulated or punished, I think

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Speaker 3: is critical to human flourishing. In other context, it's already

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Speaker 3: being used in these kind of coercive ways, like in

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Speaker 3: police interrogations where people's brains are being interrogated to see

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Speaker 3: if they recognize. Yes, it's already happening. There's a company

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Speaker 3: in the US that has been selling their technology to

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Speaker 3: law enforcement agencies worldwide. Whether it's that technology which has

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Speaker 3: been used in places like the UAE or in Singapore,

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Speaker 3: is being tested out in Australia, and there have been

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Speaker 3: criminal convictions that have occurred as a result so called

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Speaker 3: criminal confessions in response to brain based interrogations. It's already

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Speaker 3: happening worldwide. Those are I think very chilling applications of

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Speaker 3: this technology.

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Speaker 1: I've read a slightly scary example of a beer company

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Speaker 1: trying to change the way we dream so that we

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Speaker 1: would dream about their beer. I mean, how does that

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Speaker 1: even work?

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Speaker 3: So neuromarketing has been around for a while. There are

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Speaker 3: certain periods of time, like when you just wake up

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Speaker 3: from a dream, that you're more suggestible. And by more suggestible,

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Speaker 3: I mean your mind can be changed more easily. Yes,

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Speaker 3: And so in that suggestible state, what some dream researchers

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Speaker 3: were hired to do or to figure out could your

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Speaker 3: dreams be used as a time to incubate particular ideas.

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Speaker 3: They call this dream incubation. So this particular beer company

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Speaker 3: they had as the kind of logo associations of mountains

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Speaker 3: and streams, and they want you to think of their

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Speaker 3: beer and think being refreshed.

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Speaker 1: I'm almost speechless. It really sounds horrible, and it does.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it does sound horrible, and I've gone to

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Speaker 3: the most dystopian place with it possible. So now imagine

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Speaker 3: you're wearing your overnight brain centers. Because there are earbuds

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Speaker 3: that are designed to detect your sleep and to help

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Speaker 3: you monitor your own sleep. You have your you know

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Speaker 3: speaker that's listening in your bedroom. They're connected together at

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Speaker 3: the moment at which your most suggestible, a soundscape starts

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Speaker 3: to play without you even realizing it. And this is,

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Speaker 3: you know, the newest place that people pitch their advertisements.

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Speaker 1: That logic is completely inverted. The moment when we're most

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Speaker 1: suggestible is the moment when there should be.

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Speaker 2: No right from us now one hundred.

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Speaker 3: Percent agree right? This is just like the dystopian vision

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Speaker 3: of this is. If advertisemers are trying to find the

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Speaker 3: moment that you are most likely to develop positive associations

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Speaker 3: with their brands or their products, and there are no

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Speaker 3: regulations that would prevent them from being able to commodify

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Speaker 3: your brain data and to target you with advertisements, then

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Speaker 3: why wouldn't they right? And the only thing that would

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Speaker 3: stop them from doing so is ethical norms that would

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Speaker 3: strongly develop against doing so and legal rights that would

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Speaker 3: protect people from having that happen to them.

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Speaker 2: If you could take.

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Speaker 3: A person who's suffering from trauma who voluntarily said like, yes,

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Speaker 3: I would like for treatments while I'm sleeping to incubate

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Speaker 3: positive memories or associations instead, it's not a bad thing.

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Speaker 3: And done a controlled research environment with consent that seems

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Speaker 3: potentially like an incredibly positive application of it, when instead

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Speaker 3: what you have is what seems like gimmicks. But I

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Speaker 3: worry that each instance of the use of neurotechnology in

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Speaker 3: these unexpected associations and unexpected places subtly and very perniciously

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Speaker 3: normalizes people to a future of neural surveillance where even

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Speaker 3: our brains are hacked and tracked.

