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Tan Le is an entrepreneur, inventor, explorer, and CEO of the San Francisco-based company EMOTIV. The company’s non-invasive brain technology reads and interprets brainwaves. She is also the author of The Neurogeneration: The New Era in Brain Enhancement That Is Revolutionizing the Way We Think, Work, and Heal. In it she says, “The NeuroGeneration is an all-encompassing age of unprecedented change in the way we use and understand the brain that may forever alter what it means to be human. It will touch all of our lives, whether we actively participate in it or not… Nations will have to rethink education systems, healthcare systems, labor laws, and more to address the vast implications of these technologies. I’m honored to serve as a member of the WEF’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnologies, a group of neuroscientists, neurologists, technologists, and biopharmaceutical and corporate leaders that explores the effects of developments in neurotechnology on individuals as well as industry, government, and society as a whole. Together we attempt to design innovative governance models to ensure we can maximize the benefits of these developments while minimizing their risks… As the latest tools for brain enhancement and augmentation revolutionize our world, it could lead to greater disparity and a ‘neuro-elite’ class that has an unfair competitive advantage in business and life. Or, it could act as a great equalizer, letting all of us make the most of the supercomputer inside our skull.”
The positives of the book include an overall well-rounded and optimistic view of the coming “neuro generation,” with many examples of technology that is being developed. In the introduction she states, “The neurotechnologies I showcase represent the breadth of innovations underway—from noninvasive tools to those that require surgical procedures, tools that let us peer into the brain of others and others that allow us to change it, tools developed for the healthcare industry and others geared to consumers… Chapter two reveals how breakthrough EEG-fused brainwear is opening the door to Star Wars-style mind control to transform the lives of people with physical limitations and to unlock seemingly impossible abilities… Chapter eight includes an urgent call for “neuroequality” and urges brain-enhancement innovators and inventors to democratize access to their technologies to ensure we don’t create greater disparity in our world.”
Throughout the book, she gives many examples of how neurotechnology positively impacts our world, such as when Rodrigo Hubner Mendes drove a racecar with his mind in Brazil in 2017. He was shot in a carjacking when he was only eighteen years old, which left him without the ability to use his arms and legs. As a quadriplegic, he was finally able to drive a car twenty-seven years later when he was forty-five, due to neurotechnology that allowed him to control the car using only his brainwaves!
In chapter 3 she states, “The director of the Center for the Mind at the University of Sydney & Australian National University, Allan, firmly believes that we all possess hidden genius within the folds of our brains—and that neurostimulation is the key to unlocking it.” She then goes on to talk about Jason Padgett, who was kicked in the head during a mugging. After the attack, he obtained the ability to comprehend math and physics differently, and it also altered how he saw the entire world. He started to see everything as “complex geometric patterns and repeating fractals,” and he was then able to create award-winning art, even though he did not have any art skills previously. With neurotechnology, it is possible that everyone may be able to unlock servant-like abilities that would never have even been thought of before! This would be done by “stimulating the brain with electricity in such a way as to turn off certain areas that typically inhibit our ability to notice detail in favor of quickly assigning meaning…”
Geoff, a military trauma physician, did not want to wait the usual five to ten years before testing humans, so he “…seized on his DARPA predecessor’s push into the brain-computer interface arena and launched a program called Revolutionizing Prosthetics to create a mind-controlled robotic prosthetic arm with a fully functioning hand.” She later goes on to state, “The technology Geoff’s team at DARPA created isn’t just about building a mind-controlled robot arm for amputees or people with paralysis. It’s about using your brain to control the world around you. When we can do that, the possibilities will be endless. “This means in the future our descendants will no longer be confined to the bodies in which they were born,’ Geoff says. He envisions a day when humans will be able to see beyond the visual spectrum and wear exoskeletons that allow them to control six robotic arms. “They’re going to do things you and I can’t even imagine right now,” he says enthusiastically.”
Later in Chapter 9, she addresses the fears of AI replacing humans in the workplace, saying, “Machines and algorithms could displace 75 million jobs by 2022, according to the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2018. But the news isn’t all dire. AI is also expected to create 133 million new jobs for a net gain of 58 million new positions.” This is currently a hot-button issue that leaves many people worrying, which is why this should be seen as a relief. This issue also may lead many people to embrace the coming inevitable changes that AI is destined to bring.
