May 6, 2026 • 40 mins
Your brain is the last place companies don’t have access to… yet. But that’s changing fast. Nita Farahany, professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and author of The Battle for Your Brain, explains why the sci-fi future of mind-reading technology is here, and already sitting on the shelves at Best Buy. Dexter talks to Nita about how AI is learning to decode your mental state, how employers are using neurotechnology to monitor workers, and why this might be our last chance to protect the one thing that’s still private: what’s actually going on inside your head.
And be sure to listen through the end of the episode for a note from Dexter.
Hit us up: killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod on IG, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
I actually got to play with Meta's neural band. So
this application was like pac Man moving around the screen,
and you had to subtly move your thumb or your
forefinger so that it was picking up the brain activity
at your wrist, and then pac Man would move up
or down or left to right.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Nita Farahani is a professor of law and philosophy at
Duke University, and she's written a book called The Battle
for Your Brain.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It was pretty cool and within like a couple of minutes,
it was calibrated to my signals just barely moving my
fingers or my wrist.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So you're getting very close to being able to play
pac Man with your brain. You might know about Elon
Musk's company, Neuralink. You might also know that you can't
just go out and buy a Neuralink device yet. But
which you might not is that other companies already have
stuff on the shelves and that more is coming.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Like I'm sitting here at my desk, I've got a
little cabinet next to me and it is filled with
different ones of these devices. I have headphones that have
like EEG sensors around them. I've got earbuds not from Apple,
that have EEG sensors in them. I've got forehead bands.
I have like dozens sitting in this little cabinet next
to me, and there are tons on the market already.
(01:26):
Metow was like the first i'd say, major tech company
launching everyday neurotechnology into the marketplace right where you can
go to best Buy and you can buy a neural band.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
This stuff is here now and you don't need to
drill a hole in your head to use it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
People hear these stories from Neurallink and others and they're like, Okay,
that doesn't apply to me, because that's some sci fi
future where like somebody who is in a wheelchair who's
unable to move or to speak, has something drilled into
their brain. Like that's not me, But go to best Buy.
That's you right, like me at this conference, you know,
saying to Meta like, yeah, go ahead and take my
(02:04):
brain activity while I interact with your pac Man on
your device and then playing pac Man with my neural signals,
not with a joystick or my finger anything else.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
As a professor, Needle works on both law and philosophy,
which makes sense because on the one hand, figuring out
how the mind works that's a philosophical question.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
If you're a philosopher mind and you're trying to understand
how the mind works, and then there's technology that could
start to really decode it, Like how could you ignore
that as a philosopher and just continue to ask thought
problems and thought questions when there's real technology that could
help you answer some of those questions.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And then there's the law, or we might say the
lack of laws. Neurotechnology is blasting off right now, and
Nita says that we need to figure out what's legal
and what's not before it's too late.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Every company, the last piece of you that they don't
have access to is your brain. There is no trace
of privacy left except for this, which is what you're
thinking and what you're feeling inside of your own mind.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcast. This is kill switch this.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I'm DEXTERH Thomas, i'morright, I'm sorry, goodbye.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
The field of neurotechnology itself has been around longer than
most people realize. Even the term brain computer interface, which
we ill used today, goes back to the nineteen seventies.
But since then this stuff was mostly confined to research labs.
There have been products here and there, but it's never
really been practical enough for a mainstream audience to catch on.
(04:13):
But the people who know the technology have always figured
out that one day it would catch on. Anita remembers
the day that she was convinced Back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I was at a conference at Bourton and this guy
stands up to give his presentation and he says, like,
why are we humans such clumsy output devices? Okay, that
got my attention.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
We're really output device.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yes, you're a very clumsy output device. All right, dexter.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
No, I've been insulted a lot of ways. That's a
new one.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So he says, we're really good at taking in information,
but we're going backwards in time instead of fours And
he's like, think about it. We're typing with two thumbs
now instead of typing with like our full hand. So
our rate of getting information out is going down, not up.
What if we could operate octopus like tentacles with our
brains instead. What he was talking about was he had
(05:02):
this very clunky early version of this armband that he
was showcasing, and the company at the time was called
Control Labs, and he was showing how you could type
on a virtual keyboard by having like brain activity read
here at the wrist. I was fascinated. I was like,
there are two things that make this lead pivotal acquisition
in neurotechnology for this to go mainstream. One is the
(05:26):
form factor, Like instead of it being a stupid forehead band,
we're talking about something that could show up in your
watch and be part of everyday wearable devices. But then second,
and more importantly, he was talking about it becoming the
interface to technology, replacing your keyboard in your mouth as
the way that you would interact with other technology. And
I was like, I get it now. I see how
(05:47):
this stuff becomes mainstream and for everyone is you know,
whether it's augmented reality or the Internet of things. Like
if you're laying in bed and you want to flick
off your life that are part of the Internet of
things in your home, like you either have to reach
for your phone or maybe you could just imagine doing it,
(06:07):
and then there's a device on your wrist that picks
up your intention and turns off the light, right, And
that's what he was talking about. He was talking about,
like our brain becoming the way we interface with other
technology through a wearable device, whether that's our computer or
any other Internet of things, and I was like, I
get it now.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So how big is this industry? Now?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Oh gosh, I haven't kept up with what the current
numbers are because the numbers keep changing on a daily basis,
and the numbers are converging with AI and we're talking
billions to trillions of dollars. Is how people are thinking
about it, because, for example, I was at a conference
last week that was this big pivotal conference in the field,
and at that meeting, I learned about the kind of
(06:51):
huge bets that Apple is making in the space, and
it seems like they're getting closer to becoming like a
big help platform kind of bet in the brain. And
if that happens, then the size of the industry we're
talking about is like the size of Apple and every
Apple device that's out there that starts to become a
(07:12):
brain health and a brain tracking device in addition to
everything else that's out there. So I'd say I don't
know exactly what the number is anymore, because the number
is as big as the economy.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And I'm just going to paraphrase from one of your
articles here, This from a while ago So there's Neurolink,
which raised six hundred and fifty million at a nine
billion dollar valuation. That's Elon's Project Synchron one hundred and
forty five million, Precision Neuroscience ninety three million, Paradromics eighty
seven million. Sam Altman from open Ai is supposed to
(07:44):
be co founding merged labs that hit close to a
billion dollar valuation before launching. It hasn't even launched yet.
There's a bunch of names, a lot of money, and.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
These are just the implanted companies, right, So you listed
a bunch of companies that are companies that are primarily
going through regulatory approval with the Food and Drug Administration
or other medical regulatory licensing organizations like within the governments
where the goal is for people who are suffering from
als or suffering from like paraplegia. These are people who
(08:17):
would be eligible to participate in clinical trials where they'd
have a whole, you know, cut in their skull, an
implant that would be implanted inside of the brain which
could read brain activity and then it interacts with something
outside the body, like an application that helps to code
that brain activity and might enable them to interact with
(08:39):
an iPhone or an iPad or smart things within their
home so that they can interact with the outside world,
which is an extraordinary possibility. So those companies are one
set of neurotech companies. The other set of neurotech companies
are companies like Meta and Apple, who instead of investing
(08:59):
in technologlogy that's implanted inside the brain, are looking at
wearable devices. And so you know a lot of people
have an Apple smart watch. The Apple smart watch already
has inside of it sensors that pick up things like
heart rate, or smart rings that pick up things like
temperature or movement. And for these companies, what they're looking
(09:19):
at is putting sensors that pick up brain activity at
a much lower signal rate than inside the brain. So
you might have a few electrodes that are inside air
pods or in the soft cups that go around your
ears or pick up what's called peripheral nervous system activity.
