Will we know neurotech when we see it?
It may seem a little Sci-Fi to be talking about how technology being built today is already making it possible for us to read each others’ minds, but that is exactly why this is one of the most exciting areas of tech today, and one that is attracting significant interest and investment.
You have definitely heard of biotech. You’ve seen the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey (No? Go watch) and got all reflective one night about what the movie says about our adoption of technology and what it means for our own evolution. It’s Sci-Fi at its best. But within trendy studio offices in New York, Seattle, London, Silicon Valley and across the world, there are technologists and companies creating real tools that blur the lines between machine and man and promise incredible innovation and change.
And then there is Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which may lead the way in terms of major deliveries in neurotechnology, simply because of the scale of potential investment and diversity of talent contributing to the company’s endeavour to link computers with the human mind. Late last year, Musk hinted at a major announcement, and in November on Twitter acknowledged the existence of the tech firm for the first time on the platform, which he has historically used to promote his other major projects.
At ISSR&D Conference last year, Musk blithely summarised Neuralink’s origin:
“The reason I wanted to create Neuralink was primarily as an offset to the existential risk associated with Artificial Intelligence. I think human intelligence will not be able to beat AI…so if you can’t beat them join them.”
One of the most interesting aspects of Neuralink is the silence around it. Musk has never shied away from his views about AI and its potential possibilities and consequences for humans. It has been one of his most central concerns throughout his life. It is poignant that he has remained relatively silent about what exactly Neuralink is developing and may be a sign of the personal importance he places on Neuralink compared to his other major projects. Space travel, tunnels, flamethrowers, electric cars, battery storage and solar cells may pale in comparison to what Neuralink is potentially cooking up.
As far as what AI will mean for the world, Musk parcelled his response up concisely in that same conference:
“It’s going to be a real big deal and it’s going to come on like a tidal wave.”
Why Google Glasses failed
One of the earlier (but still incredibly recent) examples of neurotech hardware at work was the Google Glass. Marketed to consumers as an extension and potential replacement of other technologies, such as smart phones, the Google Glass promised incredible potential as a piece of neurotech.
Personal Neuro Devices, a company based out of Ottawa, developed a neuroimaging app to be used with Google Glass in 2014, with the aim to monitor brain activity to aid medical care of those suffering mental illness. Unfortunately for Personal Neuro, Google Glass wasn’t the successful piece of hardware that the iPhone was, which means companies like it are still looking for the hardware that will house innovative neurotechnology applications.
In conversation with Neurotech Podcast’s Doug Clinton, AJ Keller (co-founder of Neurosity) noted that one of the biggest questions in neurotech is creating products that people want to wear. There was a stagnation, he said, that people felt when they were wearing Google Glass or similar tech.
The problem for Google Glass, as AJ sees it, was in the way the tech presented itself. People were suspicious of tech that tried to hide itself or suggest that it may be something else, such as a pair of glasses, which in turn made it conspicuous in a way that compromised its marketability and stymied further progress of the technology.
A few years down the track, AJ and his co-founder at Neurosity, Alex Castillo, are working on neurotech hardware that works with our brains to achieve unexpected outcomes. There are obviously beneficial opportunities, such as Personal Neuro’s attempts to create a tool that aided in medical intervention and prevention/monitoring of mental illness as well as other possibilities, such as in the prevention of fatigue-related road accidents.
“There seems to be a significant amount of adoption on the neuro-feedback and cognitive training industries,” says Neurosity’s Alex Castillo. “It makes total sense. The return on investment and long-term benefits on mental health have proven to be worthwhile for many people. Brain insight and SleepTech industries are also getting a lot of momentum. I would say, anything that adds to the ‘quantifying self’ toolset and answers questions like ‘Why do I feel the way I do?’ is increasing in demand.”
There are of course the elephant-in-the-room uses of brain data and the challenges these pose, like third-party use of this data for advertising. Due to data’s inextricable link with capital, any use of personal data (especially our thoughts) comes with the necessary and enormous ethical concerns, which forms a part of a nascent form of ethics for this field: neuroethics.
Beyond advertising considerations, there are other ways to talk about neurotech. Rights are a big issue, and identity. If neurotechnology promises the ability to one day aid those with learning difficulties (i.e. by stimulating underperforming areas of the brain), where is the line for when that technology can be used by those who don’t have such difficulties? Can they use neurotechnology to make themselves smarter, or is that unethical? This is notwithstanding the basic question of whether or not people want their ‘limitations’ improved or removed and the implicitly dangerous bias against those with limitations of any sort, mental or physical.
In debating whether there should be limits to the reach of neurotech, even in R&D, are we potentially neutering its potential in pursuit of some mistaken ideal of not moving too far away from traditional views of the ‘natural person’? Who says homo sapiens shouldn’t keep evolving to include tech within its very makeup. As Elon Musk said last year, he sees it as the only existential tool we have against AI. With the incorporation of tech with our biology, we may evolve into new forms of beings with synthesised and advanced intelligence. Why stop this from happening?
On top of this, no discussion of ethics in tech should be based on a belief that future capabilities in tech are a sure-thing. Who says all this Sci-Fi talk is for certain? Progress in tech is bumpy, and never certain.
Returning to advertising — Bladerunner 2049 is a great example of the potential for neurotech in terms of consumerism. K, the film’s central character has installed in his dingy apartment his own 3D ‘Siri’ or ‘Alexa’-like device called Joi — his virtual girlfriend — who basically acts as a balm to K’s loneliness.
On the dark and dystopian streets of LA in the film, a skyscraper-tall advertisement of Joi often appears near K as he walks the streets, at one stage reaching down to point at him in solidarity. In pointing at him directly, and with tenderness, this digital advertisement affirms K’s ‘humanity’ — a nod to a typical dystopian trope where our pursuit of technological innovation takes us to a point where we (and the machines we create) turn back too late and pine for our old selves.
What isn’t clear in the film is whether or not this advertisement is made just for K. Does everyone have access to Joi in the same manifestation that K experiences? Or, is she created using algorithms, completely unique in her aesthetic and interactive nature with K? Her black eyes indicate that she is yet to be ‘customised’, but as for the very presence of the advertisement in the physical space, when others walk down the street do they see a different form of advertising, based on who (and what) they are?
The story of the Bladerunner series nestles within the idea of loneliness. Neurotech potentially presents the opportunity to further target advertising to individuals to a point where we are not even sure whether the reality we experience is the same that others right next to us experience (or are confident that it isn’t). But in terms of our relationship with tech today, it would simply be another manifestation of our simultaneous isolation and ‘connectivity’ that we experience from our use of many technologies today.
As far as where this meeting of innovation and regulation meet, Alex Castillo sees ethical concerns as central to the creation of new applications within neurotech.
“Neuroethics should not be treated as an afterthought. Tools should be architected and engineered with very strict data privacy policies in place, and always with the user’s best interest in mind. Otherwise, we might find ourselves being ‘rated’ on eligibility by our health insurance provider because some company sold them our brainwave data. Can you imagine that? This is exactly why customer centricity is one of Neurosity’s core values.”
Policy and regulation development are hampered both by the secrecy of companies like Neuralink and when the permutations of any given field such as neurotech remain outside of the conceptual grasp of their creators, much less uninformed politicians. We can discuss the concept of ‘neurotech’ all we like, and argue about whether humans should, or even can, evolve beyond their current biological state, but these debates seem to have little impact on the pace and ferocity of development. In other words, I guess we’ll just wait, see, and cross that bridge with our stem cell-regenerated and robotically strengthened legs.
