Speaker 1: I actually got to play with Meta's neural band. So
Speaker 1: this application was like pac Man moving around the screen,
Speaker 1: and you had to subtly move your thumb or your
Speaker 1: forefinger so that it was picking up the brain activity
Speaker 1: at your wrist, and then pac Man would move up
Speaker 1: or down or left to right.
Speaker 2: Nita Farahani is a professor of law and philosophy at
Speaker 2: Duke University, and she's written a book called The Battle
Speaker 2: for Your Brain.
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool and within like a couple of minutes,
Speaker 1: it was calibrated to my signals just barely moving my
Speaker 1: fingers or my wrist.
Speaker 2: So you're getting very close to being able to play
Speaker 2: pac Man with your brain. You might know about Elon
Speaker 2: Musk's company, Neuralink. You might also know that you can't
Speaker 2: just go out and buy a Neuralink device yet. But
Speaker 2: which you might not is that other companies already have
Speaker 2: stuff on the shelves and that more is coming.
Speaker 1: Like I'm sitting here at my desk, I've got a
Speaker 1: little cabinet next to me and it is filled with
Speaker 1: different ones of these devices. I have headphones that have
Speaker 1: like EEG sensors around them. I've got earbuds not from Apple,
Speaker 1: that have EEG sensors in them. I've got forehead bands.
Speaker 1: I have like dozens sitting in this little cabinet next
Speaker 1: to me, and there are tons on the market already.
Speaker 1: Metow was like the first i'd say, major tech company
Speaker 1: launching everyday neurotechnology into the marketplace right where you can
Speaker 1: go to best Buy and you can buy a neural band.
Speaker 2: This stuff is here now and you don't need to
Speaker 2: drill a hole in your head to use it.
Speaker 1: People hear these stories from Neurallink and others and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that doesn't apply to me, because that's some sci fi
Speaker 1: future where like somebody who is in a wheelchair who's
Speaker 1: unable to move or to speak, has something drilled into
Speaker 1: their brain. Like that's not me, But go to best Buy.
Speaker 1: That's you right, like me at this conference, you know,
Speaker 1: saying to Meta like, yeah, go ahead and take my
Speaker 1: brain activity while I interact with your pac Man on
Speaker 1: your device and then playing pac Man with my neural signals,
Speaker 1: not with a joystick or my finger anything else.
Speaker 2: As a professor, Needle works on both law and philosophy,
Speaker 2: which makes sense because on the one hand, figuring out
Speaker 2: how the mind works that's a philosophical question.
Speaker 1: If you're a philosopher mind and you're trying to understand
Speaker 1: how the mind works, and then there's technology that could
Speaker 1: start to really decode it, Like how could you ignore
Speaker 1: that as a philosopher and just continue to ask thought
Speaker 1: problems and thought questions when there's real technology that could
Speaker 1: help you answer some of those questions.
Speaker 2: And then there's the law, or we might say the
Speaker 2: lack of laws. Neurotechnology is blasting off right now, and
Speaker 2: Nita says that we need to figure out what's legal
Speaker 2: and what's not before it's too late.
Speaker 1: Every company, the last piece of you that they don't
Speaker 1: have access to is your brain. There is no trace
Speaker 1: of privacy left except for this, which is what you're
Speaker 1: thinking and what you're feeling inside of your own mind.
Speaker 2: Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcast. This is kill switch this.
Speaker 3: I'm DEXTERH Thomas, i'morright, I'm sorry, goodbye.
Speaker 2: The field of neurotechnology itself has been around longer than
Speaker 2: most people realize. Even the term brain computer interface, which
Speaker 2: we ill used today, goes back to the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: But since then this stuff was mostly confined to research labs.
Speaker 2: There have been products here and there, but it's never
Speaker 2: really been practical enough for a mainstream audience to catch on.
Speaker 2: But the people who know the technology have always figured
Speaker 2: out that one day it would catch on. Anita remembers
Speaker 2: the day that she was convinced Back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: I was at a conference at Bourton and this guy
Speaker 1: stands up to give his presentation and he says, like,
Speaker 1: why are we humans such clumsy output devices? Okay, that
Speaker 1: got my attention.
Speaker 2: We're really output device.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're a very clumsy output device. All right, dexter.
Speaker 2: No, I've been insulted a lot of ways. That's a
Speaker 2: new one.
Speaker 1: So he says, we're really good at taking in information,
Speaker 1: but we're going backwards in time instead of fours And
Speaker 1: he's like, think about it. We're typing with two thumbs
Speaker 1: now instead of typing with like our full hand. So
Speaker 1: our rate of getting information out is going down, not up.