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Speaker 1: These technologies are improving exponentially, and there are these combinations

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Speaker 1: as well. So I've been tracking a variety of experiments

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Speaker 1: where scientists have connected the readings from fMRI machines to

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Speaker 1: different types of AI, and they've been able to reconstruct

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Speaker 1: the image that you've been thinking about. You've been thinking

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Speaker 1: about a church, and they can produce a sort of

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Speaker 1: blurry church. And over the last four or five years

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Speaker 1: that church has got sharper and sharper and more precise,

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Speaker 1: and even more recently, scientists have been able to look

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Speaker 1: at fMRI readings and predict the words that somebody was

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Speaker 1: thinking about. Now, of course, an fMRI machine is this

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Speaker 1: huge machine, not that practical, but the point being that

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Speaker 1: once we are able to correlate activity as we see

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Speaker 1: it through an fMRI machine to particular sequences of words

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Speaker 1: or pictures. We can then find easier to read signals

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Speaker 1: and then without needing to pop you into an fMRI machine,

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Speaker 1: start to extract those thoughts or those pictures.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So there was a recent study that was done that

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Speaker 3: was really a leap an advance in this area using

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Speaker 3: the advances in generative AI, and were able with a

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Speaker 3: very high degree of accuracy to reconstruct continuous language from

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Speaker 3: the brain. They were then curious as to whether those

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Speaker 3: same findings could apply to a different portable system called

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Speaker 3: f near's functional near infrared spectroscopy, which picks up blood

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Speaker 3: flow changes in the brain just like aphemeridas. Could it

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Speaker 3: apply in that context as well?

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Speaker 1: So blood flow being the key thing that appears to

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Speaker 1: connect to what we're thinking.

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Speaker 3: They trained it on f nears to see if it

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Speaker 3: worked in that context, and it did.

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Speaker 1: It sounds magic. It is a way of peering into

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Speaker 1: the brain using light. It's sort of infrared light are

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Speaker 1: the kind that might come out of your TV remote control.

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Speaker 3: There are others who are working on something like a

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Speaker 3: bike helmet that would have FEARS and enable us sortably

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Speaker 3: to be able to pick up even potentially our very

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Speaker 3: thoughts from our brain that could be decoded using these

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Speaker 3: advances and technology.

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Speaker 1: And of course, hundreds of millions of us have these

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Speaker 1: smart watches that actually have quite cheap sensors in them

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Speaker 1: and yet can be really accurate for measuring things like blood,

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Speaker 1: oxygenation or pulse and all sorts of other biomarkers. So

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Speaker 1: we've got some expertise in taking lower cost, low fidelity

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Speaker 1: signals and turning them into more reliable.

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Speaker 3: Signals, that's right, And to be able to filter out

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Speaker 3: things like noise, even the ability to have the computation

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Speaker 3: which used to be very difficult to do. You'd need

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Speaker 3: a huge room to do the kinds of crunching of

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Speaker 3: the data. They now are done on device literally like

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Speaker 3: a little device like this together with something like a

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Speaker 3: mobile device, you can do incredibly sophisticated both imaging and

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Speaker 3: decoding at the same time.

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Speaker 1: How long before there are going to be affordable portable

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Speaker 1: fnears devices that you might see employers buying for their

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Speaker 1: workforce that's.

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Speaker 3: Both affordable for them to buy and make sense in

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Speaker 3: some ways to distribute to employees. And that's for a

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Speaker 3: couple of applications. Those are to do things like for

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Speaker 3: brain wellness programs to decrease stress levels and employees, or

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Speaker 3: this one I use for focus. You can retrain your

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Speaker 3: brain to have longer periods of focus and increase the

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Speaker 3: activity in your prefrontal cortex, which is a form of

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Speaker 3: cognitive enhancement.

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Speaker 1: The idea need to view with your multiple degrees and

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Speaker 1: to professorships having even more focus.

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Speaker 2: It's an unfair advantage.