So as your brain sends a signal down your arm
(09:40):
to your wrist and picks up your intention to swipe
or type or move, it can pick up that peripheral
nervous system activity. So this is picking up noisier like
less sensitive brain data and by less sensitive, I mean
it's not as fine tune signals as being inside the brain,
but can be really powerful for things like being able
(10:01):
to interact with the device or being able to interact
with augmented reality or virtual reality. So these are very
different things, Which is the numbers you were listening were
for the implanted neurotechnology world for people who have serious diseases.
The wearable world is for everybody else. Like instead of
just tracking your heart rate through your Apple Watch, you
(10:24):
track your stress levels, you track your brain activity. You
track for me, I'm a chronic migraine er, you track
your likelihood of an impending migraine, or your likelihood of
an epileptic seizure, or a lot of different brain signals
that could give you brain health information and brain wellness information.
And so when I say it's as like big as
the economy, it's as big as every person who has
(10:46):
a brain and once inside in what's happening with their brains.
Or for every person who has a mouse or a
keyboard and might come to replace the mouse or keyboard
with interacting with those devices with a slight flick of
their finger instead of out of moving around on a
mouse Okay.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
The one company that I think people may have heard
of is Neuralink, oh sure, yeah, which is doing something
fundamentally pretty different from some of the stuff that you
were talking about, whether it's a headband or earbuds or whatever.
And how is that different from, say, what neuralink is
trying to do.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And the reason most people have heard of Neuralink, of course,
is because Elon Musk runs Neuralink. And one of the
very hard things about implanted neurotechnology is the limited number
of neurosurgeons who can perform what is a very delicate
operation to get a device into a person's brain. And
Neuralinks started to build basically robots that could do part
(11:41):
of that surgery, with the vision of being able to
have clinics all over the country or all over the
world that could implant what is a very tiny device.
And then the very tiny device has basically like hair
like threads that are attached to it that reach through
the brain and bed in the brain. So what a
(12:02):
neuralink device does that's very different than these wearable devices
is it's reaching into lots of different parts of the brain,
and it has many, many, many more electrodes than the
couple of electrodes that you might have outside the brain
that have to be read through the skull, so it
bypasses like it's inside, picking up brain activity where.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
It's happening direct from the source, direct from the.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Source, and at a scale that is nothing like what
is happening outside the brain. And so he's been very
clear that his vision is not that this is just
for people who've suffered from als or paraplesia or things
like that. He thinks everybody one day should have a
brain implant that can read brain activity at that depth
(12:46):
and potentially write to brain activity. And that he has
said like he thinks this is the way that humans
compete with AI. Is essentially merging with AI, is how
he's touted it.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Emerged scenario with AI is the one that seems like
probably the best like for us, Yes, if you can't
beat it, join it.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's Elon Musk talking to Joe Rogan back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
So from a long term existential standpoint, that's like the
purpose of neuralink is to create a high bandwidth interface
to the brain such that we can be symbotic with AI.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Now, how close is that? How far is that I
have no idea. I think it's weighs out right. There
aren't even FDA approved implants yet, let alone for healthy
people choosing to drill a hole in their skull and
putting a device inside of it.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But you don't necessarily have to drill a hole in
your head. AI companies are looking at wearable devices that
would allow you to get similar results.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
OpenAI has an entire division that is now dedicated to
trying to build brain found models, where one day you
would have a model like instead of a large language
model that just speaks in texts, in video and other
kinds of context. It also could go from brain signals
(14:13):
to text to video to being truly multimodal. And they
have this big investment in merged labs to create a
brain computer interface through a very different mechanism than other
ones do. All of these trillionaires who have AI companies
are investing in major neurotechnology because they see these as
(14:33):
converging fields. People like Elon Musk see these as ultimately
converging together. That you interact with AI through your neurotechnology,
that you interact with the rest of the world through
your neurotechnology, which also then decodes what's happening in your neurotechnology.
It's this loop between the brain and AI that they're
(14:54):
really building toward.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
So that's where we are brain implants for people who
need them, and neuro headstraps it best buy for everybody else,
and trillion dollar companies racing to be the first to
make money off of a loop between you and AI.
After the break, we'll find out if this stuff can
actually read your mind yet, because under certain circumstances it
kind of can. So, I mean there's kind of two
(15:26):
ends of this that you're talking about here, right. There's
the being able to control pac Man with your brain. Cool,
that's one part, right, and then there's somebody being able
to read what is in your brain. I mean effectively
you have to have that, right. If you're able to
control something, something needs to be reading what I suppose,
what you're thinking. And that's the other end of this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And then the question is, now we go back to
the philosopher side of me. What does it mean to think?
And what is it that you're really decoding?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
What does it mean to think? Okay?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Well, I mean it matters, right because when people hear
mind reading, what they think of is like all of
the thoughts in your head, the images, the feelings, this
like really robust concept of what it means to be
a thinking human. And what neurotechnology is decoding right now
is like one stream of that, not everything that's in
(16:18):
your head. Like most of the consumer neurotechnology, it's decoding
basic brain states. So it's decoding are you tired, are
you happy? Are you feeling like positive or negative? Are
you paying attention? Or is your mind wandering? But it's
not decoding like your full mental landscape. And increasingly what
(16:41):
AI is being used to do is to train on
weaker and weaker signals to be able to translate intentionally
communicated speech. Now, what is that versus just thought? If
I want to send a text message, I am formulating
words that I intend to express out of my brain
and into the world, as opposed to like the private ruminations,
(17:04):
like the things like you're turning over an idea in
your mind. You have a new crush and you're envisioning
that crush. That's not something you mean to communicate outside
of your brain. And so what neurotechnology so far has
been trained to do is to pick up that kind
of speech that you're trying to translate out of your brain,
(17:25):
which shows up differently in your brain.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
How does this stuff actually work a layperson? I think
we have a general idea that Okay, there's something called
synapses and there's like electric signals going on in your brain.
But how does that get translated out to actually data
that a computer could read or that could be useful.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
So depends on what it is that's being decoded out.
But let's start with consumer wearables. Let's imagine that, like
I have an air pods right now, Let's imagine I
have earbuds in that are picking up brain waves. So
what are brain waves as you think, as you are
feeling anything. As you said synapses, right, neurons are firing
in your brain, which give off tiny electrical discharges. And
(18:10):
when you have any dominant mental state that you're experiencing,
you'll have hundreds of thousands of neurons that are firing
at the same time giving off those little electrical discharges.
And the some of those electrical discharges are what can
be picked up outside of the skull. What these kinds
of AirPods or like other electrodes can pick up is
(18:33):
they pick up the brain waves and the amplitudes of
the different waves, and then AI has been trained on
those patterns in the same way that AI has been
trained to be able to look at breast mammograms and
be able to say, this one is cancer, this one
is not cancer. It's like pattern recognition, right, So same
thing is happening with brain waves and brainwave amplitudes. Is
(18:55):
different patterns and different brainwave amplitudes have been associated with
positive negative, mind wandering, paying attention. So it's just taking
what are brain waves and then training AI to understand
this is what it looks like at any particular moment.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So there're gonna be some people who hear this and
think this sounds amazing. If I can play pac Man
with my brain now, yo, I bet I can just
run a call of duty lobby and maybe you know,
a couple of years, maybe like really truly play with
my brain now. Granted, there's gonna be some people who
are thinking all this, you know, this would be awesome
for is like scrolling TikTok and better without my hands,
(19:37):
like this would be amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Probably infinite scroll like that is just it's painful to imagine.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Truly. Yeah, actually, like in the most literal sense of
the word, possible brain rod But there's gonna be some
people who are super into this. Yeah, and honestly sounds cool, right.
