Controlling animal movements with
your thoughts alone. Monitoring a pupil’s attention in class with a headset
that scans brain activity. And, of course, the much more familiar cochlear
implants that help the deaf hear or deep-brain stimulators that assist people
with Parkinson’s disease to regain functional mobility.
This is neurotech, new,
potentially revolutionary technology that promises to transform our lives. With
all the global challenges of today, we need revolutionary technology to help
the world cope.
Neurotech
is our, frankly, mind-blowing attempt to connect human brains to machines,
computers and mobile phones. Although brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are the
heart of neurotech, it is more broadly defined as technology able to collect,
interpret, infer or modify information generated by any part of the nervous
system. Why? To develop therapies for mental illnesses and neurological
diseases. Beyond health care, it could soon be used in education, gaming,
entertainment, transportation and so much more.
Still, neurotech is at the very
dawn of its technological journey. As it becomes more commonplace, we must
consider the risks it might present, the ethics around it, and the necessary
regulation. We have to anticipate and deal with the implications related to the
development, deployment and use of this technology. Any neurotech applications
should consider potential consequences for the autonomy, privacy,
responsibility, consent, integrity and dignity of a person. What if someone
were to face employment discrimination because the algorithms that power a
neurotech application used for hiring misinterpret his or her neurodata? What
if a criminal gets a hold of the previous or current neurodata of the secretary
of defense and steals top secret information? Ethical concerns increase when we
are not just monitoring someone’s neurodata but also interpreting it, decoding
the person’s thoughts—with implications for accuracy and mental privacy.
More information:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ethical-challenges-of-connecting-our-brains-to-computers/
