Global Courant 2023-05-24 13:24:48
For the first time, researchers have succeeded in using GPT1, the predecessor of the AI chatbot ChatGPT, to convert MRI images into text in an attempt understand what someone is thinking.
This recent breakthrough allowed researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to “read” someone’s mind as a continuous stream of text, based on what they were listening to, imagining or looking at.
It raises major concerns about privacy, freedom of thought, and even the freedom to dream undisturbed. Our laws are not equipped to deal with the widespread commercial use of mind-reading technology – the freedom of speech law does not extend to protecting our thoughts.
Participants in the Texas study were asked to listen to audiobooks for 16 hours while sitting in an MRI scanner. At the same time, a computer “learned” how to associate their brain activity from the MRI with what they were listening to. Once trained, the decoder could generate text from someone’s mind as they listened to a new story or imagined one of their own.
According to the researchers, the process was labor-intensive and the computer only managed to get the gist of what someone was thinking. However, the findings still represent a major breakthrough in brain-machine interfaces that have so far relied on invasive medical implants. Earlier non-invasive devices could only decipher a handful of words or images.
Here’s an example of what one of the subjects listened to (from an audiobook):
I got up from the air mattress and pressed my face against the glass of the bedroom window, expecting to see eyes staring back at me, only to find darkness instead.
And this is what the computer “reads” from the subject’s brain activity:
I just walked over to the window and opened the glass. I stood on tiptoe and peered out. I saw nothing and looked up again. I saw nothing.
The study participants had to work together to both train and apply the decoder so that the privacy of their thoughts was maintained. However, the researchers warn that “future developments could enable decoders to circumvent these requirements”. In other words, mind-reading technology could one day be applied to humans against their will.
Future research may also speed up the training and decoding process. While it took 16 hours to train the machine to read what someone was thinking in the current version, this will decrease significantly in future updates. And as we’ve seen with other AI applications, the decoder is likely to become more accurate over time as well.
There is another reason why this represents an incremental change. Researchers have been working on brain-machine interfaces for decades in a race to create mind-reading technologies that can perceive a person’s thoughts and convert them into text or images. But mostly this research has focused on medical implants, with an emphasis on helping disabled people express their thoughts.
Neuralink, the neurotechnology company founded by Elon Musk developing a medical implant which “allows you to control a computer or mobile device from anywhere”. But the need to undergo brain surgery to have a device implanted in you will likely remain a barrier to using such technology.
However, the improved accuracy of this new non-invasive technology could make it a game changer. For the first time, mind-reading technology appears viable by combining two technologies that are readily available — albeit with a hefty price tag. MRI machines currently cost anywhere from $150,000 to $1 million.
Legal and Ethical Consequences
Data privacy law does not currently consider thinking as a form of data. We need new laws that prevent the emergence of thought crime, data breaches, and maybe one day even the implantation or manipulation of thoughts.
From reading minds to implanting them can take a long time, but both require preventive regulation and supervision.
Abuse of the technology could allow employers to exert new levels of control over employees. Image: Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock through The Conversation
Researchers from the University of Oxford advocate a legal right to spiritual integrity, which they define as:
A right against significant, non-consensual interference with one’s mind.
Others are starting to defend a new human right freedom of thought. This would go beyond traditional definitions of freedom of expression to protect our capacity to think, wonder and dream.
A world without regulation can become dystopian very quickly. Imagine that a boss, teacher, or state official could intrude on your private thoughts – or worse, change and manipulate them.
We already see eye scanning technologies are deployed in classrooms to monitor students’ eye movements during lessons, to see if they are paying attention. What happens when mind-reading technologies are next?
Likewise, what happens in the workplace when employees are no longer allowed to think about dinner or anything outside of work? The level of unlawful employee scrutiny could surpass anything previously thought.
George Orwell wrote convincingly about the dangers of “Thought crime”, where the state makes it a crime just to have rebellious thoughts about an authoritarian regime. However, the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four relied on state officials reading body language, diaries, or other external indications of what someone was thinking.
With new mind-reading technology, Orwell’s novel would be very short indeed – perhaps even as short as a single sentence:
Winston Smith thought to himself, “Down with Big Brother” – after which he was arrested and executed.
Joshua Krook is a Research Fellow in Responsible Artificial Intelligence, University of Southampton
This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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