Speaker 1: What if we could operate octopus like tentacles with our
Speaker 1: brains instead. What he was talking about was he had
Speaker 1: this very clunky early version of this armband that he
Speaker 1: was showcasing, and the company at the time was called
Speaker 1: Control Labs, and he was showing how you could type
Speaker 1: on a virtual keyboard by having like brain activity read
Speaker 1: here at the wrist. I was fascinated. I was like,
Speaker 1: there are two things that make this lead pivotal acquisition
Speaker 1: in neurotechnology for this to go mainstream. One is the
Speaker 1: form factor, Like instead of it being a stupid forehead band,
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that could show up in your
Speaker 1: watch and be part of everyday wearable devices. But then second,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, he was talking about it becoming the
Speaker 1: interface to technology, replacing your keyboard in your mouth as
Speaker 1: the way that you would interact with other technology. And
Speaker 1: I was like, I get it now. I see how
Speaker 1: this stuff becomes mainstream and for everyone is you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's augmented reality or the Internet of things. Like
Speaker 1: if you're laying in bed and you want to flick
Speaker 1: off your life that are part of the Internet of
Speaker 1: things in your home, like you either have to reach
Speaker 1: for your phone or maybe you could just imagine doing it,
Speaker 1: and then there's a device on your wrist that picks
Speaker 1: up your intention and turns off the light, right, And
Speaker 1: that's what he was talking about. He was talking about,
Speaker 1: like our brain becoming the way we interface with other
Speaker 1: technology through a wearable device, whether that's our computer or
Speaker 1: any other Internet of things, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: get it now.
Speaker 2: So how big is this industry? Now?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I haven't kept up with what the current
Speaker 1: numbers are because the numbers keep changing on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: and the numbers are converging with AI and we're talking
Speaker 1: billions to trillions of dollars. Is how people are thinking
Speaker 1: about it, because, for example, I was at a conference
Speaker 1: last week that was this big pivotal conference in the field,
Speaker 1: and at that meeting, I learned about the kind of
Speaker 1: huge bets that Apple is making in the space, and
Speaker 1: it seems like they're getting closer to becoming like a
Speaker 1: big help platform kind of bet in the brain. And
Speaker 1: if that happens, then the size of the industry we're
Speaker 1: talking about is like the size of Apple and every
Speaker 1: Apple device that's out there that starts to become a
Speaker 1: brain health and a brain tracking device in addition to
Speaker 1: everything else that's out there. So I'd say I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what the number is anymore, because the number
Speaker 1: is as big as the economy.
Speaker 2: And I'm just going to paraphrase from one of your
Speaker 2: articles here, This from a while ago So there's Neurolink,
Speaker 2: which raised six hundred and fifty million at a nine
Speaker 2: billion dollar valuation. That's Elon's Project Synchron one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty five million, Precision Neuroscience ninety three million, Paradromics eighty
Speaker 2: seven million. Sam Altman from open Ai is supposed to
Speaker 2: be co founding merged labs that hit close to a
Speaker 2: billion dollar valuation before launching. It hasn't even launched yet.
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of names, a lot of money, and.
Speaker 1: These are just the implanted companies, right, So you listed
Speaker 1: a bunch of companies that are companies that are primarily
Speaker 1: going through regulatory approval with the Food and Drug Administration
Speaker 1: or other medical regulatory licensing organizations like within the governments
Speaker 1: where the goal is for people who are suffering from
Speaker 1: als or suffering from like paraplegia. These are people who
Speaker 1: would be eligible to participate in clinical trials where they'd
Speaker 1: have a whole, you know, cut in their skull, an
Speaker 1: implant that would be implanted inside of the brain which
Speaker 1: could read brain activity and then it interacts with something
Speaker 1: outside the body, like an application that helps to code
Speaker 1: that brain activity and might enable them to interact with
Speaker 1: an iPhone or an iPad or smart things within their
Speaker 1: home so that they can interact with the outside world,
Speaker 1: which is an extraordinary possibility. So those companies are one
Speaker 1: set of neurotech companies. The other set of neurotech companies
Speaker 1: are companies like Meta and Apple, who instead of investing
Speaker 1: in technologlogy that's implanted inside the brain, are looking at
Speaker 1: wearable devices. And so you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: have an Apple smart watch. The Apple smart watch already
Speaker 1: has inside of it sensors that pick up things like
Speaker 1: heart rate, or smart rings that pick up things like
Speaker 1: temperature or movement. And for these companies, what they're looking
Speaker 1: at is putting sensors that pick up brain activity at
Speaker 1: a much lower signal rate than inside the brain. So
Speaker 1: you might have a few electrodes that are inside air
Speaker 1: pods or in the soft cups that go around your
Speaker 1: ears or pick up what's called peripheral nervous system activity.
Speaker 1: So as your brain sends a signal down your arm
Speaker 1: to your wrist and picks up your intention to swipe
Speaker 1: or type or move, it can pick up that peripheral
Speaker 1: nervous system activity. So this is picking up noisier like
Speaker 1: less sensitive brain data and by less sensitive, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not as fine tune signals as being inside the brain,
Speaker 1: but can be really powerful for things like being able
Speaker 1: to interact with the device or being able to interact
Speaker 1: with augmented reality or virtual reality. So these are very
Speaker 1: different things, Which is the numbers you were listening were
Speaker 1: for the implanted neurotechnology world for people who have serious diseases.
