Your Right to Mental Privacy in the Age of Brain-Sensing Tech | Nita Farahany | TED

The Future of Consumer Neurotech

In this section, the speaker discusses how consumer neurotech devices are becoming more prevalent and how they will change the way we track our brain activity.

Consumer Neurotech Devices

• Smartwatches, rings, and other wearable devices can track various aspects of our physical health.

• Consumer neurotech devices are now being sold worldwide to enable us to track our own brain activity.

• Companies like Meta, Microsoft, Snap, and Apple are embedding brain sensors in everyday devices like earbuds, headphones, headbands, watches and even wearable tattoos.

• Conservative estimates predict that the neurotech industry will be worth over 38 billion dollars by 2032.

Possibilities and Risks

• Consumer neurotech devices could help treat neurological diseases and mental health disorders as seriously as physical well-being.

• However, making our brains transparent to others introduces extraordinary risks.

• Before it's too late to do so, we must change the basic terms of service for neurotechnology in favor of individual rights.

Personal Experience with Neurotechnology

In this section, the speaker shares her personal experience with using neurofeedback therapy to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Overcoming PTSD with DecNef

• Exposure therapy and neurofeedback helped the speaker overcome her PTSD after losing her daughter.

• Decoded neurofeedback (DecNef), a groundbreaking approach that uses machine-learning algorithms to identify specific brain activity patterns associated with traumatic memories could offer reprieve for those suffering from traumatic memories.

Success Story

• A woman named Sarah used implanted brain sensors that reset her brain activity like a pacemaker for the brain to overcome severe and intractable depression.

Brain Sensors and the Future of Neuroscience

In this section, the speaker discusses how brain sensors can be used to detect epileptic seizures and early stages of aggressive forms of brain tumors. The use of brain sensors can also improve brain processing speeds, memory, reasoning, executive functioning, and even change our brains for the better. However, there are concerns about the collection and sharing of sensitive brain data.

Brain Sensors for Detection and Improvement

• Researchers have developed brain sensors using AI in pattern recognition and consumer electroencephalography to detect epileptic seizures minutes to up to an hour before they occur.

• Regular use of brain sensors could enable us to detect the earliest stages of aggressive forms of brain tumors like glioblastoma.

• Some brain-training platforms like Cognizant have proven powerful in improving brain processing speeds, memory, reasoning, and executive functioning when played repeatedly over time.

Possibilities for Neuroscience

• Widespread use of brain sensors could exponentially increase data on human brains.

• Brain data will be more sensitive than personal data because it reflects feelings, mental states, emotions, preferences, desires, and thoughts.

• The speaker shares a personal example where she would not want her collected trauma-related data to be commodified or shared by others.

Concerns About Brain Data Collection

• Brain data won't be collected in traditional laboratory environments or clinical research studies run by physicians and scientists but rather by companies who've been commodifying personal data for years.

• Social hurdles will be more challenging than scientific hurdles when it comes to collecting and sharing sensitive brain data.

• Unless people have individual control over their brain data, it could be used for microtargeting or worse instead of treating dementia.

• Brain wearables will have write capabilities, creating risks that our brains can be hacked, manipulated, and even subject to targeted attacks.

Recognizing a Human Right to Cognitive Liberty

In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of recognizing cognitive liberty as a human right and outlines three interrelated human rights that need to be updated to secure mental privacy and safeguard against interference with our thoughts.

The Importance of Cognitive Liberty

• Cognitive liberty is a right from interference by others.

• It is also a right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences.

• This enables human flourishing.

Three Interrelated Human Rights

• Mental privacy: A right to safeguard us from interference with our automatic reactions, emotions, and thoughts.

• Freedom of thought: An absolute human right to protect us from interception, manipulation, and punishment of our thoughts.

• Self-determination: A right to secure self-ownership over our brains and mental experiences. This allows us to access and change them if we want to do so.

Efforts Towards Securing Digital Rights

In this section, the speaker discusses ongoing efforts towards securing digital rights around neurotechnologies but argues that these rights need to be better aligned with broader sets of digital rights.

Ongoing Efforts Towards Securing Digital Rights

• There are important efforts already underway from the UN to UNESCO in nations worldwide over rights and regulations around neurotechnologies.

Aligning Digital Rights

• However, those rights need to be better aligned with a broader set of digital rights.

• Cognitive liberty is an update to liberty in the digital age as an umbrella concept for human flourishing across digital technologies.

The Future of Digital Technologies and Our Brains

In this section, the speaker discusses the potential dangers of digital technologies on our brains and mental experiences and emphasizes the need to secure a right to self-determination over our brains.

The Dangers of Digital Technologies

• Digital technologies don't exist in silos but in combination, affecting our brains and mental experiences.

• Consumer brain wearables have already arrived, and the commodification of our brains has already begun.

• We haven't yet passed the inflection point where most of our brains can be directly accessed and changed by others.

Securing a Right to Self-Determination

• We must secure a right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences.

• Doing so will open up endless possibilities limited only by our imagination.