You know, I'm able bodied, I'm able to use the
computer with my hands, but yo, if I don't have to,
if I can do it from across the room, that's
kind of cool. And then the ability to for somebody
(20:06):
who has lost the ability or doesn't have the ability
to do some of the things that I'm able to do,
type or speak or whatever, if they can control a
computer communicate with people directly amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
You.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Your book, however, is called The Battle for the Brain,
and I feel like there's you have some caveats, I understand.
What should we be thinking about?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
This?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Is it? This is your last stand for privacy. All
you've got left at this point is what's happening inside
of your brain. Right at this point, people have given
up their privacy of their everyday interactions. They carry a
device around all the time that tracks their every movement,
even their every movement throughout their house. They have listening
(20:53):
devices in their bedrooms. They have smart refrigerators that know
exactly how much food and other things that you know
are going on when you even start to type a
search into Google, it auto completes. There are all kinds
of predictions that are happening all day long about what
you're thinking. That's why you have targeted advertisements and social
(21:15):
media feeds that are tailored to what algorithm thinks that
you will like. But it's still not perfect, and there
is still a piece of you you hold back that
you do not express, and that part of you is
in your mind. And when you start to hook up
sensors to that part of you, that's it. You've given
that last stand of freedom, that last bit of privacy,
(21:40):
to companies that have shown themselves to be particularly bad
at having your self interest in mind.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So let's back up. Even because we're speaking about it
as though it's something that will happen in the future,
but no, it's happening now, So yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
What I did was I wrote the book really to say, like,
here's what's happening right now, not like here's some future
sci fi scenario, but here are misuses of the technology
that are happening right now. Here are educational institutions in
China that are forcing fifth graders to wear headsets that
track their attention and their mind wandering in the classroom.
(22:17):
Here are police across the world who are using wearable
neurotechnology to interrogate criminal suspects. Here employers who are tracking
productivity and tracking whether they're workers are fatigued or paying
attention in the workplace, Like the kinds of abuses and
misuses that you might imagine. I give example after example
(22:39):
in the book of them happening right now, just not
at skill. That's the only difference.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
The employer monitoring thing. I think that one's like, particularly
because that really feels like something that could happen immediately anywhere.
If it's able to happen in one place.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know, it's funny because I my sister's an employement
at Journey, and when she read my chapter your brain work,
she was horrified.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And so here that has to be really interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Family goes, oh, it's like fun family talks. But okay,
So here's the basic idea, Like, especially since the pandemic bossware,
the technology that tracks people through like using their webcams
when they're working at home, or software that's been installed
onto their computers to track their productivity level, like bosswaar
is everywhere.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Remember back when everybody was like buying those mouse jiggling
devices on Amazon to make it look like you were
still working. Yeah, but if they're in your brain.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, exactly. We'll just start with the backdrop of people
recognize employers are doing this, but there still is to
your point, like there's the jiggler on the mouse, there's
the little cover on your webcam so that when you
step away from your computer it's not totally obvious that
you're not at your computer, or like the fake me
that I can put into my my my chair to
(23:57):
make it look like it's me or whatever else. Starting
more than a decade ago, there was a company that
and I'll just say this company has done the right
things privacy wise, but they're a good example. Nevertheless. So
the company is called smart Cap and what they developed
was this like forehead band, but it goes all the
way around that picks up electrical activity from the brain
(24:17):
and it can be worn inside of a hard hat
or a train conductor cap or a baseball cap. And
what it tracks is fatigue levels of an employee, like
on a scale of one to five, or are they wide
awake or are they falling asleep? And if you're a
truck driver and you are driving, you know, down the highway.
It could be useful for the employer to be able
to track whether or not you're falling asleep if you're fatigued.
(24:40):
So that was the purpose. It was for safety reasons
that they launched this, but pretty quickly other companies around
the world were like, well, cool, I can figure out
who's coming to work when they stayed up all night partying.
I can figure out like who's the productive and paying
attention person versus the person who's mind wandering all day.
(25:00):
And so these neurotech companies started selling to enterprises to say,
why don't you just start monitoring brain activity? Why go
through all these inefficiencies of downstream measurement of productivity. Just
measure productivity at.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
The brain, you know. So where you started, for a
lot of people would say, I want to make sure
the truck driver is awake. But it's super interesting here
because I think there is a way in which there's
some times we're okay with certain people being monitored, especially
if you're not a truck driver. Yep, it's okay if
that person is being monitor because they need to be monitored.
(25:35):
But hold on, hold on, you talk about monitoring me now, and.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Once you allow the one, the question is whether you're
allowing the other. But also in my book, I give
the example of the truck driver just so that people
can grapple with it exactly for that reason, which is
sometimes we are going to be okay with it, And
the question is with what limits is it okay for
the employer at the same time that they're monitoring the
truck driver's brain activity for whether they're wider awake or
(25:58):
falling asleep, to also to code their brain activity of
the person that they're fantasizing about. Well, I hope everybody
says no, right, like track if they're falling asleep at
the wheel. But there's a whole bunch of other information
that you could extract from the brain at the same time,
and that should be off limits.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
So one really interesting question that I've seen come up
a lot recently is what sort of privacy that law
enforcement can expect. And there might be some people who
would be interested in knowing what a police officer, what
an ice agent was thinking when they did something. Should
(26:39):
we have access to police officers' brain data?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Hmm, that's interesting right. I like the analogy because you know,
we've been dealing with this on police cameras. Right does
the public get to watch the bodycam footage? The reason
that bodycam footage was originally developed was for the police
force to have a second source of you know, kind
of monitoring what the police officer was doing rather than
(27:03):
just from their perspective. And then the public started to say, well,
if you're recording that, we want access to that data
as well, right, And there's no reason why there should
be asymmetric access to that information. Asymmetries and power are
part of how you end up with abuses of power,
and checks on those asymmetries can be really powerful as
(27:25):
a way to counteract it. But I'm going to start
from a different place, which is I don't think that
the government should have access to our brain data. So
I don't think that there should be an asymmetry to
begin with, because I don't think either side should have
access to each other's brain activity data. I think the
police should not be able to interrogate a person's mind
(27:46):
and the public shouldn't be able to interrogate the police's mind.
That we should have a right to mental privacy on
both sides. That is symmetrical, not asymmetrical. And we can
actually set those guardrails. How do you design your laws
and how do you design your policies so that you
got the upside without also having to accept the downside?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Okay, so how exactly are we supposed to design these laws? Also,
why hasn't anyone just made these laws already? Well, they
have kind of, but it just isn't working out very well.
We get into that and talk about how we could
do better after the break. If you take away nothing
(28:36):
else from this episode, I hope you're able to take
away the fact that neurotech is here right now. It
is not just sci fi. It's not abstract, it's not
something in the future. It already works and there is
already big money behind it. Okay, that established. Let's go
back and think about what happened when social media got popular.
(28:56):
So as a society, we all really got taken by surprise.
We weren't prepared for the addiction, for the disinformation for
the forty fifth president of the United States, any of
that stuff. And the same thing is happening with AI
right now. We have slept walked our way into a
society full of artificial intelligence. So how do we not
repeat that same mistake. How do we prepare for neurotech?