Speaker 1: The wearable world is for everybody else. Like instead of
Speaker 1: just tracking your heart rate through your Apple Watch, you
Speaker 1: track your stress levels, you track your brain activity. You
Speaker 1: track for me, I'm a chronic migraine er, you track
Speaker 1: your likelihood of an impending migraine, or your likelihood of
Speaker 1: an epileptic seizure, or a lot of different brain signals
Speaker 1: that could give you brain health information and brain wellness information.
Speaker 1: And so when I say it's as like big as
Speaker 1: the economy, it's as big as every person who has
Speaker 1: a brain and once inside in what's happening with their brains.
Speaker 1: Or for every person who has a mouse or a
Speaker 1: keyboard and might come to replace the mouse or keyboard
Speaker 1: with interacting with those devices with a slight flick of
Speaker 1: their finger instead of out of moving around on a
Speaker 1: mouse Okay.
Speaker 2: The one company that I think people may have heard
Speaker 2: of is Neuralink, oh sure, yeah, which is doing something
Speaker 2: fundamentally pretty different from some of the stuff that you
Speaker 2: were talking about, whether it's a headband or earbuds or whatever.
Speaker 2: And how is that different from, say, what neuralink is
Speaker 2: trying to do.
Speaker 1: And the reason most people have heard of Neuralink, of course,
Speaker 1: is because Elon Musk runs Neuralink. And one of the
Speaker 1: very hard things about implanted neurotechnology is the limited number
Speaker 1: of neurosurgeons who can perform what is a very delicate
Speaker 1: operation to get a device into a person's brain. And
Speaker 1: Neuralinks started to build basically robots that could do part
Speaker 1: of that surgery, with the vision of being able to
Speaker 1: have clinics all over the country or all over the
Speaker 1: world that could implant what is a very tiny device.
Speaker 1: And then the very tiny device has basically like hair
Speaker 1: like threads that are attached to it that reach through
Speaker 1: the brain and bed in the brain. So what a
Speaker 1: neuralink device does that's very different than these wearable devices
Speaker 1: is it's reaching into lots of different parts of the brain,
Speaker 1: and it has many, many, many more electrodes than the
Speaker 1: couple of electrodes that you might have outside the brain
Speaker 1: that have to be read through the skull, so it
Speaker 1: bypasses like it's inside, picking up brain activity where.
Speaker 2: It's happening direct from the source, direct from the.
Speaker 1: Source, and at a scale that is nothing like what
Speaker 1: is happening outside the brain. And so he's been very
Speaker 1: clear that his vision is not that this is just
Speaker 1: for people who've suffered from als or paraplesia or things
Speaker 1: like that. He thinks everybody one day should have a
Speaker 1: brain implant that can read brain activity at that depth
Speaker 1: and potentially write to brain activity. And that he has
Speaker 1: said like he thinks this is the way that humans
Speaker 1: compete with AI. Is essentially merging with AI, is how
Speaker 1: he's touted it.
Speaker 4: Emerged scenario with AI is the one that seems like
Speaker 4: probably the best like for us, Yes, if you can't
Speaker 4: beat it, join it.
Speaker 2: That's Elon Musk talking to Joe Rogan back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: So from a long term existential standpoint, that's like the
Speaker 4: purpose of neuralink is to create a high bandwidth interface
Speaker 4: to the brain such that we can be symbotic with AI.
Speaker 1: Now, how close is that? How far is that I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I think it's weighs out right. There
Speaker 1: aren't even FDA approved implants yet, let alone for healthy
Speaker 1: people choosing to drill a hole in their skull and
Speaker 1: putting a device inside of it.
Speaker 2: But you don't necessarily have to drill a hole in
Speaker 2: your head. AI companies are looking at wearable devices that
Speaker 2: would allow you to get similar results.
Speaker 1: OpenAI has an entire division that is now dedicated to
Speaker 1: trying to build brain found models, where one day you
Speaker 1: would have a model like instead of a large language
Speaker 1: model that just speaks in texts, in video and other
Speaker 1: kinds of context. It also could go from brain signals
Speaker 1: to text to video to being truly multimodal. And they
Speaker 1: have this big investment in merged labs to create a
Speaker 1: brain computer interface through a very different mechanism than other
Speaker 1: ones do. All of these trillionaires who have AI companies
Speaker 1: are investing in major neurotechnology because they see these as
Speaker 1: converging fields. People like Elon Musk see these as ultimately
Speaker 1: converging together. That you interact with AI through your neurotechnology,
Speaker 1: that you interact with the rest of the world through
Speaker 1: your neurotechnology, which also then decodes what's happening in your neurotechnology.
Speaker 1: It's this loop between the brain and AI that they're
Speaker 1: really building toward.
Speaker 2: So that's where we are brain implants for people who
Speaker 2: need them, and neuro headstraps it best buy for everybody else,
Speaker 2: and trillion dollar companies racing to be the first to
Speaker 2: make money off of a loop between you and AI.
