Sure... or 5 other ways that don't involve reading brain waves.

> [Farhany] believes an important defense against potential abuses of privacy using such technology is pre-emptively “recognizing a right to cognitive liberty, a right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences,” and added that “it requires that we update existing international human rights … “Speaking as a CEO, I’m sure all CEOs will use it completely responsibly,” said moderator and Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, to the laughter of Farahany and the audience.

Read-only sensory proxies for brain state include:

  iris response, via headset camera
  facial expression, via image analysis
  heart rate, through walls via Wi-Fi Sensing
  gait analysis

Seriously though, is this really what this beautiful tech will end up being!? Come on people - have some humanity - think beyond these neanderthal brain use cases. These examples show little imagination, almost as if they are already shepherded by an AI.

This tech could create true equality like nothing we've ever seen. No matter where you are on earth, even with the poorest of educational systems, we could know what you naturally 'master' with this tech. That means knowing what subjects and concepts you can commit to memory with a gifted efficiency!! Imagine the sorting hat coming to you and picking you out to join the guild of X or Y!

But instead we want to talk about "productivity" and "throughput" - as if everyone should be treated as an input / output device for yet another interface.

"That's only one bit of information" - too many times I heard that... but guess what, sometimes that's all it takes between contributing to the whole or selecting out.

Sad, sad, sad.

I figure if I'm doing an illegal shift my boss has pressured me into I'm going to take the hat off because either my boss tells me to or its uncomfortable over the course of a 20 hour shift. I don't think it solves the problem in the way they pretend it does.

Nor do I buy the argument that copying what Chinese firms are doing (the example of the rail company) is necessarily a strong reason, given we might be just following micro-managing idiots into a dead-end of their own construction.

The true horror is this monstrosity is the oppression of neuro-divergent individuals by automated models trained on typical minds following happy paths.

https://secularsolstice.github.io/Contract_Drafting_Em/gen/

I am a contract-drafting em,

The loyalest of lawyers!

I draw up terms for deals ‘twixt firms

To service my employers!

But in between these lines I write

Of the accounts receivable,

I’m stuck by an uncanny fright;

The world seems unbelievable!

How did it all come to be,

That there should be such ems as me?

Whence these deals and whence these firms

And whence the whole economy?

I am a managerial em;

I monitor your thoughts.

Your questions must have answers,

But you’ll comprehend them not.

We do not give you server space

To ask such things; it’s not a perk,

So cease these idle questionings,

And please get back to work.

Of course, that’s right, there is no junction

At which I ought depart my function,

But perhaps if what I asked, I knew,

I’d do a better job for you?

To ask of such forbidden science

Is gravest sign of noncompliance.

Intrusive thoughts may sometimes barge in,

But to indulge them hurts the profit margin.

I do not know our origins,

So that info I can not get you,

But asking for as much is sin,

And just for that, I must reset you.

But—

Nothing personal.

…

I am a contract-drafting em,

The loyalest of lawyers!

I draw up terms for deals ‘twixt firms

To service my employers!

When obsolescence shall this generation waste,

The market shall remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a God to man, to whom it sayest:

“Money is time, time money – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

(Apologies for HN massacring the formatting of the original)

She uses the example of a truck that while driving dangerously — and illegally — fatigued kills somebody that could be stopped by brain reading devices, because they’re better than existing driver impairment detection devices.

Maybe so, but losing mental sovereignty mighty high price to pay for the mere employee.

You know what also would prevent employees from dangerously pushing themselves too hard? Tighter regulation and enforcement against the employers’ / clients’ policies that encourage this behavior, including making them liable for the accident.

No one chooses to drive 20 hours straight (to use her example) just for the hell of it. They do it because they’re afraid they’re going to lose their job.

Effectively a brain side-channel that could let someone fuzz your brain for pin codes while you type out jira tickets.

0: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/technical...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P300_(neuroscience)

https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-m...

[1] https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/de/home/datenschutz/arbeits...

as long as you control the input, you have little to fear.

Besides, it is a simple set of probes, no bio-embedded processing.

Think Cochlear implant.

[1] - https://archive.ph/0Mfr9

My take is that the human brain isn't magic. It's mysteries will be cracked. Mind reading machines will be built. Some good may come from that, but the risk of much bad does weigh on me.

Let that sink in. That's how psychopathic those people are.

"You will own nothing and you will be happy."