While offering an overall positive vision of the technological advances of the neuro generation, she also highlights the concerns and dangers that come along with these technologies. The dangers of this technology are easily seen and can be broken down into three main categories: data collection/privacy, upgrading/changing the human body, and thought control.
Data Collection/Privacy
As technology becomes integrated with the human mind and body, massive data collection will inevitably follow. Tan goes on to state, “Preliminary results from Suzanne and her colleagues also suggest that team success is indeed reflected in brain-to-brain synchrony, predicting team performance better than the team’s own judgments of how well they did. Taking this concept further, could EEG data someday help managers create higher-performing teams based on brain-to-brain synchrony? What if companies used the devices to weed out individuals based on something they noted in their neural data?… You can also combine brain insights with other biometric sensors, such as eye tracking and heart-rate measurements, to gain a fuller picture of consumer choices…It’s now possible to get quantifiable metrics in real time as a customer is walking through your store, showroom, or venue.”
“In the decades since Arne received his pacemaker, innovators got smart and started not just stimulating the heart but also recording data from it. They began using technology that records remotely from a home-based device that monitors the patient’s pacemaker activity.”
“In 2017, tech firm Three Square Market in Wisconsin began offering employees an unusual perk: an RFID chip implanted between the thumb and forefinger… Three Square Market isn’t the only enterprise using implantable devices. A growing number of Swedish companies are exploring the cyborg route. One firm called Biohax has implanted microchips in several thousand customers to allow them to hop on board trains without waiting in a ticket line.”
“It’s mind-boggling to think of the extraordinary discoveries that could arise from a globally shared platform. Yet Tara anticipates a slight snag in the concept: How can you share data without infringing on privacy? She’s seen reports of people being re-identified from anonymized data. In an explosive 2015 investigation, Latanya Sweeney, the director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University and the editor of Technology Science, tested patients’ vulnerability to re-identification. She focused her study on Washington State, one of the thirty-three U.S. states that legally share or sell anonymized patient data. Using newspaper articles about traffic accidents, assaults, and other incidents that resulted in hospital visits, Sweeny was able to correctly match 35 of 81 individuals—43 percent—who were identified by name in the news stories to the anonymized information released by the state.”
“Educators have a tremendous opportunity to produce better results by taking advantage of the latest advances in neurotechnology in a variety of ways: tailoring education to individual learning styles, allowing students to use technology that facilitates learning, and offering tools that promote better focus and attention.”
“The field could take a cue from retail giants like Walmart and Amazon, which are already using neurotechnologies and neuroscience findings to understand and influence consumer behavior.”
The dangers of the above-mentioned scenarios are impossible to understate. Could the day come when individuals have no choice but to participate in brain-to-brain synchrony just to be able to perform well enough to get or keep a job? As time goes on, are more and more companies going to require that employees get chipped? The day could come when technology is used to track and trace every part of our daily lives, and the data that is collected can be used by individuals or corporations to uncover every small detail of our personal lives, making privacy a thing of the past!
Upgrading/Changing the Human Body
As the ability to alter the human body becomes more and more of a reality, it is inevitable that ethical questions will follow. Below are just a handful of the almost endless scenarios in this area.
“Adam’s vision for the future of the human brain goes far beyond treating neural deficits. At the epic Neuroscape incubator, his team is also crafting technologies intended to augment cognitive function in healthy people, possibly elevating us to that elusive superhuman status.”
“Could we reach a day when people actually consider trading in their flesh and blood for bionic body parts to upgrade their capabilities or their job performance? Could this biological-bionic connection eventually tip so we become more machine than human? And at what cost? Imagine feeling pressured to endure major surgical procedures to get the most advanced bionics so you can keep up with other superhumans… He defines himself as a cyborg in three ways: biological, neurological, and psychological. Because of the blending of human and machine, Neil’s physical body has changed, his sense of self has changed, and his brain has changed… The cyborg can even venture beyond the earthly realm, linking up with satellites and telescopes or connecting to the International Space Station, where he can hear the colors from space. “Our senses no longer need to be where our bodies are,” he says. “I believe the next stage of human exploration is to investigate the disconnection between body and sense and to start traveling without our bodies.” He envisions a day when we can explore space and other planets from the comfort of our own bed.”