Speaker 2: After the break, we'll find out if this stuff can
Speaker 2: actually read your mind yet, because under certain circumstances it
Speaker 2: kind of can. So, I mean there's kind of two
Speaker 2: ends of this that you're talking about here, right. There's
Speaker 2: the being able to control pac Man with your brain. Cool,
Speaker 2: that's one part, right, and then there's somebody being able
Speaker 2: to read what is in your brain. I mean effectively
Speaker 2: you have to have that, right. If you're able to
Speaker 2: control something, something needs to be reading what I suppose,
Speaker 2: what you're thinking. And that's the other end of this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the question is, now we go back to
Speaker 1: the philosopher side of me. What does it mean to think?
Speaker 1: And what is it that you're really decoding?
Speaker 2: What does it mean to think? Okay?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it matters, right because when people hear
Speaker 1: mind reading, what they think of is like all of
Speaker 1: the thoughts in your head, the images, the feelings, this
Speaker 1: like really robust concept of what it means to be
Speaker 1: a thinking human. And what neurotechnology is decoding right now
Speaker 1: is like one stream of that, not everything that's in
Speaker 1: your head. Like most of the consumer neurotechnology, it's decoding
Speaker 1: basic brain states. So it's decoding are you tired, are
Speaker 1: you happy? Are you feeling like positive or negative? Are
Speaker 1: you paying attention? Or is your mind wandering? But it's
Speaker 1: not decoding like your full mental landscape. And increasingly what
Speaker 1: AI is being used to do is to train on
Speaker 1: weaker and weaker signals to be able to translate intentionally
Speaker 1: communicated speech. Now, what is that versus just thought? If
Speaker 1: I want to send a text message, I am formulating
Speaker 1: words that I intend to express out of my brain
Speaker 1: and into the world, as opposed to like the private ruminations,
Speaker 1: like the things like you're turning over an idea in
Speaker 1: your mind. You have a new crush and you're envisioning
Speaker 1: that crush. That's not something you mean to communicate outside
Speaker 1: of your brain. And so what neurotechnology so far has
Speaker 1: been trained to do is to pick up that kind
Speaker 1: of speech that you're trying to translate out of your brain,
Speaker 1: which shows up differently in your brain.
Speaker 2: How does this stuff actually work a layperson? I think
Speaker 2: we have a general idea that Okay, there's something called
Speaker 2: synapses and there's like electric signals going on in your brain.
Speaker 2: But how does that get translated out to actually data
Speaker 2: that a computer could read or that could be useful.
Speaker 1: So depends on what it is that's being decoded out.
Speaker 1: But let's start with consumer wearables. Let's imagine that, like
Speaker 1: I have an air pods right now, Let's imagine I
Speaker 1: have earbuds in that are picking up brain waves. So
Speaker 1: what are brain waves as you think, as you are
Speaker 1: feeling anything. As you said synapses, right, neurons are firing
Speaker 1: in your brain, which give off tiny electrical discharges. And
Speaker 1: when you have any dominant mental state that you're experiencing,
Speaker 1: you'll have hundreds of thousands of neurons that are firing
Speaker 1: at the same time giving off those little electrical discharges.
Speaker 1: And the some of those electrical discharges are what can
Speaker 1: be picked up outside of the skull. What these kinds
Speaker 1: of AirPods or like other electrodes can pick up is
Speaker 1: they pick up the brain waves and the amplitudes of
Speaker 1: the different waves, and then AI has been trained on
Speaker 1: those patterns in the same way that AI has been
Speaker 1: trained to be able to look at breast mammograms and
Speaker 1: be able to say, this one is cancer, this one
Speaker 1: is not cancer. It's like pattern recognition, right, So same
Speaker 1: thing is happening with brain waves and brainwave amplitudes. Is
Speaker 1: different patterns and different brainwave amplitudes have been associated with
Speaker 1: positive negative, mind wandering, paying attention. So it's just taking
Speaker 1: what are brain waves and then training AI to understand
Speaker 1: this is what it looks like at any particular moment.
Speaker 2: So there're gonna be some people who hear this and
Speaker 2: think this sounds amazing. If I can play pac Man
Speaker 2: with my brain now, yo, I bet I can just
Speaker 2: run a call of duty lobby and maybe you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of years, maybe like really truly play with
Speaker 2: my brain now. Granted, there's gonna be some people who
Speaker 2: are thinking all this, you know, this would be awesome
Speaker 2: for is like scrolling TikTok and better without my hands,
Speaker 2: like this would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Probably infinite scroll like that is just it's painful to imagine.
Speaker 2: Truly. Yeah, actually, like in the most literal sense of
Speaker 2: the word, possible brain rod But there's gonna be some
Speaker 2: people who are super into this. Yeah, and honestly sounds cool, right.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm able bodied, I'm able to use the
Speaker 2: computer with my hands, but yo, if I don't have to,
Speaker 2: if I can do it from across the room, that's
Speaker 2: kind of cool. And then the ability to for somebody
Speaker 2: who has lost the ability or doesn't have the ability
Speaker 2: to do some of the things that I'm able to do,
Speaker 2: type or speak or whatever, if they can control a
Speaker 2: computer communicate with people directly amazing.
Speaker 3: You.
Speaker 2: Your book, however, is called The Battle for the Brain,
Speaker 2: and I feel like there's you have some caveats, I understand.
