The Future of Cognitive Liberty

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What you can get resolution-wise from implants in the brain may be much more powerful than wearable sensors. You can pick up with some degree of accuracy, for example, if a person is tired just by picking up how they're moving steering wheel or using sensors on a car. But what these other microfacial changes don't get you are some of the unexpressed inward and deeper feelings, emotions, and reactions. Those inward reflections are things that AI has gotten better at, but not precise.

We are on the cusp of an explosion of cheap, consumer-ready neurotechnology - from earbuds that gather our behavioral data, to sensors that can read our dreams. And it’s all going to be supercharged by AI. This technology is moving from niche to mainstream - and it has the same potential to become exponential.

Legal scholar Nita Farahany talks us through the current state of neurotechnology and its deep links to AI. She says that we urgently need to protect the last frontier of privacy: our internal thoughts. And she argues that without a new legal framework around “cognitive liberty,” we won’t be able to insulate our brains from corporate and government intrusion.

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