(29:19):
Nita says the answer is probably making some laws right
now while we still have time.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
In this book, what I advocate for is a starting
place is a set of norms, and the norm. Like
to name the norm, it's cognitive liberty, the right to
self determination over your brain and mental experiences. And then
how that translates into law. It shows up in a
lot of places. Right The easiest is imagine setting an
international human right, where the right is updating existing human
(29:52):
rights to reflect the kind of modern threats. So privacy
should explicitly include a right to mental privacy. The right
to self determination, which is collective and political right, should
also be an individual right to self determination, so you
have a right to access and change your brain. Freedom
of thought needs to include your right against manipulation and
punishment for your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
And some states have started doing what she's describing. California
and Colorado have both passed laws that treat your neural
data as a new protected category of data.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
There are some laws that are starting to be adopted,
particularly in the United States, where the idea is to
create a sensitive category of data. So in states that
already have comprehensive privacy laws, like in California or Colorado
to recognize neural data as a category of data that's
sensitive and requires special kinds of processing for that, and
(30:42):
that gets as part of the way there in that
the companies have requirements and limitations on how they actually
address and use neural data. The problem largely is that
the inferences about mental state don't happen in isolation. And
so for example, if you start to have electrodes that
are picking up brain activity and those work together with
(31:02):
glasses that pick up through eye tracking data where your
gaze is, it's the data together that starts to allow
for really precise inferences. We didn't have to articulate these
kinds of rights before because we just assumed we had them.
But technology sometimes reveals to us what our limitations of
law and philosophy are. Like they help us see, okay,
(31:24):
law assumed you had it. We didn't have to name it.
It assumed you had freedom of thought. It assumed you
had mental privacy because there was no way to violate
it before and now there is, and so now you
have to name it. So I think it's a good attempt.
We're starting to see movement in this direction. That's what
we would hope to see. The problem right now is
in the execution, and I think we'll close that gap eventually.
(31:47):
I think eventually we'll start to recognize that there is
a right to mental privacy, that that right to mental
privacy doesn't matter how you get at brain activity, it's
getting at brain activity at all, and that we need
to create special protections that give peace people unique rights
to do so, and hopefully we do that before the
technology becomes widespread, because it's almost impossible to claw back rights.
(32:08):
It's a lot easier to protect rights in advance.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
How concerned are you that we're just going to get
used to a company having access to our brain before
we actually get the chance to do something about it preemptively?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
It is something unusual that I had to convince my
editor of, which is when the paperback version of my
book came out, which was a year after the hardback
copy of my book came out, to let me write
a new chapter, like I kind of PostScript, and I
titled that chapter normalizing Neural Surveillance. But it showed that's
(32:44):
kind of exactly how it happens, especially when you encounter
new technology. In settings that are unfamiliar, meaning like they're
oftentimes paired with something that isn't the threat. You go
to the perfume counter and you're offered the chance to
wear a neural headset to tell what your favorite perfume
(33:06):
is how your brain reacts to perfume. Or you go
to the Museum of Modern Art and you're invited to
put on a neural headset to look at an extraordinary
AI art installation and then become part of the art
as your brain activity merges with the art in visual form.
These are real examples. These aren't hypotheticals that I'm coming
(33:28):
up with. These are real things that are happening. And
what happens is people then have positive associations like wow,
that was so cool, not wow that was so scary.
I just gave up my brain activity data on the
beach to meta And it's how we normalize the technology
and give up like a whole new category of data
our last passion of freedom without ever thinking about it.
(33:51):
I'm inviting us to think about it. I'm begging us
to think about it, right, and I am like, please,
let's this time think about it and make the choices
so that the technology which can be extraordinarily promising, which
could transform brain health and wellness, which could be incredibly empowering,
becomes a tool that does all of those things rather
(34:12):
than a tool of surveillance and of stripping us of
our last stand for freedom.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
And moving away from the privacy and the law side
for just a second and going back to philosophy. The
commercialization of neurotech and the outside access to that data
also has some implications for your own sense of who
you are.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
I think there has to be some space that we
create for us to continue to be human. And I
think that space is the space of mental reprieve, Like
it always has been. It's always been assumed. It's always
been presumed that you would have it because there was
never a way to access it before. And I think, like,
think about this, Think about like your closest human relationships,
(34:58):
Like what makes them close for you?
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Well, I suppose you can tell them anything.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, and you choose what to tell them, right, And
that's different than what you choose to tell other people.
There is an asymmetry of how much you're willing to
be vulnerable with another person, how much you're willing to
share with them, and you get to make those choices,
and if that choice was taken away from you, right,
the contents of your mind were something that other people
(35:24):
had access to, like, it would both change your relationship
to the person that you're closest to, but also change
your relationship to yourself, because maybe you start to try
to censor your own thoughts or you're worried in the
same way that you're worried about your writing or what
you do in public, will lead to other people judging you,
and the earlier that happens. Like a kid, I have
a fifth grader, you know, she's all self conscious and
(35:46):
awkward about you know, and if she has to worry
that people know what she's thinking and not just what
she's expressing to the world, like, does her mental world
become smaller and smaller and smaller. And I worry about that, right,
I worry that the more we allow intrusions into the
private thoughts of an individual, the less space they have
(36:09):
for becoming.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So what is it that we can do. I'm going
to assume you're not telling me to wear a tinfoil hat.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
No, it's not that it is. This time, actually demand better, Right,
there's legislation that's pending in the US Congress called the
Mind Act that was introduced by Senator Schumer, which asks
the FTC, the agency that looks into trade practices and
consumer practices, and figure out, like what are the gaps
in federal law that need to be filled to actually
(36:39):
address and enable us to have neurotechnology be beneficial to us.
Support that, Pick up the phone, call your senator and say, like,
I support the Mind Act and want there to be
the right set of protections that are in place. Look
at and read this time. And I know it's fine print.
I know we all just scroll past it, but we
(37:00):
only choose the companies that are actually committing to protect
your neural data and to not use or misuse it.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
It's a big ask, but maybe we'll get it right
this time. We have to.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Like this time, we have to, We really do. And
I get it that it's hard. It's easier to be
the passive consumer who thinks that they don't have any
say in all of this, but we do. We have
a say in it. It is up to it's like
up to us, it's up to the choices we make
for what direction this technology goes.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
So longtime listeners will notice, But originally this podcast had
a different name and it had different hosts. Back in
twenty nineteen, the original hosts Oz and Kara were asking
some pretty weird questions for the time, like could AI
one day be used by the cops? Or could AI
take people's jobs or spread misinformation or crank out art
(37:50):
and music so fast that it cheapens it? Were we
losing our last chance to make decisions about AI? And
where we just sleepwalking into a future of AI? These
questions sounded abstract or like science fiction, or at the
very least so far out in the future that we
could just deal with it or figure it out when
or if the technology ever got here, because that's how
(38:14):
people looked at AI when they ask those questions as
the season ended in twenty nineteen. Anyway, that's a long
wind up to say that this is the final episode
of kill Switch. It has been a very weird ride
making this, but it also feels fitting that seven years
after that first season we're ending on neurotechnology, something that
(38:34):
sounds abstract. It sounds like science fiction, or at the
very least, it sounds like it's so far out in
the future that we can just figure it out. When
or if the technology ever gets here. Who knows what
the next seven years looks like. But I'd like to
go back briefly to twenty seven years ago, to something
that the artist Prince said while he was handing out
an award at the Yahoo Internet Life Awards back in
(38:57):
nineteen ninety nine. Here's print.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Don't be fooled by the internet.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
H It's it's cool.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
It's cool to get on the computer, but don't let
the computer get on you. It's cool. It's cool to
use the computer. Don't let the computer use you. You
all saw the matrix. There's a war going on the
(39:29):
battlefields and the mind, and the prize is the soul,
so just be careful.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Okay, thank you. The battlefield is the mind, so just
be careful one last time. Killswitch is hosted by Me
Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darling Potts and
Julian Nutter. Our theme song is by Me and Kyle Murdoch,
(40:01):
and Kyle also mixed the show from Kaleidoscope. Our executive
producers are oz Va Lashin, mangesh Hat Togadur and Kate Osbourne.