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Speaker 1: It is. It is. We have these very powerful technologies

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Speaker 1: that are improving exponentially, and we can see many of

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Speaker 1: the upsides. We can also see how they can be

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Speaker 1: used against us. The thing that strikes me about these

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Speaker 1: technologies in particular is that the brain is that last fortress,

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Speaker 1: and our inner self is the thing that defines us.

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Speaker 1: And yet we're at this turning point where that inner

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Speaker 1: space could become part of someone some business's private enclave,

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Speaker 1: or some governments or welly in fantasy. What do we

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Speaker 1: do about it?

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Speaker 3: So I worry about this deeply, and I worry that

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Speaker 3: that final private space, the space that I think is

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Speaker 3: so critical both for self awareness and for resilience, for

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Speaker 3: the ability to know truth from fiction. The emotional self

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Speaker 3: reflection and cultivation is at risk of brain transparency.

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Speaker 1: You mean the idea that we can just be seen

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Speaker 1: through entirely.

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Speaker 2: Essentially, right.

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Speaker 3: I think most people consider having that space of mental

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Speaker 3: reprieve being able to think about what you're going to

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Speaker 3: say next, with whom you share information with whom you're vulnerable.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: The way we define intimacy and a lot of relationships

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Speaker 3: is by choosing what emotions, what thoughts, what secrets we

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Speaker 3: want to share with another person, and if all of

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Speaker 3: that can be revealed by decoding your brain activity, if

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Speaker 3: other people can have access to it, whether it's your

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Speaker 3: partner who says, no, no, I want you to prove

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Speaker 3: that you're in love with me, or you know, your

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Speaker 3: employer who says, you know, I need you to have

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Speaker 3: five hours of focus today.

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Speaker 1: Or show me you gave me one hundred percent that's.

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Speaker 3: Right, prove it to me, or you know, a lie

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Speaker 3: detection test by the governments, or the way you authenticate

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Speaker 3: yourself at borders is through brain transparency. I think this

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Speaker 3: final space of mental reprieve.

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Speaker 2: Is at risk.

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Speaker 1: Your suggestion is cognitive rights. What do you mean by that? So?

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Speaker 3: I believe that a right to cognitive liberty as an

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Speaker 3: international human right or right to self determination over our

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Speaker 3: brains and mental experiences, would give us both a right

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Speaker 3: to access and change our brains if we choose to

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Speaker 3: do so, but are also a right from interference with

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Speaker 3: our mental privacy and our freedom of thoughts. Those can

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Speaker 3: be simply updates to our existing interpretations of right.

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Speaker 1: Already in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right

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Speaker 1: to privacy, the rights freedom of thought and belief, and

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Speaker 1: the right to self expression without undue influence.

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Speaker 3: You can look to the right to privacy and say

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Speaker 3: what we need to make explicit as right to mental

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Speaker 3: privacies included within it.

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Speaker 2: You can look to the.

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Speaker 3: Right to freedom of thoughts, which has currently been really

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Speaker 3: interpreted much more narrowly to be about freedom of religion

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Speaker 3: and belief, and say, no, no, this is also about interception,

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Speaker 3: manipulation and punishment of our thoughts. And we have a

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Speaker 3: collective right to self determination, a political right which really

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Speaker 3: if we look at all of the existing rights, we

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Speaker 3: can say an individual right to self determination is fundamental

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Speaker 3: to every right that is part of the.

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Speaker 2: UN Declaration of Human Rights.

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Speaker 3: So it's not that I think we need new rights,

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Speaker 3: it's that we need a new umbrella concept, which is

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Speaker 3: cognitive liberty to help us and direct us to update

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Speaker 3: our interpretation of existing rights.

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Speaker 1: The other side of all of that, of course, is

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Speaker 1: that these are much more powerful and useful technologies for

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Speaker 1: beneficial outcomes. So how do you propose drawing a line

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Speaker 1: between the acceptable and unacceptable uses of these newer technologies.