Speaker 2: What should we be thinking about?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 1: Is it? This is your last stand for privacy. All
Speaker 1: you've got left at this point is what's happening inside
Speaker 1: of your brain. Right at this point, people have given
Speaker 1: up their privacy of their everyday interactions. They carry a
Speaker 1: device around all the time that tracks their every movement,
Speaker 1: even their every movement throughout their house. They have listening
Speaker 1: devices in their bedrooms. They have smart refrigerators that know
Speaker 1: exactly how much food and other things that you know
Speaker 1: are going on when you even start to type a
Speaker 1: search into Google, it auto completes. There are all kinds
Speaker 1: of predictions that are happening all day long about what
Speaker 1: you're thinking. That's why you have targeted advertisements and social
Speaker 1: media feeds that are tailored to what algorithm thinks that
Speaker 1: you will like. But it's still not perfect, and there
Speaker 1: is still a piece of you you hold back that
Speaker 1: you do not express, and that part of you is
Speaker 1: in your mind. And when you start to hook up
Speaker 1: sensors to that part of you, that's it. You've given
Speaker 1: that last stand of freedom, that last bit of privacy,
Speaker 1: to companies that have shown themselves to be particularly bad
Speaker 1: at having your self interest in mind.
Speaker 2: So let's back up. Even because we're speaking about it
Speaker 2: as though it's something that will happen in the future,
Speaker 2: but no, it's happening now, So yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 1: What I did was I wrote the book really to say, like,
Speaker 1: here's what's happening right now, not like here's some future
Speaker 1: sci fi scenario, but here are misuses of the technology
Speaker 1: that are happening right now. Here are educational institutions in
Speaker 1: China that are forcing fifth graders to wear headsets that
Speaker 1: track their attention and their mind wandering in the classroom.
Speaker 1: Here are police across the world who are using wearable
Speaker 1: neurotechnology to interrogate criminal suspects. Here employers who are tracking
Speaker 1: productivity and tracking whether they're workers are fatigued or paying
Speaker 1: attention in the workplace, Like the kinds of abuses and
Speaker 1: misuses that you might imagine. I give example after example
Speaker 1: in the book of them happening right now, just not
Speaker 1: at skill. That's the only difference.
Speaker 2: The employer monitoring thing. I think that one's like, particularly
Speaker 2: because that really feels like something that could happen immediately anywhere.
Speaker 2: If it's able to happen in one place.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because I my sister's an employement
Speaker 1: at Journey, and when she read my chapter your brain work,
Speaker 1: she was horrified.
Speaker 2: And so here that has to be really interesting.
Speaker 1: Family goes, oh, it's like fun family talks. But okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the basic idea, Like, especially since the pandemic bossware,
Speaker 1: the technology that tracks people through like using their webcams
Speaker 1: when they're working at home, or software that's been installed
Speaker 1: onto their computers to track their productivity level, like bosswaar
Speaker 1: is everywhere.
Speaker 2: Remember back when everybody was like buying those mouse jiggling
Speaker 2: devices on Amazon to make it look like you were
Speaker 2: still working. Yeah, but if they're in your brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. We'll just start with the backdrop of people
Speaker 1: recognize employers are doing this, but there still is to
Speaker 1: your point, like there's the jiggler on the mouse, there's
Speaker 1: the little cover on your webcam so that when you
Speaker 1: step away from your computer it's not totally obvious that
Speaker 1: you're not at your computer, or like the fake me
Speaker 1: that I can put into my my my chair to
Speaker 1: make it look like it's me or whatever else. Starting
Speaker 1: more than a decade ago, there was a company that
Speaker 1: and I'll just say this company has done the right
Speaker 1: things privacy wise, but they're a good example. Nevertheless. So
Speaker 1: the company is called smart Cap and what they developed
Speaker 1: was this like forehead band, but it goes all the
Speaker 1: way around that picks up electrical activity from the brain
Speaker 1: and it can be worn inside of a hard hat
Speaker 1: or a train conductor cap or a baseball cap. And
Speaker 1: what it tracks is fatigue levels of an employee, like
Speaker 1: on a scale of one to five, or are they wide
Speaker 1: awake or are they falling asleep? And if you're a
Speaker 1: truck driver and you are driving, you know, down the highway.
Speaker 1: It could be useful for the employer to be able
Speaker 1: to track whether or not you're falling asleep if you're fatigued.
Speaker 1: So that was the purpose. It was for safety reasons
Speaker 1: that they launched this, but pretty quickly other companies around
Speaker 1: the world were like, well, cool, I can figure out
Speaker 1: who's coming to work when they stayed up all night partying.
Speaker 1: I can figure out like who's the productive and paying
Speaker 1: attention person versus the person who's mind wandering all day.
Speaker 1: And so these neurotech companies started selling to enterprises to say,
Speaker 1: why don't you just start monitoring brain activity? Why go
Speaker 1: through all these inefficiencies of downstream measurement of productivity. Just
Speaker 1: measure productivity at.