From iHeart. Our executive producers are Katrina norbl and Nikki E. Tor.
My name is Daxter Thomas and it's been in honor
to spend some time with y'all. Catch y'all out there somewhere. Goodbye,
I actually got to play with Meta's neural band. So
this application was like pac Man moving around the screen,
and you had to subtly move your thumb or your
forefinger so that it was picking up the brain activity
at your wrist, and then pac Man would move up
or down or left to right.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Nita Farahani is a professor of law and philosophy at
Duke University, and she's written a book called The Battle
for Your Brain.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It was pretty cool and within like a couple of minutes,
it was calibrated to my signals just barely moving my
fingers or my wrist.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So you're getting very close to being able to play
pac Man with your brain. You might know about Elon
Musk's company, Neuralink. You might also know that you can't
just go out and buy a Neuralink device yet. But
which you might not is that other companies already have
stuff on the shelves and that more is coming.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Like I'm sitting here at my desk, I've got a
little cabinet next to me and it is filled with
different ones of these devices. I have headphones that have
like EEG sensors around them. I've got earbuds not from Apple,
that have EEG sensors in them. I've got forehead bands.
I have like dozens sitting in this little cabinet next
to me, and there are tons on the market already.
(01:26):
Metow was like the first i'd say, major tech company
launching everyday neurotechnology into the marketplace right where you can
go to best Buy and you can buy a neural band.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
This stuff is here now and you don't need to
drill a hole in your head to use it.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
People hear these stories from Neurallink and others and they're like, Okay,
that doesn't apply to me, because that's some sci fi
future where like somebody who is in a wheelchair who's
unable to move or to speak, has something drilled into
their brain. Like that's not me, But go to best Buy.
That's you right, like me at this conference, you know,
saying to Meta like, yeah, go ahead and take my
(02:04):
brain activity while I interact with your pac Man on
your device and then playing pac Man with my neural signals,
not with a joystick or my finger anything else.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
As a professor, Needle works on both law and philosophy,
which makes sense because on the one hand, figuring out
how the mind works that's a philosophical question.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
If you're a philosopher mind and you're trying to understand
how the mind works, and then there's technology that could
start to really decode it, Like how could you ignore
that as a philosopher and just continue to ask thought
problems and thought questions when there's real technology that could
help you answer some of those questions.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And then there's the law, or we might say the
lack of laws. Neurotechnology is blasting off right now, and
Nita says that we need to figure out what's legal
and what's not before it's too late.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Every company, the last piece of you that they don't
have access to is your brain. There is no trace
of privacy left except for this, which is what you're
thinking and what you're feeling inside of your own mind.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcast. This is kill switch this.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I'm DEXTERH Thomas, i'morright, I'm sorry, goodbye.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
The field of neurotechnology itself has been around longer than
most people realize. Even the term brain computer interface, which
we ill used today, goes back to the nineteen seventies.
But since then this stuff was mostly confined to research labs.
There have been products here and there, but it's never
really been practical enough for a mainstream audience to catch on.
(04:13):
But the people who know the technology have always figured
out that one day it would catch on. Anita remembers
the day that she was convinced Back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I was at a conference at Bourton and this guy
stands up to give his presentation and he says, like,
why are we humans such clumsy output devices? Okay, that
got my attention.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
We're really output device.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yes, you're a very clumsy output device. All right, dexter.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
No, I've been insulted a lot of ways. That's a
new one.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So he says, we're really good at taking in information,
but we're going backwards in time instead of fours And
he's like, think about it. We're typing with two thumbs
now instead of typing with like our full hand. So
our rate of getting information out is going down, not up.
What if we could operate octopus like tentacles with our
brains instead. What he was talking about was he had
(05:02):
this very clunky early version of this armband that he
was showcasing, and the company at the time was called
Control Labs, and he was showing how you could type
on a virtual keyboard by having like brain activity read
here at the wrist. I was fascinated. I was like,
there are two things that make this lead pivotal acquisition
in neurotechnology for this to go mainstream. One is the
(05:26):
form factor, Like instead of it being a stupid forehead band,
we're talking about something that could show up in your
watch and be part of everyday wearable devices. But then second,
and more importantly, he was talking about it becoming the
interface to technology, replacing your keyboard in your mouth as
the way that you would interact with other technology. And
I was like, I get it now. I see how
(05:47):
this stuff becomes mainstream and for everyone is you know,
whether it's augmented reality or the Internet of things. Like
if you're laying in bed and you want to flick
off your life that are part of the Internet of
things in your home, like you either have to reach
for your phone or maybe you could just imagine doing it,
(06:07):
and then there's a device on your wrist that picks
up your intention and turns off the light, right, And
that's what he was talking about. He was talking about,
like our brain becoming the way we interface with other
technology through a wearable device, whether that's our computer or
any other Internet of things, and I was like, I
get it now.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So how big is this industry? Now?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Oh gosh, I haven't kept up with what the current
numbers are because the numbers keep changing on a daily basis,
and the numbers are converging with AI and we're talking
billions to trillions of dollars. Is how people are thinking
about it, because, for example, I was at a conference
last week that was this big pivotal conference in the field,
and at that meeting, I learned about the kind of
(06:51):
huge bets that Apple is making in the space, and
it seems like they're getting closer to becoming like a
big help platform kind of bet in the brain. And
if that happens, then the size of the industry we're
talking about is like the size of Apple and every
Apple device that's out there that starts to become a
(07:12):
brain health and a brain tracking device in addition to
everything else that's out there. So I'd say I don't
know exactly what the number is anymore, because the number
is as big as the economy.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And I'm just going to paraphrase from one of your
articles here, This from a while ago So there's Neurolink,
which raised six hundred and fifty million at a nine
billion dollar valuation. That's Elon's Project Synchron one hundred and
forty five million, Precision Neuroscience ninety three million, Paradromics eighty
seven million. Sam Altman from open Ai is supposed to
(07:44):
be co founding merged labs that hit close to a
billion dollar valuation before launching. It hasn't even launched yet.
There's a bunch of names, a lot of money, and.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
These are just the implanted companies, right, So you listed
a bunch of companies that are companies that are primarily
going through regulatory approval with the Food and Drug Administration
or other medical regulatory licensing organizations like within the governments
where the goal is for people who are suffering from
als or suffering from like paraplegia. These are people who
(08:17):
would be eligible to participate in clinical trials where they'd
have a whole, you know, cut in their skull, an
implant that would be implanted inside of the brain which
could read brain activity and then it interacts with something
outside the body, like an application that helps to code
that brain activity and might enable them to interact with
(08:39):
an iPhone or an iPad or smart things within their
home so that they can interact with the outside world,
which is an extraordinary possibility. So those companies are one
set of neurotech companies. The other set of neurotech companies
are companies like Meta and Apple, who instead of investing
(08:59):
in technologlogy that's implanted inside the brain, are looking at
wearable devices. And so you know a lot of people
have an Apple smart watch. The Apple smart watch already
has inside of it sensors that pick up things like
heart rate, or smart rings that pick up things like
temperature or movement. And for these companies, what they're looking
(09:19):
at is putting sensors that pick up brain activity at
a much lower signal rate than inside the brain. So
you might have a few electrodes that are inside air
pods or in the soft cups that go around your
ears or pick up what's called peripheral nervous system activity.
So as your brain sends a signal down your arm
(09:40):
to your wrist and picks up your intention to swipe
or type or move, it can pick up that peripheral
nervous system activity. So this is picking up noisier like
less sensitive brain data and by less sensitive, I mean
it's not as fine tune signals as being inside the brain,
but can be really powerful for things like being able
(10:01):
to interact with the device or being able to interact
with augmented reality or virtual reality. So these are very
different things, Which is the numbers you were listening were
for the implanted neurotechnology world for people who have serious diseases.