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Speaker 3: So I have framed cognitive liberty is a right too

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Speaker 3: and write from and I think the right too is

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Speaker 3: critical because the truth is, we don't treat our brain

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Speaker 3: health and wellness nearly as seriously as we treat the

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Speaker 3: rest of our physical wellbeing. We don't have access to

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Speaker 3: information about our own biases and preferences, even our own

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Speaker 3: cognitive decline over time. Self insight, I think is powerful,

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Speaker 3: which is why it's a positive right to access information

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Speaker 3: about your brain, a positive right to be able to

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Speaker 3: use it. Notice me saying you right. It's about you

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Speaker 3: being able to access and use the technology, you having

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Speaker 3: control over your own brain data, it not being commode

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Speaker 3: and misused against you, and a right from other people

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Speaker 3: coercing you to use the technology or taking your brain data,

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Speaker 3: to analyze it, to mine it, to share it, and

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Speaker 3: to sell it. It's giving you and putting you in

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Speaker 3: the driver's seat of your own brain.

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Speaker 1: Even if we are in the driver's seat, we do

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Speaker 1: have precedence from other types of therapeutics. I'm thinking about

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Speaker 1: attention deficit disorder therapeutics. I'm thinking about antidepressants, which emerged

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00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 1: over the last thirty or forty years, and particularly in

445
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:34,720
Speaker 1: Western markets, particularly in the United States, are heavily over

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00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 1: prescribed because it's easier to deal with some of these

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00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:43,199
Speaker 1: issues through a prescription than perhaps figuring out how to

448
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:48,520
Speaker 1: tackle those issues. These advanced neurotechniques will be more sophisticated,

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00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 1: more precise, more effective. So why wouldn't they fall foul

450
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 1: of the same type of behavior that sees them just

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00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:59,200
Speaker 1: being used pervasively, even if we are notionally in the

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00:24:59,280 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 1: driver's seat.

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00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,920
Speaker 3: They could be right, I mean, I think that's the risk,

454
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 3: and there are risks to individuals using them to shortcut

455
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 3: their own process of self discovery and self awareness and

456
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:14,159
Speaker 3: growth and emotional developments. It can be misused by others.

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00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 3: It can be misused by parents, well intentioned though they

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00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,639
Speaker 3: may be, to try to redirect the brain activity and

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00:25:19,680 --> 00:25:23,159
Speaker 3: brain development of their children. I think in order for

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00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 3: us to effectively realize the potential of this technology and society,

461
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:29,399
Speaker 3: we have to not just have rights right, not just

462
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 3: have norms, but we need to also be substantially increasing

463
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:37,720
Speaker 3: people's awareness of how their brains can be accessed and changed.

464
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 3: What does individual cognitive liberty and cultivating that and individuals

465
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 3: look like. What does it mean to cultivate it in

466
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,680
Speaker 3: children or in the workplace, or to invest in cognitive

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00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 3: liberty for businesses and for corporate developments, for product developments,

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00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:53,640
Speaker 3: for employee wellness.

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00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: Given the urgency the technologies are getting better and better

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Speaker 1: at exponential rates, I'm a bit perplexed about choosing the

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00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: UN as the route to do this. It's not an

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00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: organization that in recent years people would say is adept

473
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: at dealing with change, or indeed effective when it does

474
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:16,720
Speaker 1: finally get round to doing it. So is that the

475
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:19,280
Speaker 1: right way to approach this first?

476
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,920
Speaker 3: It's not the only way, but as a starting place

477
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 3: to say, we need worldwide to recognize as an international

478
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 3: human rights that we have a right to cognitive liberty,

479
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 3: and that that simply directs us to update existing human

480
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 3: rights and our interpretation of it sets both a strong

481
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:37,239
Speaker 3: legal norm which doesn't require everybody to come together. It

482
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 3: requires the existing oversight bodies like the Human Rights Committee

483
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 3: that oversees the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

484
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 3: to update their interpretation and application of existing rights to

485
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,679
Speaker 3: protect people. Even if we don't succeed, meaning even if

486
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 3: the UN takes zero action in this space, that doesn't

487
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 3: prevent us in the United States and Europe and other

488
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:03,959
Speaker 3: countries from interpreting existing human rights consistently with the idea

489
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,000
Speaker 3: that there's a right to mental privacy, that freedom of

490
00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 3: thought is broader, that we have an individual right to

491
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 3: self determination.

