Mindblowing: Advances in mind tech spur push meant for 'neuro-rights'
As sci-fi thriller "Inception" topped box offices around the world, audiences were delighted and appalled by its futuristic account of a criminal gang invading people's dreams to steal valuable data.
Greater than a decade in, the technology envisioned by filmmaker Christopher Nolan is probable not remote, according to experts in Chile, who've moved the security debate beyond burglar alarms to safeguarding the most effective real estate persons ever own: their minds.
The South American nation is looking to be the world's first to legally protect citizens' "neuro-rights," with lawmakers likely to pass a constitutional reform blocking technology that seeks to "increase, diminish or disturb" people's mental integrity without their consent.
Opposition senator Guido Girardi, among the authors of the legislation, is concerned about technology -- whether algorithms, bionic implants or some other gadgetry -- that could threaten "the essence of humans, their autonomy, their freedom and their no cost will."
"If this technology manages to learn (your mind), before even you're alert to what you're thinking," he told AFP, "it might write emotions into the human brain: life stories that aren't yours and that the human brain won't be able to distinguish whether they were yours or the product of designers."
Scores of sci-fi movies and novels experience offered audiences the dark area of neurotechnology -- perhaps invoking criminal masterminds ensconced in solution strongholds, manipulating the world with a good dastardly laugh even while stroking a cat.
Actually, the nascent technology has recently demonstrated how it can have drastically positive applications.
In 2013, then-US president Barack Obama promoted the BRAIN (Brain Exploration through Advancing Progressive Neuro-technologies) initiative, which aimed to review the sources of brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and epilepsy.
Back Chile, Science Minister Andres Couve told AFP the neuro-rights debate "is part of a consolidation of a fresh scientific institutionality in the country that's now capturing international interest."
But many are concerned about the prospect of nefarious actors to abuse technological advancements.
Chile's President Sebastian Pinera proposed at last week's Ibero-American summit found in Andorra that countries legislate along on the thorny concern.
"I call on all Ibero-American countries to anticipate the near future and also to adequately protect, nowadays, not only our citizens' info and information, but also their thoughts, their emotions, their neuronal details, to avoid these from appearing manipulated by new technology," the conservative Pinera said.
The Chilean bill contains four key fields of legislation: guarding the human mind's data, or neuro-data; fixing limits to the neuro-technology of studying and specifically writing in brains; placing an equitable distribution and usage of these systems; and putting limitations on neuro-algorithms.
Spanish scientist Rafael Yuste, an expert on the subject from Columbia University on New York, told AFP many of these technologies already exist, and sometimes the the majority of remote will be available within 10 years.
They already are being applied to animals in laboratories.
Scientists have attempted rats, implanting images of unfamiliar things within their brains and observing how they accept those things in real life as their own and incorporate them to their natural behavior.
"If you can enter there (in to the chemical operations of the mind) and stimulate or inhibit them, you can transform people's decisions. That is something we've previously finished with animals," said Yuste.
The science has opened the probability of developing hybrid humans with artificially increased cognitive abilities.
The chance is that, without proper safeguards, the technology could possibly be used to improve people's thoughts, employing algorithms via the internet to re-program their hard wiring, to dictate their interests, preferences or patterns of consumption.
"In order to avoid a two-speed problem with some enhanced humans and other people who aren't, we believe these neuro-technologies have to be regulated along rules of universal justice, recognizing the spirit of the General Declaration of Human Rights," said Yuste.
Yuste considers neuro-technology a good "tsunami" that humanity will need to deal with, which is why people have to be prepared.
"Neuro-technology could be scary if you feel about dystopian science-fiction scenarios. Nevertheless, for every dystopian situation, there are 10 useful kinds," said Yuste, who views neuro-technology as "a fresh Renaissance for humanity."
Already, neuro-technologies are being used on patients experiencing Parkinson's or depression simply by stimulating the mind with electrodes to "alleviate the symptoms," said Yuste.
Similarly, deaf people happen to be treated with "cochlear implants in the auditory nerve" that stimulate the mind.
It is hoped that something similar later on will restore sight to the blind or treat people that have Alzheimer's by strengthening the memory's neuronal circuits.
"It will be an advantageous change for the human race," said Yuste.
Source: japantoday.com