“Yes, there will be robots, but AI will also become part of an extended, augmented human organism—part of us, part of our brain. In other words, “humanistic intelligence” will prevail, with humans integrated in the feedback loop with computers, allowing the analog and digital systems to work together. In the NeuroGeneration, human-machine hybrids will combine the high-speed processing powers of computers with the creativity that is uniquely human, transforming us into something much greater than the sum of our parts. And in my view, it is this powerful combo that will outperform all others… Nimble companies that adopt emerging AI technologies early may gain an unsurpassable competitive edge over slower legacy firms. In a workforce dominated by automated devices, workers who don’t want to become obsolete may have to upgrade their brain’s software to stay relevant… What was most remarkable, according to study author Andrew Beck, a researcher at Bethel Israel Deaconess Medical Center, was that when they combined the efforts of AI and the pathologists, the accuracy rating rose to 99.5 percent. The human-computer combo outclassed them all.”
“On the other hand, if you arrive in the City of Lights and simply ask your AI to translate your thoughts into French, your brain isn’t actually learning how to speak. Take away your AI, and you’ll be in big trouble when you need to go now. Developers need to start addressing these issues so that in the future we can integrate AI with our biological brains without becoming slaves to it. In our ongoing quest for the advancement of humankind, we must continue to ponder what we want the evolution of the human brain to look like, and strategically map our trajectory to get there… The reality is that individuals who dedicate themselves to learning how to make their brain sync with the new tools will outperform those who aren’t willing to invest the hours necessary… In other eras, these feats would have been viewed as nothing short of miraculous. But to those of us living in the NeuroGeneration, they will simply become our new reality, the science fiction of our daily lives. These tools will become such an integral part of our human society and so enmeshed within our own biological beings, we will one day wonder how we ever managed to live without them. When that day comes, let’s all be ready.”
Is there a line that should not be crossed? Where is that line, and has it been crossed already? Is that line the same for everyone, or is it different in each individual situation? Do the positives of body/mind enhancement always outweigh the negatives? Should normal, healthy individuals be encouraged to partake in any and every mind or body enhancement that is available to them, just so that they do not become obsolete in the job market? Is it set in stone that the day will come when those who partake in invasive BCI technology will outperform even those who participate in various noninvasive neurotechnologies? These scenarios paint a scary picture, leaving one to wonder how far things will go.
Thought Control
“Many of us think memory manipulation is the stuff of sci-fi movies like Total Recall, Inception, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But next-level researchers are already exploring how to replace lost memories, transplant them from one person to another, and even edit them. Imagine someday being able to erase painful memories—your first heart-wrenching breakup in junior high, the wildfire that burned down your family home, or even the IED explosion that killed your fellow Marines. What about implanting new memories about events that never happened to you but that you wish you had? Could you fill your brain with fantastic memories about making the Forbes 400 list, winning Wimbledon, or earning the Nobel Prize in Neurotechnology? Or what about replacing lost memories? For now, these experiments are restricted to mice, but they’re making some remarkable progress, and, according to Duke University Medical School professor Murali Doraiswamy, “We’re getting closer and closer to where you can actually transfer different types of memories from one mouse to another.” … In his view, it’s just a matter of time until memory manipulation in humans happens. “Because the proof of principle is there that we can artificially recreate memories and create false memories in animals,” he told Smithsonian Magazine in 2014, “the only leap left between there and humans is just technological innovation.” … The research team had identified the specific brain cells that were active when the mouse was making a particular fear memory in a different box. Then, using optogenetics, they tricked those brain cells into responding to pulses of light, and after surgically injecting narrow filaments from a laser into the mouse’s hippocampus, they shot light into the brain to re-create that fear memory in a new box. The mouse was remembering something that never happened—now that’s sci-fi reality.”
“The other overarching reason why we must study the human brain on a large scale relates to brain health… No one listens to your brain and tells you your brain’s okay, too. The reason is, no one knows what to say about it… The challenge lies in the fact that there are no standards. Since we don’t know what normal looks like, and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what brain activity looks like across different populations, what would a brain health checkup achieve? … the Neurotechnology and Ethics Taskforce raised a red flag. They warned that some of the transformative brain-computer interface technologies explored in this book could pose a variety of threats. For example, they suggested that BCIs intended to help people with spinal cord injuries perform everyday tasks could “exacerbate social inequalities and offer corporations, hackers, governments, or anyone else new ways to exploit and manipulate people.” They take a rather doom-and-gloom view of things, fearing that existing ethics guidelines are woefully inadequate to address the sort of technologies that may profoundly alter the brain and what it means to be human… This book has discussed issues of bias when technologies are designed by a narrow subset of the human population. Ethicists advocate having probable users, including those who are marginalized or from low-income or developing areas, be included in the earliest stages of development.”