The wearable world is for everybody else. Like instead of
just tracking your heart rate through your Apple Watch, you
(10:24):
track your stress levels, you track your brain activity. You
track for me, I'm a chronic migraine er, you track
your likelihood of an impending migraine, or your likelihood of
an epileptic seizure, or a lot of different brain signals
that could give you brain health information and brain wellness information.
And so when I say it's as like big as
the economy, it's as big as every person who has
(10:46):
a brain and once inside in what's happening with their brains.
Or for every person who has a mouse or a
keyboard and might come to replace the mouse or keyboard
with interacting with those devices with a slight flick of
their finger instead of out of moving around on a
mouse Okay.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
The one company that I think people may have heard
of is Neuralink, oh sure, yeah, which is doing something
fundamentally pretty different from some of the stuff that you
were talking about, whether it's a headband or earbuds or whatever.
And how is that different from, say, what neuralink is
trying to do.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And the reason most people have heard of Neuralink, of course,
is because Elon Musk runs Neuralink. And one of the
very hard things about implanted neurotechnology is the limited number
of neurosurgeons who can perform what is a very delicate
operation to get a device into a person's brain. And
Neuralinks started to build basically robots that could do part
(11:41):
of that surgery, with the vision of being able to
have clinics all over the country or all over the
world that could implant what is a very tiny device.
And then the very tiny device has basically like hair
like threads that are attached to it that reach through
the brain and bed in the brain. So what a
(12:02):
neuralink device does that's very different than these wearable devices
is it's reaching into lots of different parts of the brain,
and it has many, many, many more electrodes than the
couple of electrodes that you might have outside the brain
that have to be read through the skull, so it
bypasses like it's inside, picking up brain activity where.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
It's happening direct from the source, direct from the.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Source, and at a scale that is nothing like what
is happening outside the brain. And so he's been very
clear that his vision is not that this is just
for people who've suffered from als or paraplesia or things
like that. He thinks everybody one day should have a
brain implant that can read brain activity at that depth
(12:46):
and potentially write to brain activity. And that he has
said like he thinks this is the way that humans
compete with AI. Is essentially merging with AI, is how
he's touted it.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Emerged scenario with AI is the one that seems like
probably the best like for us, Yes, if you can't
beat it, join it.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's Elon Musk talking to Joe Rogan back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
So from a long term existential standpoint, that's like the
purpose of neuralink is to create a high bandwidth interface
to the brain such that we can be symbotic with AI.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Now, how close is that? How far is that I
have no idea. I think it's weighs out right. There
aren't even FDA approved implants yet, let alone for healthy
people choosing to drill a hole in their skull and
putting a device inside of it.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But you don't necessarily have to drill a hole in
your head. AI companies are looking at wearable devices that
would allow you to get similar results.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
OpenAI has an entire division that is now dedicated to
trying to build brain found models, where one day you
would have a model like instead of a large language
model that just speaks in texts, in video and other
kinds of context. It also could go from brain signals
(14:13):
to text to video to being truly multimodal. And they
have this big investment in merged labs to create a
brain computer interface through a very different mechanism than other
ones do. All of these trillionaires who have AI companies
are investing in major neurotechnology because they see these as
(14:33):
converging fields. People like Elon Musk see these as ultimately
converging together. That you interact with AI through your neurotechnology,
that you interact with the rest of the world through
your neurotechnology, which also then decodes what's happening in your neurotechnology.
It's this loop between the brain and AI that they're
(14:54):
really building toward.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
So that's where we are brain implants for people who
need them, and neuro headstraps it best buy for everybody else,
and trillion dollar companies racing to be the first to
make money off of a loop between you and AI.
After the break, we'll find out if this stuff can
actually read your mind yet, because under certain circumstances it
kind of can. So, I mean there's kind of two
(15:26):
ends of this that you're talking about here, right. There's
the being able to control pac Man with your brain. Cool,
that's one part, right, and then there's somebody being able
to read what is in your brain. I mean effectively
you have to have that, right. If you're able to
control something, something needs to be reading what I suppose,
what you're thinking. And that's the other end of this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And then the question is, now we go back to
the philosopher side of me. What does it mean to think?
And what is it that you're really decoding?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
What does it mean to think? Okay?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Well, I mean it matters, right because when people hear
mind reading, what they think of is like all of
the thoughts in your head, the images, the feelings, this
like really robust concept of what it means to be
a thinking human. And what neurotechnology is decoding right now
is like one stream of that, not everything that's in
(16:18):
your head. Like most of the consumer neurotechnology, it's decoding
basic brain states. So it's decoding are you tired, are
you happy? Are you feeling like positive or negative? Are
you paying attention? Or is your mind wandering? But it's
not decoding like your full mental landscape. And increasingly what
(16:41):
AI is being used to do is to train on
weaker and weaker signals to be able to translate intentionally
communicated speech. Now, what is that versus just thought? If
I want to send a text message, I am formulating
words that I intend to express out of my brain
and into the world, as opposed to like the private ruminations,
(17:04):
like the things like you're turning over an idea in
your mind. You have a new crush and you're envisioning
that crush. That's not something you mean to communicate outside
of your brain. And so what neurotechnology so far has
been trained to do is to pick up that kind
of speech that you're trying to translate out of your brain,
(17:25):
which shows up differently in your brain.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
How does this stuff actually work a layperson? I think
we have a general idea that Okay, there's something called
synapses and there's like electric signals going on in your brain.
But how does that get translated out to actually data
that a computer could read or that could be useful.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
So depends on what it is that's being decoded out.
But let's start with consumer wearables. Let's imagine that, like
I have an air pods right now, Let's imagine I
have earbuds in that are picking up brain waves. So
what are brain waves as you think, as you are
feeling anything. As you said synapses, right, neurons are firing
in your brain, which give off tiny electrical discharges. And
(18:10):
when you have any dominant mental state that you're experiencing,
you'll have hundreds of thousands of neurons that are firing
at the same time giving off those little electrical discharges.
And the some of those electrical discharges are what can
be picked up outside of the skull. What these kinds
of AirPods or like other electrodes can pick up is
(18:33):
they pick up the brain waves and the amplitudes of
the different waves, and then AI has been trained on
those patterns in the same way that AI has been
trained to be able to look at breast mammograms and
be able to say, this one is cancer, this one
is not cancer. It's like pattern recognition, right, So same
thing is happening with brain waves and brainwave amplitudes. Is
(18:55):
different patterns and different brainwave amplitudes have been associated with
positive negative, mind wandering, paying attention. So it's just taking
what are brain waves and then training AI to understand
this is what it looks like at any particular moment.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So there're gonna be some people who hear this and
think this sounds amazing. If I can play pac Man
with my brain now, yo, I bet I can just
run a call of duty lobby and maybe you know,
a couple of years, maybe like really truly play with
my brain now. Granted, there's gonna be some people who
are thinking all this, you know, this would be awesome
for is like scrolling TikTok and better without my hands,
(19:37):
like this would be amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Probably infinite scroll like that is just it's painful to imagine.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Truly. Yeah, actually, like in the most literal sense of
the word, possible brain rod But there's gonna be some
people who are super into this. Yeah, and honestly sounds cool, right.
You know, I'm able bodied, I'm able to use the
computer with my hands, but yo, if I don't have to,
if I can do it from across the room, that's
kind of cool. And then the ability to for somebody
(20:06):
who has lost the ability or doesn't have the ability
to do some of the things that I'm able to do,
type or speak or whatever, if they can control a
computer communicate with people directly amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
You.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Your book, however, is called The Battle for the Brain,
and I feel like there's you have some caveats, I understand.