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00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 1: I mean, it strikes me that even if this isn't sufficient,

493
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 1: also self regulation that's right could be very, very valuable

494
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:23,119
Speaker 1: if you're able to persuade the handful soon to be

495
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 1: dozens of companies making these technologies that cognitive rights matter.

496
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 1: That also creates some kind of a buttress for them

497
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:32,479
Speaker 1: in the near future.

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00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 2: I think that's right.

499
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 3: I think that could be simple things in product design,

500
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:40,399
Speaker 3: when you have multifunctional earbuds to be able to turn

501
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:43,719
Speaker 3: off brainwave reading while you're taking a conference call if

502
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 3: you choose to do so, or to recognize the mental

503
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:49,679
Speaker 3: privacy of their employees, and to say here's technology you

504
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 3: can use to improve your focus we won't collect the data,

505
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:55,199
Speaker 3: we won't use it to make choices about you.

506
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 1: Now, the premise of our conversation is that within five years,

507
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: our thoughts could be legally protected. How likely do you

508
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: think this vision could become reality?

509
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 3: Well, I'm an optimist, I would say, and I believe

510
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 3: that we have to get this right, and that the

511
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 3: only way to get this right is to give people

512
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 3: strong rights and protections over their thoughts from being intercepted, manipulated,

513
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 3: and punished. Within five years, I think the technology is

514
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 3: going to be mature, and it's going to be widely

515
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:28,520
Speaker 3: available at scale across society, which is why I believe

516
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 3: before that happens, we will make moves to recognize or

517
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 3: write a cognitive liberty to enable us to be empowered

518
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:37,520
Speaker 3: by rather than oppressed by the technology.

519
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 1: Anita Farrehani, I don't have to tell you what I'm thinking,

520
00:28:40,280 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: but there has been a tremendous pleasure to speak to you.

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00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 2: Well, such a pleasure for me as well. Thank you.

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00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: Reflecting on my conversation with Nita, I can't help feeling

523
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:58,120
Speaker 1: that the technologies we've discussed will be mainstream even faster

524
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 1: than we think, and two hundred million of us wear

525
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 1: smart watches, and these collect personal information every second of

526
00:29:05,520 --> 00:29:09,600
Speaker 1: the day. It's becoming a normal experience, and the exponential

527
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: improvement in technologies will allow devices like these to monitor

528
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: us more closely. Yes to the point of tracking our

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00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 1: mental states. So it does make sense to protect our

530
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 1: minds our thoughts. But as going via the slow moving

531
00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: un the best route or can we together find a

532
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: better way? Thanks for listening to the exponentially podcast. If

533
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: you enjoy the show, please leave a review or rating.

534
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: It really does help others find us. The Exponentially podcast

535
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 1: is presented by me azeem as Are. The sound designer

536
00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 1: is Will horricks The research was led by Chloe Ippah

537
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: and music composed by Emily Green and John Zarcone. The

538
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 1: show is produced by Frederick Cassela, Maria Garrilov and me

539
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: azeem as Are Special thanks to Sage Bauman, Grocott and

540
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:05,280
Speaker 1: Magnus Henrickson. The executive producers are Andrew Barden, Adam Kamiski,

541
00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 1: and Kyle Kramer. David Ravella is the managing editor. Exponentially

542
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:11,960
Speaker 1: was created by Frederick Cassella and is an Eat the

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00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: pie I plus one limited production in association with Bloomberg LLC,