The Thrill and Threat of Mind Hacking | Posthuman with Emily Chang

Introduction to Brain-Computer Interfaces and Their Potential

• Humans have long hoped to harness the full power of the mind, with the CIA even hiring supposed "mind readers" during the Cold War to help spy on the Soviets in a top secret program (17s).
• Brain computer interface (BCI) technology shows tremendous promise in making our minds do things we've only previously imagined, but this comes at a price: access to your mind (40s).
• With neurotechnology, we can decide what type of human being we want to be, and for the first time in history, we've developed technology that lets you record and change brain activity (1m22s).
• Scientists have successfully manipulated a mouse's neurons to make it drink, proving that the brain can be controlled from the outside, which raises concerns about the potential risks of neurotechnology in humans (1m38s).
• The most scary scenarios that can be imagined with neurotechnology include mental privacy, decoding of one's thoughts, identity dissolution, manipulation of decisions, and the creation of a fractured humanity with mentally augmented and non-augmented individuals (2m8s).

Neurotechnology for Mental Health Treatment

• The development of neurotechnology is driven by the need to help patients with brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, who cannot be effectively treated with current technology (3m31s).
• At Motif, implantable electronic devices are being built to help people who suffer from mental health conditions that aren't being effectively treated by their drugs, with an estimated 3 million Americans suffering from depression and having failed to respond to two or more drugs (4m12s).
• The device being developed by Motif is a miniature implant that stimulates the executive function network to increase its activity and help treat depression, which is considered a circuit level disorder (5m6s).
• A brain implant procedure can help individuals overcome negative emotions and ruminating states by strengthening the brain's networks, allowing them to do things that were previously impossible (5m23s).
• The procedure is estimated to take less than 30 minutes and is considered less invasive than most cosmetic procedures, such as a nose job (5m34s).
• Unlike drugs, which can cause side effects by activating neurons in the body and brain, this procedure targets specific brain networks (5m44s).
• The implant is expected to receive FDA approval in the coming years, followed by a clinical trial, and may potentially be used to treat mental illnesses such as PTSD, ADHD, and OCD (6m4s).

Potential Applications and Advancements in Neurotechnology

• Researchers also believe that electronic therapy could prevent cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's disease within the next 10 years (6m18s).
• This technology differs from Neuralink and other brain-computer interface companies, which focus on getting information in and out of the brain, whereas this procedure aims to restore brain circuits (6m36s).
• Potential use cases for the implant include curing incurable diseases, and it may also be possible to use the technology to enhance cognitive abilities, such as focus and attention (6m48s).
• The implant could potentially make people smarter or give them the ability to focus on demand, with the possibility of pushing a button to increase attention levels (6m57s).
• The technology has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of mental illnesses, which can be measured and treated in a similar way to other diseases like cancer (7m16s).
• The implant is a significant improvement over previous technology, with a minimally invasive procedure that involves drilling a small hole in the skull and placing a tiny device the size of a pea (8m38s).
• The greatest potential of this technology lies in its ability to stop the massive public health crisis caused by mental illnesses (9m0s).

Brain-Computer Interfaces for Restoring Lost Abilities

• Brain computer interfaces offer hope for people who have lost the ability to interact with the world due to illness or accident, allowing them to perform tasks just by using their brains, truly hands-free (9m57s).
• Rodney, a person with ALS, is able to send text messages using only his brain with the help of an implantable brain computer interface (11m17s).
• The stentrode, a stent electrode, is a technology that uses the natural highways of the blood vessels to enter the brain in a safe and scalable way, with the potential to solve previously unsolvable problems (10m37s).
• The first application of the stentrode is in the use of an implantable brain computer interface, which can detect activity in the brain associated with the control of movement and restore a person's ability to exert their free will (10m55s).
• The technology is about the restoration of agency, autonomy, and giving people back control over their world, which has a huge impact on relationships in life (11m29s).
• Neurological disability is the number one cause of disability in the world, and solving problems in a way that can scale is crucial to have the impact that neurotechnology can have (12m6s).
• The traditional problem in neurotechnology has been the requirement of open brain surgery, which limits the technology to specialized academic centers, but the stentrode technology aims to solve problems without open surgery (12m16s).
• No company has yet achieved market approval for an implantable brain computer interface, but breakthroughs are coming that will allow access to a whole range of regions in the brain (12m41s).

