Can AI read your mind? Its an emphatic future YES... Here's what you should know.

Generative AI can now be used to read your mind with very impressive accuracy. This technology is coming to simple consumer-based brain sensors embedded in a headband or everyday devices like smart watches. What does this mean for the future of work and what should we all be worried about?

When you have thoughts, neurons are fired in your brain. There are thousands of these fired each day in your brain and by wearing a simple headband with EEG sensors, scientists can identify characteristic patterns and decode your thoughts using AI.

Here are some excerpts from Dr. Nita’s keynote at the ISC2 security Congress that I found really interesting .

1. Your mouse or keyboards will no longer be the primary way you’ll interact with other technologies, instead, it’ll be a seamless brain-to-technology enabled interaction. You’ll be able to control things just using your thoughts. Sounds magical right?

2. Your virtual keyboard will learn you and your intentions and become responsive to who you are.An interesting use case is Safety in Heavy Equipment Handling & Logistics: Neural devices can be used to alert employers and the employee, when employees enter dangerous levels of fatigue. (e.g a truck driver sleeping off on the wheels and getting jolted to stay awake by a vibration coming from the haptic sensors in his smart cap. His manager will also be notified that he’s tired and sleeping off). Employers will be able to tell the employees who are distracted the most from those who are able to concentrate for longer periods of time.

Employers will not just be able to tell if an employee is bored, their mind is wondering or they’re paying attention. They’ll also be able to tell what they’re paying attention to. E.g is the software developer doing a century task like writing code? Or a peripheral task like writing documentation for their code ? Or unrelated tasks like surfing social media sites.Monitoring work productivity is another use case of this technology.

Here are the issues though :

1. More corporate power imbalance with this high level surveillance and fighting the ability for employees to unionize.

2. Who is safeguarding the data being collected? What could interference cause? Rephrasing my last question in technical parlance, what could happen if an adversary could break the confidentiality and integrity of a neural interface ? And what can we begin to do to secure this future? Could there be interception, manipulation and punishment for just having certain political or religious beliefs? Can an adversary poison or alter our thoughts using this new technology?

3. What workplace policies and government policies need to be written today to ensure this sort of technology and your brain data specifically, is not exploited and rewards are reaped?

4. Our international human rights needs to be updated to include new issues that neuro technology presents, like freedom of thought, a right to mental privacy, a right to audit ways in which this data is collected and used.

5. How is ethical commercial design currently handled? Can this be tackled early enough to allow users turn off brain wave monitoring while the user enjoys other benefits of devices embedded with this technology? How are we ensuring that this new science breakthrough enables cognitive freedom?

6. Big tech isn’t covered with current regulation because HIPAA applies to healthcare institutions that are collecting healthcare data. Consequently when a company like Meta (who by the way recently acquired a neural interface company) integrates your brain data with their platforms, they’re not a covered entity and HIPAA doesn’t applied. THERE IS NO REGULATION currently that tackles this.

AI can’t yet literally decode our thoughts with consumer-based products but that future of thought transparency is really close. What are your thoughts? Do you see opportunities? How can our APIs connecting neural technology systems be fortified even better?

#APISecurity #Privacy #Cybersecurity #technology #AI