Speaker 2: The brain, you know. So where you started, for a
Speaker 2: lot of people would say, I want to make sure
Speaker 2: the truck driver is awake. But it's super interesting here
Speaker 2: because I think there is a way in which there's
Speaker 2: some times we're okay with certain people being monitored, especially
Speaker 2: if you're not a truck driver. Yep, it's okay if
Speaker 2: that person is being monitor because they need to be monitored.
Speaker 2: But hold on, hold on, you talk about monitoring me now, and.
Speaker 1: Once you allow the one, the question is whether you're
Speaker 1: allowing the other. But also in my book, I give
Speaker 1: the example of the truck driver just so that people
Speaker 1: can grapple with it exactly for that reason, which is
Speaker 1: sometimes we are going to be okay with it, And
Speaker 1: the question is with what limits is it okay for
Speaker 1: the employer at the same time that they're monitoring the
Speaker 1: truck driver's brain activity for whether they're wider awake or
Speaker 1: falling asleep, to also to code their brain activity of
Speaker 1: the person that they're fantasizing about. Well, I hope everybody
Speaker 1: says no, right, like track if they're falling asleep at
Speaker 1: the wheel. But there's a whole bunch of other information
Speaker 1: that you could extract from the brain at the same time,
Speaker 1: and that should be off limits.
Speaker 2: So one really interesting question that I've seen come up
Speaker 2: a lot recently is what sort of privacy that law
Speaker 2: enforcement can expect. And there might be some people who
Speaker 2: would be interested in knowing what a police officer, what
Speaker 2: an ice agent was thinking when they did something. Should
Speaker 2: we have access to police officers' brain data?
Speaker 1: Hmm, that's interesting right. I like the analogy because you know,
Speaker 1: we've been dealing with this on police cameras. Right does
Speaker 1: the public get to watch the bodycam footage? The reason
Speaker 1: that bodycam footage was originally developed was for the police
Speaker 1: force to have a second source of you know, kind
Speaker 1: of monitoring what the police officer was doing rather than
Speaker 1: just from their perspective. And then the public started to say, well,
Speaker 1: if you're recording that, we want access to that data
Speaker 1: as well, right, And there's no reason why there should
Speaker 1: be asymmetric access to that information. Asymmetries and power are
Speaker 1: part of how you end up with abuses of power,
Speaker 1: and checks on those asymmetries can be really powerful as
Speaker 1: a way to counteract it. But I'm going to start
Speaker 1: from a different place, which is I don't think that
Speaker 1: the government should have access to our brain data. So
Speaker 1: I don't think that there should be an asymmetry to
Speaker 1: begin with, because I don't think either side should have
Speaker 1: access to each other's brain activity data. I think the
Speaker 1: police should not be able to interrogate a person's mind
Speaker 1: and the public shouldn't be able to interrogate the police's mind.
Speaker 1: That we should have a right to mental privacy on
Speaker 1: both sides. That is symmetrical, not asymmetrical. And we can
Speaker 1: actually set those guardrails. How do you design your laws
Speaker 1: and how do you design your policies so that you
Speaker 1: got the upside without also having to accept the downside?
Speaker 2: Okay, so how exactly are we supposed to design these laws? Also,
Speaker 2: why hasn't anyone just made these laws already? Well, they
Speaker 2: have kind of, but it just isn't working out very well.
Speaker 2: We get into that and talk about how we could
Speaker 2: do better after the break. If you take away nothing
Speaker 2: else from this episode, I hope you're able to take
Speaker 2: away the fact that neurotech is here right now. It
Speaker 2: is not just sci fi. It's not abstract, it's not
Speaker 2: something in the future. It already works and there is
Speaker 2: already big money behind it. Okay, that established. Let's go
Speaker 2: back and think about what happened when social media got popular.
Speaker 2: So as a society, we all really got taken by surprise.
Speaker 2: We weren't prepared for the addiction, for the disinformation for
Speaker 2: the forty fifth president of the United States, any of
Speaker 2: that stuff. And the same thing is happening with AI
Speaker 2: right now. We have slept walked our way into a
Speaker 2: society full of artificial intelligence. So how do we not
Speaker 2: repeat that same mistake. How do we prepare for neurotech?
Speaker 2: Nita says the answer is probably making some laws right
Speaker 2: now while we still have time.
Speaker 1: In this book, what I advocate for is a starting
Speaker 1: place is a set of norms, and the norm. Like
Speaker 1: to name the norm, it's cognitive liberty, the right to
Speaker 1: self determination over your brain and mental experiences. And then
Speaker 1: how that translates into law. It shows up in a
Speaker 1: lot of places. Right The easiest is imagine setting an
Speaker 1: international human right, where the right is updating existing human
Speaker 1: rights to reflect the kind of modern threats. So privacy
Speaker 1: should explicitly include a right to mental privacy. The right
Speaker 1: to self determination, which is collective and political right, should
Speaker 1: also be an individual right to self determination, so you
Speaker 1: have a right to access and change your brain. Freedom
Speaker 1: of thought needs to include your right against manipulation and
Speaker 1: punishment for your thoughts.
Speaker 2: And some states have started doing what she's describing. California
Speaker 2: and Colorado have both passed laws that treat your neural
Speaker 2: data as a new protected category of data.