The ability to alter and control thought could be considered one of the scariest threats that humanity faces as we approach the neuro generation. Some might even wonder if certain neurotechnology is purposely being promoted to move us closer to that end goal, as this reviewer documented in a previous article titled Brain-Computer Interface Tech: Step Forward or Plot for Mind Control? Either way, the dangers that humanity faces as we approach the neuro generation inevitably beg the question: Should laws be made to accommodate and protect the rights of those who choose not to upgrade their bodies and minds, similarly to how public accommodations laws already exist to protect the disabled?
In this reviewer’s opinion, the only weakness is that while Tan does spend a notable amount of time detailing the ethical concerns of AI and neurotechnology, as shown previously, she doesn’t seem to take the threats seriously as she goes on to say, “Frankly, some of their worries border on scaremongering, which does this emerging industry a disservice.”
The fact that several groups have formed to carefully address the issue of developing AI safely shows that the threats are real and should be taken seriously. She goes on to state, “A growing cadre within the tech community is banding together to use their brainpower to promote AI safety as a way to prevent these existential risks. Jaan Tallinn is one of them. You may not have heard of the organizations he has co-founded—the Center for the Study of Existential Risk and the Future of Life Institute… Aligning AI with human values is essential to creating technology that stays on course to benefit humans. Like almost everybody who interviews Jaan about this topic, I ask him, “Whose values are we talking about?”… But Jaan also admits that we have a major problem aggregating values… In 2017 Jaan proposed designing mechanisms to “transparently and robustly aggregate global opinion about what a good future should look like.”
It should not come as a surprise that Tan does not seem to take the threats of neurotechnology seriously, considering that she is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders community, and the World Economic Forum naturally shares the values of the transhumanist Deep State. She clearly sees a vision of the world where neurotechnology used by everyone is purely a step forward for humanity, simply working towards a common goal:
“Since the 1990s, corporations have been exploring “neuromarketing” as a way to bypass the guesswork and go straight to the source—the brain—to see what’s driving consumers’ choices. This followed a watershed moment in the history of imaging—the arrival of fMRI scanning, which offered an unprecedented view of the functioning brain. It was a beginning of the revolution in the understanding of consumer behavior, according to Professor Olivier Oullier, a neuroscientist I met through the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders community and who now works with me. Considered one of the world’s leading experts in consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing, Oliver quickly saw the limitations of fMRI: it’s prohibitively expensive and very restricted in terms of scale. You simply can’t scan millions of brains… Enter affordable, portable EEG technology, and scalability finally promises to disrupt the marketing world. “The next frontier isn’t the brain,” as Oliver likes to say, “it’s the brains, plural.” The ability to tap into the brains of thousands or millions of consumers will reveal patterns unlike anything ever seen before. With a suite of algorithms that detect cognitive functions, marketers and PR agencies can decode the instinctive feelings that compel customers to buy—feelings they may not be aware of themselves… EEG can measure consumers’ neural responses to stimuli—ads, products, packaging—to reveal a clear winner…”
“As the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds begin to blend, and as feedback and responsiveness speed up, we will all benefit from having as many minds as possible plugged into our evolving systems. If we make the journey into the future a shared project, we’ll be able to draw on the cognitive power of every brain around the world to support our long-term well-being. By empowering the individual and putting them at the center of the collective, we can build a world that works for each of us, together.”
As the technology of the neuro generation becomes a reality, the importance of being educated and informed about what is coming cannot be overstated. Tan Le offers an expansive view of the future, which is why The Neurogeneration is an essential read. At some point, this technology will affect everyone’s life, whether we are prepared for it or not!
About the author: Brandon is a freelance journalist based in the metro-Milwaukee area. His work has been featured in Liberty Sentinel Media, Wisconsin Conservative Digest, and Reality News Media. He has worked full-time in politics for six years. This includes leading successful campaigns for legislatures at the state and congressional levels and successful deployments to get bills passed in Kentucky and Texas. In his spare time, he enjoys weightlifting, running, hiking, and listening to classic rock.
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