What should we be thinking about?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
This?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Is it? This is your last stand for privacy. All
you've got left at this point is what's happening inside
of your brain. Right at this point, people have given
up their privacy of their everyday interactions. They carry a
device around all the time that tracks their every movement,
even their every movement throughout their house. They have listening
(20:53):
devices in their bedrooms. They have smart refrigerators that know
exactly how much food and other things that you know
are going on when you even start to type a
search into Google, it auto completes. There are all kinds
of predictions that are happening all day long about what
you're thinking. That's why you have targeted advertisements and social
(21:15):
media feeds that are tailored to what algorithm thinks that
you will like. But it's still not perfect, and there
is still a piece of you you hold back that
you do not express, and that part of you is
in your mind. And when you start to hook up
sensors to that part of you, that's it. You've given
that last stand of freedom, that last bit of privacy,
(21:40):
to companies that have shown themselves to be particularly bad
at having your self interest in mind.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So let's back up. Even because we're speaking about it
as though it's something that will happen in the future,
but no, it's happening now, So yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
What I did was I wrote the book really to say, like,
here's what's happening right now, not like here's some future
sci fi scenario, but here are misuses of the technology
that are happening right now. Here are educational institutions in
China that are forcing fifth graders to wear headsets that
track their attention and their mind wandering in the classroom.
(22:17):
Here are police across the world who are using wearable
neurotechnology to interrogate criminal suspects. Here employers who are tracking
productivity and tracking whether they're workers are fatigued or paying
attention in the workplace, Like the kinds of abuses and
misuses that you might imagine. I give example after example
(22:39):
in the book of them happening right now, just not
at skill. That's the only difference.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
The employer monitoring thing. I think that one's like, particularly
because that really feels like something that could happen immediately anywhere.
If it's able to happen in one place.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know, it's funny because I my sister's an employement
at Journey, and when she read my chapter your brain work,
she was horrified.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And so here that has to be really interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Family goes, oh, it's like fun family talks. But okay,
So here's the basic idea, Like, especially since the pandemic bossware,
the technology that tracks people through like using their webcams
when they're working at home, or software that's been installed
onto their computers to track their productivity level, like bosswaar
is everywhere.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Remember back when everybody was like buying those mouse jiggling
devices on Amazon to make it look like you were
still working. Yeah, but if they're in your brain.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, exactly. We'll just start with the backdrop of people
recognize employers are doing this, but there still is to
your point, like there's the jiggler on the mouse, there's
the little cover on your webcam so that when you
step away from your computer it's not totally obvious that
you're not at your computer, or like the fake me
that I can put into my my my chair to
(23:57):
make it look like it's me or whatever else. Starting
more than a decade ago, there was a company that
and I'll just say this company has done the right
things privacy wise, but they're a good example. Nevertheless. So
the company is called smart Cap and what they developed
was this like forehead band, but it goes all the
way around that picks up electrical activity from the brain
(24:17):
and it can be worn inside of a hard hat
or a train conductor cap or a baseball cap. And
what it tracks is fatigue levels of an employee, like
on a scale of one to five, or are they wide
awake or are they falling asleep? And if you're a
truck driver and you are driving, you know, down the highway.
It could be useful for the employer to be able
to track whether or not you're falling asleep if you're fatigued.
(24:40):
So that was the purpose. It was for safety reasons
that they launched this, but pretty quickly other companies around
the world were like, well, cool, I can figure out
who's coming to work when they stayed up all night partying.
I can figure out like who's the productive and paying
attention person versus the person who's mind wandering all day.
(25:00):
And so these neurotech companies started selling to enterprises to say,
why don't you just start monitoring brain activity? Why go
through all these inefficiencies of downstream measurement of productivity. Just
measure productivity at.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
The brain, you know. So where you started, for a
lot of people would say, I want to make sure
the truck driver is awake. But it's super interesting here
because I think there is a way in which there's
some times we're okay with certain people being monitored, especially
if you're not a truck driver. Yep, it's okay if
that person is being monitor because they need to be monitored.
(25:35):
But hold on, hold on, you talk about monitoring me now, and.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Once you allow the one, the question is whether you're
allowing the other. But also in my book, I give
the example of the truck driver just so that people
can grapple with it exactly for that reason, which is
sometimes we are going to be okay with it, And
the question is with what limits is it okay for
the employer at the same time that they're monitoring the
truck driver's brain activity for whether they're wider awake or
(25:58):
falling asleep, to also to code their brain activity of
the person that they're fantasizing about. Well, I hope everybody
says no, right, like track if they're falling asleep at
the wheel. But there's a whole bunch of other information
that you could extract from the brain at the same time,
and that should be off limits.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
So one really interesting question that I've seen come up
a lot recently is what sort of privacy that law
enforcement can expect. And there might be some people who
would be interested in knowing what a police officer, what
an ice agent was thinking when they did something. Should
(26:39):
we have access to police officers' brain data?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Hmm, that's interesting right. I like the analogy because you know,
we've been dealing with this on police cameras. Right does
the public get to watch the bodycam footage? The reason
that bodycam footage was originally developed was for the police
force to have a second source of you know, kind
of monitoring what the police officer was doing rather than
(27:03):
just from their perspective. And then the public started to say, well,
if you're recording that, we want access to that data
as well, right, And there's no reason why there should
be asymmetric access to that information. Asymmetries and power are
part of how you end up with abuses of power,
and checks on those asymmetries can be really powerful as
(27:25):
a way to counteract it. But I'm going to start
from a different place, which is I don't think that
the government should have access to our brain data. So
I don't think that there should be an asymmetry to
begin with, because I don't think either side should have
access to each other's brain activity data. I think the
police should not be able to interrogate a person's mind
(27:46):
and the public shouldn't be able to interrogate the police's mind.
That we should have a right to mental privacy on
both sides. That is symmetrical, not asymmetrical. And we can
actually set those guardrails. How do you design your laws
and how do you design your policies so that you
got the upside without also having to accept the downside?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Okay, so how exactly are we supposed to design these laws? Also,
why hasn't anyone just made these laws already? Well, they
have kind of, but it just isn't working out very well.
We get into that and talk about how we could
do better after the break. If you take away nothing
(28:36):
else from this episode, I hope you're able to take
away the fact that neurotech is here right now. It
is not just sci fi. It's not abstract, it's not
something in the future. It already works and there is
already big money behind it. Okay, that established. Let's go
back and think about what happened when social media got popular.
(28:56):
So as a society, we all really got taken by surprise.
We weren't prepared for the addiction, for the disinformation for
the forty fifth president of the United States, any of
that stuff. And the same thing is happening with AI
right now. We have slept walked our way into a
society full of artificial intelligence. So how do we not
repeat that same mistake. How do we prepare for neurotech?
(29:19):
Nita says the answer is probably making some laws right
now while we still have time.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
In this book, what I advocate for is a starting
place is a set of norms, and the norm. Like
to name the norm, it's cognitive liberty, the right to
self determination over your brain and mental experiences. And then
how that translates into law. It shows up in a
lot of places. Right The easiest is imagine setting an
international human right, where the right is updating existing human
(29:52):
rights to reflect the kind of modern threats. So privacy
should explicitly include a right to mental privacy. The right
to self determination, which is collective and political right, should
also be an individual right to self determination, so you
have a right to access and change your brain. Freedom
of thought needs to include your right against manipulation and
punishment for your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
And some states have started doing what she's describing. California
and Colorado have both passed laws that treat your neural
data as a new protected category of data.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
There are some laws that are starting to be adopted,
particularly in the United States, where the idea is to
create a sensitive category of data. So in states that
already have comprehensive privacy laws, like in California or Colorado
to recognize neural data as a category of data that's
sensitive and requires special kinds of processing for that, and
(30:42):
that gets as part of the way there in that
the companies have requirements and limitations on how they actually
address and use neural data. The problem largely is that
the inferences about mental state don't happen in isolation. And
so for example, if you start to have electrodes that
are picking up brain activity and those work together with
(31:02):
glasses that pick up through eye tracking data where your
gaze is, it's the data together that starts to allow
for really precise inferences. We didn't have to articulate these
kinds of rights before because we just assumed we had them.