Speaker 1: There are some laws that are starting to be adopted,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States, where the idea is to
Speaker 1: create a sensitive category of data. So in states that
Speaker 1: already have comprehensive privacy laws, like in California or Colorado
Speaker 1: to recognize neural data as a category of data that's
Speaker 1: sensitive and requires special kinds of processing for that, and
Speaker 1: that gets as part of the way there in that
Speaker 1: the companies have requirements and limitations on how they actually
Speaker 1: address and use neural data. The problem largely is that
Speaker 1: the inferences about mental state don't happen in isolation. And
Speaker 1: so for example, if you start to have electrodes that
Speaker 1: are picking up brain activity and those work together with
Speaker 1: glasses that pick up through eye tracking data where your
Speaker 1: gaze is, it's the data together that starts to allow
Speaker 1: for really precise inferences. We didn't have to articulate these
Speaker 1: kinds of rights before because we just assumed we had them.
Speaker 1: But technology sometimes reveals to us what our limitations of
Speaker 1: law and philosophy are. Like they help us see, okay,
Speaker 1: law assumed you had it. We didn't have to name it.
Speaker 1: It assumed you had freedom of thought. It assumed you
Speaker 1: had mental privacy because there was no way to violate
Speaker 1: it before and now there is, and so now you
Speaker 1: have to name it. So I think it's a good attempt.
Speaker 1: We're starting to see movement in this direction. That's what
Speaker 1: we would hope to see. The problem right now is
Speaker 1: in the execution, and I think we'll close that gap eventually.
Speaker 1: I think eventually we'll start to recognize that there is
Speaker 1: a right to mental privacy, that that right to mental
Speaker 1: privacy doesn't matter how you get at brain activity, it's
Speaker 1: getting at brain activity at all, and that we need
Speaker 1: to create special protections that give peace people unique rights
Speaker 1: to do so, and hopefully we do that before the
Speaker 1: technology becomes widespread, because it's almost impossible to claw back rights.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to protect rights in advance.
Speaker 2: How concerned are you that we're just going to get
Speaker 2: used to a company having access to our brain before
Speaker 2: we actually get the chance to do something about it preemptively?
Speaker 1: It is something unusual that I had to convince my
Speaker 1: editor of, which is when the paperback version of my
Speaker 1: book came out, which was a year after the hardback
Speaker 1: copy of my book came out, to let me write
Speaker 1: a new chapter, like I kind of PostScript, and I
Speaker 1: titled that chapter normalizing Neural Surveillance. But it showed that's
Speaker 1: kind of exactly how it happens, especially when you encounter
Speaker 1: new technology. In settings that are unfamiliar, meaning like they're
Speaker 1: oftentimes paired with something that isn't the threat. You go
Speaker 1: to the perfume counter and you're offered the chance to
Speaker 1: wear a neural headset to tell what your favorite perfume
Speaker 1: is how your brain reacts to perfume. Or you go
Speaker 1: to the Museum of Modern Art and you're invited to
Speaker 1: put on a neural headset to look at an extraordinary
Speaker 1: AI art installation and then become part of the art
Speaker 1: as your brain activity merges with the art in visual form.
Speaker 1: These are real examples. These aren't hypotheticals that I'm coming
Speaker 1: up with. These are real things that are happening. And
Speaker 1: what happens is people then have positive associations like wow,
Speaker 1: that was so cool, not wow that was so scary.
Speaker 1: I just gave up my brain activity data on the
Speaker 1: beach to meta And it's how we normalize the technology
Speaker 1: and give up like a whole new category of data
Speaker 1: our last passion of freedom without ever thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I'm inviting us to think about it. I'm begging us
Speaker 1: to think about it, right, and I am like, please,
Speaker 1: let's this time think about it and make the choices
Speaker 1: so that the technology which can be extraordinarily promising, which
Speaker 1: could transform brain health and wellness, which could be incredibly empowering,
Speaker 1: becomes a tool that does all of those things rather
Speaker 1: than a tool of surveillance and of stripping us of
Speaker 1: our last stand for freedom.
Speaker 2: And moving away from the privacy and the law side
Speaker 2: for just a second and going back to philosophy. The
Speaker 2: commercialization of neurotech and the outside access to that data
Speaker 2: also has some implications for your own sense of who
Speaker 2: you are.
Speaker 1: I think there has to be some space that we
Speaker 1: create for us to continue to be human. And I
Speaker 1: think that space is the space of mental reprieve, Like
Speaker 1: it always has been. It's always been assumed. It's always
Speaker 1: been presumed that you would have it because there was
Speaker 1: never a way to access it before. And I think, like,
Speaker 1: think about this, Think about like your closest human relationships,
Speaker 1: Like what makes them close for you?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, I suppose you can tell them anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you choose what to tell them, right, And
Speaker 1: that's different than what you choose to tell other people.