Non-Invasive Neurotechnology and Wearable Devices

• A pipeline of products is expected to be rolled out over the next couple of years, including non-invasive wearable technologies such as wristbands that can read brain signals (12m51s).
• Meta acquired Control Labs, a company that makes neurotechnology in the form of a wristband, allowing users to control devices with their thoughts (13m19s).
• The neural interface being designed is not reading minds, but rather allowing users to control devices with their brain signals (13m40s).

Brain-Computer Interfaces and Human Enhancement

• Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) allow the brain to communicate with devices in the same way it communicates with the body, enabling control of devices with thoughts, such as checking email or hearing messages through AI-powered earbuds like Apple's patented EEG-capable AirPods (13m48s).
• BCIs have the potential to create "super humans" by granting senses that currently aren't possible, such as hearing inaudible sounds or seeing ultraviolet light, and could even allow people to relive memories by transporting back to them (14m43s).
• The goal of some scientists is to use BCIs to control not just aspects of the body, but also systems outside the body, providing humans with superhuman capabilities (15m5s).
• AI devices that emulate the brain can share information more efficiently and become better than human brains, leading to the possibility of hybrids of AI devices in human brains, as proposed by Ray Kurzweil (15m40s).
• However, there are concerns that once AI devices become smarter than humans, they may not need humans, and the development of such technology requires careful consideration to prevent existential threats (15m51s).

OpenBCI and Real-Time Emotion Decoding

• OpenBCI is an open-source brain computer interfacing company that has evolved from building low-cost modules to working on complex integrated systems like Galea, which can be used to control devices like drones with facial muscles (16m55s).
• The technology can also be used to decode emotions, stress, arousal, fatigue, and workload in real-time, enabling applications like movies, games, or stories that adapt to the user's emotions (18m24s).

Ethical Concerns and Privacy Implications of BCIs

• Telepathy, or the ability to read minds, is a possibility with BCIs, but it raises concerns about privacy and permission, and would likely start with crude states like detecting high-level emotions (19m15s).
• Computers will integrate the individual's mind or emotions as a core component, allowing for a more personal level of emotional analysis, but raising concerns about privacy (19m34s).
• The idea of mental and emotional states being stored online and accessed by governments, advertisers, and corporations is a reality, with digital twins existing on the internet inside major technology companies' servers (19m55s).
• There is a sense of loss of control over one's emotions, with no access to the collected data, and an immense amount of "ethical debt" that needs to be paid off with technology (20m31s).
• The classification of people into different camps and tailoring of advertisements and content based on these representations is a difficult technological problem to solve (20m42s).
• The question arises of how to backtrack from the current methods of harvesting and collecting psychological information about people and give that power back to the user (21m6s).

The Final Barrier: Human Identity and Free Will

• Brain-computer interfaces enable direct communication between the brain and machines, but the question remains whether this crosses a final barrier and gives up the last part of what makes us human (21m38s).
• The idea of putting a chip in one's brain to enhance neurological functions is considered, with the condition that it wouldn't have nasty side effects and a high probability of safety (21m59s).
• As AI influences more decisions, the question arises whether we are willingly opening ourselves up to some form of mind control and challenging the concept of free will (22m15s).
• Free will is defined as doing something to achieve one's own goals, not someone else's, and the concern is whether AI is influencing our desires and decisions, making us less autonomous (22m39s).
• The fear is that once we open our minds to these devices, tech companies and the government will have access to all our thoughts and take advantage of them (23m9s).
• The possibility of putting a chip in one's brain to increase happiness is considered, but it raises concerns about the potential for exploitation by tech companies and governments (23m29s).
• A hypothetical brain chip that makes a person happier is considered, but it raises questions about how it would fit everyone's definition of happiness and work with individual brain chemistry (23m36s).
• It is suggested that experiencing all emotions is necessary to understand and address the root causes of unhappiness, rather than relying on a chip to induce happiness (23m48s).
• A thought experiment is proposed, where a helmet can make the wearer smarter and double their salary, but at the cost of tech companies and the government having access to their thoughts (24m0s).
• Initially, the idea of wearing the helmet is considered acceptable, but concerns arise when the potential for invasive access to thoughts is mentioned (24m20s).
• The decision to wear the helmet is reconsidered, and it is ultimately rejected due to the risk of tech companies and the government accessing thoughts, with the condition that it should not be invasive in changing who a person is (24m40s).
• The importance of maintaining personal autonomy and control over one's thoughts is emphasized, with a clear rejection of any technology that compromises this (24m47s).