But technology sometimes reveals to us what our limitations of
law and philosophy are. Like they help us see, okay,
(31:24):
law assumed you had it. We didn't have to name it.
It assumed you had freedom of thought. It assumed you
had mental privacy because there was no way to violate
it before and now there is, and so now you
have to name it. So I think it's a good attempt.
We're starting to see movement in this direction. That's what
we would hope to see. The problem right now is
in the execution, and I think we'll close that gap eventually.
(31:47):
I think eventually we'll start to recognize that there is
a right to mental privacy, that that right to mental
privacy doesn't matter how you get at brain activity, it's
getting at brain activity at all, and that we need
to create special protections that give peace people unique rights
to do so, and hopefully we do that before the
technology becomes widespread, because it's almost impossible to claw back rights.
(32:08):
It's a lot easier to protect rights in advance.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
How concerned are you that we're just going to get
used to a company having access to our brain before
we actually get the chance to do something about it preemptively?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
It is something unusual that I had to convince my
editor of, which is when the paperback version of my
book came out, which was a year after the hardback
copy of my book came out, to let me write
a new chapter, like I kind of PostScript, and I
titled that chapter normalizing Neural Surveillance. But it showed that's
(32:44):
kind of exactly how it happens, especially when you encounter
new technology. In settings that are unfamiliar, meaning like they're
oftentimes paired with something that isn't the threat. You go
to the perfume counter and you're offered the chance to
wear a neural headset to tell what your favorite perfume
(33:06):
is how your brain reacts to perfume. Or you go
to the Museum of Modern Art and you're invited to
put on a neural headset to look at an extraordinary
AI art installation and then become part of the art
as your brain activity merges with the art in visual form.
These are real examples. These aren't hypotheticals that I'm coming
(33:28):
up with. These are real things that are happening. And
what happens is people then have positive associations like wow,
that was so cool, not wow that was so scary.
I just gave up my brain activity data on the
beach to meta And it's how we normalize the technology
and give up like a whole new category of data
our last passion of freedom without ever thinking about it.
(33:51):
I'm inviting us to think about it. I'm begging us
to think about it, right, and I am like, please,
let's this time think about it and make the choices
so that the technology which can be extraordinarily promising, which
could transform brain health and wellness, which could be incredibly empowering,
becomes a tool that does all of those things rather
(34:12):
than a tool of surveillance and of stripping us of
our last stand for freedom.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
And moving away from the privacy and the law side
for just a second and going back to philosophy. The
commercialization of neurotech and the outside access to that data
also has some implications for your own sense of who
you are.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
I think there has to be some space that we
create for us to continue to be human. And I
think that space is the space of mental reprieve, Like
it always has been. It's always been assumed. It's always
been presumed that you would have it because there was
never a way to access it before. And I think, like,
think about this, Think about like your closest human relationships,
(34:58):
Like what makes them close for you?
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Well, I suppose you can tell them anything.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, and you choose what to tell them, right, And
that's different than what you choose to tell other people.
There is an asymmetry of how much you're willing to
be vulnerable with another person, how much you're willing to
share with them, and you get to make those choices,
and if that choice was taken away from you, right,
the contents of your mind were something that other people
(35:24):
had access to, like, it would both change your relationship
to the person that you're closest to, but also change
your relationship to yourself, because maybe you start to try
to censor your own thoughts or you're worried in the
same way that you're worried about your writing or what
you do in public, will lead to other people judging you,
and the earlier that happens. Like a kid, I have
a fifth grader, you know, she's all self conscious and
(35:46):
awkward about you know, and if she has to worry
that people know what she's thinking and not just what
she's expressing to the world, like, does her mental world
become smaller and smaller and smaller. And I worry about that, right,
I worry that the more we allow intrusions into the
private thoughts of an individual, the less space they have
(36:09):
for becoming.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So what is it that we can do. I'm going
to assume you're not telling me to wear a tinfoil hat.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
No, it's not that it is. This time, actually demand better, Right,
there's legislation that's pending in the US Congress called the
Mind Act that was introduced by Senator Schumer, which asks
the FTC, the agency that looks into trade practices and
consumer practices, and figure out, like what are the gaps
in federal law that need to be filled to actually
(36:39):
address and enable us to have neurotechnology be beneficial to us.
Support that, Pick up the phone, call your senator and say, like,
I support the Mind Act and want there to be
the right set of protections that are in place. Look
at and read this time. And I know it's fine print.
I know we all just scroll past it, but we
(37:00):
only choose the companies that are actually committing to protect
your neural data and to not use or misuse it.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
It's a big ask, but maybe we'll get it right
this time. We have to.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Like this time, we have to, We really do. And
I get it that it's hard. It's easier to be
the passive consumer who thinks that they don't have any
say in all of this, but we do. We have
a say in it. It is up to it's like
up to us, it's up to the choices we make
for what direction this technology goes.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
So longtime listeners will notice, But originally this podcast had
a different name and it had different hosts. Back in
twenty nineteen, the original hosts Oz and Kara were asking
some pretty weird questions for the time, like could AI
one day be used by the cops? Or could AI
take people's jobs or spread misinformation or crank out art
(37:50):
and music so fast that it cheapens it? Were we
losing our last chance to make decisions about AI? And
where we just sleepwalking into a future of AI? These
questions sounded abstract or like science fiction, or at the
very least so far out in the future that we
could just deal with it or figure it out when
or if the technology ever got here, because that's how
(38:14):
people looked at AI when they ask those questions as
the season ended in twenty nineteen. Anyway, that's a long
wind up to say that this is the final episode
of kill Switch. It has been a very weird ride
making this, but it also feels fitting that seven years
after that first season we're ending on neurotechnology, something that
(38:34):
sounds abstract. It sounds like science fiction, or at the
very least, it sounds like it's so far out in
the future that we can just figure it out. When
or if the technology ever gets here. Who knows what
the next seven years looks like. But I'd like to
go back briefly to twenty seven years ago, to something
that the artist Prince said while he was handing out
an award at the Yahoo Internet Life Awards back in
(38:57):
nineteen ninety nine. Here's print.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
Don't be fooled by the internet.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
H It's it's cool.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
It's cool to get on the computer, but don't let
the computer get on you. It's cool. It's cool to
use the computer. Don't let the computer use you. You
all saw the matrix. There's a war going on the
(39:29):
battlefields and the mind, and the prize is the soul,
so just be careful.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Okay, thank you. The battlefield is the mind, so just
be careful one last time. Killswitch is hosted by Me
Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darling Potts and
Julian Nutter. Our theme song is by Me and Kyle Murdoch,
(40:01):
and Kyle also mixed the show from Kaleidoscope. Our executive
producers are oz Va Lashin, mangesh Hat Togadur and Kate Osbourne.
From iHeart. Our executive producers are Katrina norbl and Nikki E. Tor.
My name is Daxter Thomas and it's been in honor
to spend some time with y'all. Catch y'all out there somewhere. Goodbye,
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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