Speaker 1: There is an asymmetry of how much you're willing to
Speaker 1: be vulnerable with another person, how much you're willing to
Speaker 1: share with them, and you get to make those choices,
Speaker 1: and if that choice was taken away from you, right,
Speaker 1: the contents of your mind were something that other people
Speaker 1: had access to, like, it would both change your relationship
Speaker 1: to the person that you're closest to, but also change
Speaker 1: your relationship to yourself, because maybe you start to try
Speaker 1: to censor your own thoughts or you're worried in the
Speaker 1: same way that you're worried about your writing or what
Speaker 1: you do in public, will lead to other people judging you,
Speaker 1: and the earlier that happens. Like a kid, I have
Speaker 1: a fifth grader, you know, she's all self conscious and
Speaker 1: awkward about you know, and if she has to worry
Speaker 1: that people know what she's thinking and not just what
Speaker 1: she's expressing to the world, like, does her mental world
Speaker 1: become smaller and smaller and smaller. And I worry about that, right,
Speaker 1: I worry that the more we allow intrusions into the
Speaker 1: private thoughts of an individual, the less space they have
Speaker 1: for becoming.
Speaker 2: So what is it that we can do. I'm going
Speaker 2: to assume you're not telling me to wear a tinfoil hat.
Speaker 1: No, it's not that it is. This time, actually demand better, Right,
Speaker 1: there's legislation that's pending in the US Congress called the
Speaker 1: Mind Act that was introduced by Senator Schumer, which asks
Speaker 1: the FTC, the agency that looks into trade practices and
Speaker 1: consumer practices, and figure out, like what are the gaps
Speaker 1: in federal law that need to be filled to actually
Speaker 1: address and enable us to have neurotechnology be beneficial to us.
Speaker 1: Support that, Pick up the phone, call your senator and say, like,
Speaker 1: I support the Mind Act and want there to be
Speaker 1: the right set of protections that are in place. Look
Speaker 1: at and read this time. And I know it's fine print.
Speaker 1: I know we all just scroll past it, but we
Speaker 1: only choose the companies that are actually committing to protect
Speaker 1: your neural data and to not use or misuse it.
Speaker 2: It's a big ask, but maybe we'll get it right
Speaker 2: this time. We have to.
Speaker 1: Like this time, we have to, We really do. And
Speaker 1: I get it that it's hard. It's easier to be
Speaker 1: the passive consumer who thinks that they don't have any
Speaker 1: say in all of this, but we do. We have
Speaker 1: a say in it. It is up to it's like
Speaker 1: up to us, it's up to the choices we make
Speaker 1: for what direction this technology goes.
Speaker 2: So longtime listeners will notice, But originally this podcast had
Speaker 2: a different name and it had different hosts. Back in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, the original hosts Oz and Kara were asking
Speaker 2: some pretty weird questions for the time, like could AI
Speaker 2: one day be used by the cops? Or could AI
Speaker 2: take people's jobs or spread misinformation or crank out art
Speaker 2: and music so fast that it cheapens it? Were we
Speaker 2: losing our last chance to make decisions about AI? And
Speaker 2: where we just sleepwalking into a future of AI? These
Speaker 2: questions sounded abstract or like science fiction, or at the
Speaker 2: very least so far out in the future that we
Speaker 2: could just deal with it or figure it out when
Speaker 2: or if the technology ever got here, because that's how
Speaker 2: people looked at AI when they ask those questions as
Speaker 2: the season ended in twenty nineteen. Anyway, that's a long
Speaker 2: wind up to say that this is the final episode
Speaker 2: of kill Switch. It has been a very weird ride
Speaker 2: making this, but it also feels fitting that seven years
Speaker 2: after that first season we're ending on neurotechnology, something that
Speaker 2: sounds abstract. It sounds like science fiction, or at the
Speaker 2: very least, it sounds like it's so far out in
Speaker 2: the future that we can just figure it out. When
Speaker 2: or if the technology ever gets here. Who knows what
Speaker 2: the next seven years looks like. But I'd like to
Speaker 2: go back briefly to twenty seven years ago, to something
Speaker 2: that the artist Prince said while he was handing out
Speaker 2: an award at the Yahoo Internet Life Awards back in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine. Here's print.
Speaker 5: Don't be fooled by the internet.
Speaker 2: H It's it's cool.
Speaker 5: It's cool to get on the computer, but don't let
Speaker 5: the computer get on you. It's cool. It's cool to
Speaker 5: use the computer. Don't let the computer use you. You
Speaker 5: all saw the matrix. There's a war going on the
Speaker 5: battlefields and the mind, and the prize is the soul,
Speaker 5: so just be careful.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you. The battlefield is the mind, so just
Speaker 2: be careful one last time. Killswitch is hosted by Me
Speaker 2: Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darling Potts and
Speaker 2: Julian Nutter. Our theme song is by Me and Kyle Murdoch,
Speaker 2: and Kyle also mixed the show from Kaleidoscope. Our executive
Speaker 2: producers are oz Va Lashin, mangesh Hat Togadur and Kate Osbourne.
Speaker 2: From iHeart. Our executive producers are Katrina norbl and Nikki E. Tor.
Speaker 2: My name is Daxter Thomas and it's been in honor
Speaker 2: to spend some time with y'all. Catch y'all out there somewhere. Goodbye,