The New York Times: Μαμντάνι και Τραμπ θα συναντηθούν στον Λευκό Οίκο – Τα χρήματα της Σαουδικής Αραβίας τελειώνουν – Οι ληστές λύκοι του Καναδά – Ένας θαυμαστός νέος κόσμος; – Το ηφαίστειο Σεμέρου εξερράγη στην Ινδονησία, ρίχνοντας στάχτη σε χωριά και αναγκάζοντας εκατοντάδες να εγκαταλείψουν τα σπίτια τους – Η τσάντα-υπογραφή της Ιάπωνα πρωθυπουργού – Ο Σόλβεϊ Μπάλε έχει περάσει 30 χρόνια δουλεύοντας σε ένα επταμερές μυθιστόρημα για μια μόνο ημέρα. Είναι μια αίσθηση – Ποιος κλέβει θαλασσινά… στον Καναδά; – Το 2013, ένας Ιταλός πολιτικός προσπάθησε (και απέτυχε) να λάβει πιστοποίηση από την ΕΕ για το τιραμισού, το αγαπημένο επιδόρπιο, για να το προστατεύσει «από τις πολλές απομιμήσεις που κυκλοφορούν»

A brave new world?

My parents used to play a 19th century German folk song, “Die Gedanken Sind Frei,” which means “thoughts are free.”

No man can know them

No hunter shoot them

It will always be:

Thoughts are free

Concerns — and dreams — about controlling the human mind go back a long way, my colleague Linda Kinstler recounts in her must-read New York Times Magazine piece. During the Cold War, the first implants showing that we could control animal minds sparked panic about the Soviet Union using this technology to spread communism. The C.I.A. had its own clandestine experimental mind-control program. People warned of brain warfare.

Those fears have come and gone. But today they’re very much back, along with a conversation about what it means to have freedom of thought at a time when technology is literally being implanted in our brains.

Linda, what does that technology look like?

At the core of this technology is something called a brain computer interface, or B.C.I. These are very small devices that go right on the surface of your brain, where they can pick up neural activity. The data is transmitted via Bluetooth to a computer program, which decodes the information.

In a sense, they’re hooked up to an artificial intelligence. So the neural network inside your mind communicates with a neural network outside. And through that, we are able to reconstruct people’s intentions — what they would like to say, what they would like to do with their arms or hands, and so on.

And how is this technology currently being applied?

You might have heard of Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company, which has implanted 12 people so far with these devices. But there are many others.

The implants are geared toward what they call restoration of function. For people with degenerative diseases, or who are paralyzed, or who otherwise have lost important abilities, these implants have been totally revolutionary. These patients can move their hands, type and in some cases, speak again.

One patient I learned about was not only able to communicate, but also hear their own voice again. The algorithm used past recordings of his voice and then expressed his thoughts in his voice. Imagine if you hadn’t heard your father’s voice for that long and suddenly he “speaks” to you again.

That all sounds very sci-fi, but also incredibly promising. What are the concerns?

On the one hand, it’s wonderful that we have this technology. On the other hand, I can immediately think of one million ways this could be misused. These technologies can access what we’re used to thinking of as our most intimate selves — our minds, the substance of our thoughts. What kind of commercial purposes or political purposes could that be used for? These technologies are really pushing the thresholds of privacy.

That’s the problem lawyers and philosophers and ethicists are trying to think through: how we set guidelines when the technology is advancing at such a rapid pace and entering the market pretty swiftly.

Could this technology not just read our thoughts, but also alter them?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is: It’s complicated. “Thought,” as my sources reminded me, is not a technical term. There is a technique called deep brain stimulation that is used therapeutically to treat, for example, Parkinson’s. There was one reported instance where, in a clinical setting, they were performing deep brain stimulation, and it dramatically altered the behavior of the patient. When they stopped the procedure, he went back to normal. What it demonstrated was that if you’re manipulating someone’s brain, you can alter their actions.

Optogenetics, a technique for turning isolated neurons on and off, has been used to implant false memories in mice, raising the possibility that, in the distant future, something similar could be done in humans.

We’re very far away from the potential of that commercially. But scientifically, no one is saying that this isn’t at least theoretically possible.

Tell me a little bit about the idea of neuroprivacy.

Neuroprivacy is the idea that we should have to give consent to anyone who wants access to our innermost selves. But there’s a question: Does neuroprivacy apply only to my unspoken thoughts? Or does it apply to the electrical activity in my brain? If that’s the case, does it apply to what I type, what I click on? That’s intimate information that’s being harvested already. And all of these things are derived from neural activity. So it could be a really broad category of data or it could be quite small, but there is a consensus that we need to recognize this new kind of information.

What kind of safeguards can we impose? How are people and governments thinking about this?

In the United States, several states have passed laws about how neural data should be regulated. National legislation has been proposed that would require regulators to look into this. Countries outside of the United States — Chile, Spain and others — have discussed, and in some cases passed, neural privacy laws.

The good news is everyone I spoke to told me these conversations about the implications of these technologies are coming ahead of time. If you’re an able-bodied person, there’s currently no way that you could get one of these implants legally. If and when that does happen, however — an able-bodied person gets a neural implant — that will really mean we’ve crossed the threshold into the brave new world.

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“Sometimes we forget that the species that exist with us, around us, are just as intelligent as we are,” said one local official.

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