The Use of Brain Tech in China: Tracking Attention and Punishing Students

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Brain tech is being used in China, India, Singapore, and the UAE for interrogation purposes.
Factory workers in China are required to wear EEG sensors in their hard hats and baseball caps to monitor their attention and fatigue levels.
Students in China wear headsets provided by a U.S. company to track their attention and mind wandering.
Brain activity information of students is sent to teachers, parents, and the state, leading to potential punishments.
Employees are required to have their brain activity tracked in the workplace, raising concerns about data misuse.
China is conducting brain mining experiments, examining people's reactions to political messaging to determine their beliefs.

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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