Why is real life starting to feel like the first chapter of a dystopian sci-fi novel?
I blame the mad scientists and their doomed obsession with artificial intelligence. A few months ago, you barely heard a peep about AI. Now, thanks to ChatGPT and its language learning sequels, AI is sure to be the 2023 Time Person of the Year.
Not content with doing homework, stealing jobs, disrupting sectors, winning photo contests, acing medical exams, serving as lawyers, predicting to the penny how much someone would be willing to pay for a hot dog during the 7th inning stretch at Rogers Centre, AI is now turning its digital eyes and ears to … reading our minds?
Or as Nature framed it: “Mind-reading machines are here: is it time to worry?”
Yes, Nature. I fear it may be time to worry.
I won’t pretend to understand how any of this works. But it seems researchers at the University of Texas have made a breakthrough with a “brain-computer interface that decodes continuous language from non-invasive recordings …”
You know that internal recording of dread playing in your head when a friend invites you to a destination wedding in the Caribbean during hurricane season and you need to come up with a good excuse? It’s kind of like that, but with exotic equipment.
This new mind-reading tech works by something-something putting subjects into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) chamber and something-something about “cortical semantic representations.” There is something-something about how scientists scan brain activity, create an imaging baseline, hook up the AI and soon the ChatGPT is translating thoughts in real time as you listen to a podcast.
Make no mistake. The possible therapeutic applications are truly wonderful for anyone with a speech disorder. In the future, those suffering a stroke or motor neuron disease may not be robbed of their voice. Truly wonderful.
If mind-reading is limited to medicine, give these Texas nerds the Nobel Prize.
But we already know technology never stops evolving. You can draw a dotted line from Alexander Graham Bell to social media. Or the Wright brothers to killer drones. Our earliest ancestors discovered they could eat plants. Fast forward millennia and now kale is a horrific menu staple at most restaurants. Not wonderful.
It’s the law of unintended consequences. The internet connected the world and promptly drove us apart. We started out sleeping in caves and now there are smart mattresses designed to detect marital infidelity.
Technology never goes on hiatus. We went from the original ChatGPT to GPT-4 in a few months. The leaders of that company are now practically begging lawmakers to regulate them so they don’t accidentally destroy humanity. It’s nuts. The inventors of the Furby never feared their creepy toy might bring about the end of civilization.
These AI lunatics created a monster and now want governments to build a cage.
But it’s too late. AI is everywhere, including much of what you will read in the future.
The head shot that runs with this column? That’s not me. I am a Scandinavian woman.
Or I will be soon enough thanks to tech.
Mind-reading is where we should draw the line. This month, neuro-ethicists are actually having earnest group chats about “mental privacy.” We already have facial recognition. What happens when there is thought recognition?
I don’t want to bang the alarmist gong. But in the future, I’m telling you, job interviews will involve fMRI and skull sensors and a zap of electricity when you lie to the HR rep about why you left your last company: “Sir, we can see from these mind readouts that you were not dissatisfied with your role. You were embezzling.”
The length of a police interrogation will also get cut by about 99 per cent.
Stop talking. We know you killed him. Your brain just confessed.
You can acknowledge a utility in that stuff. But what happens when mind-reading shifts from altruistic medicine and becomes a for-profit app anyone can use on anyone else? My wife can already read my mind. She does not deserve the benefit of a video review to be sure. If I fake sore muscles to avoid planting annuals because I want to watch the Jays hammer Tampa 20-1, technology should not rat me out.
Unspoken thoughts are the glue of polite society. We lie because we care.
Here’s what researcher Jerry Tang told CNN this week: “We think that everyone’s brain data should be kept private. Our brains are kind of one of the final frontiers of our privacy.”
Agreed. But the mad scientists say true mind-reading in any sci-fi sense — they prefer the term “brain decoding” — is years away. Right. The inventor of the black-and-white TV did not predict 3D in HD with Dolby surround. Technology is not a pogo stick — it is a runaway train and soon the person sitting next to you will be reading your mind.
As Tang warned CNN: “It’s important not to get a false sense of security and think that things will be this way forever. Technology can improve and that could change how well we can decode and change whether decoders require a person’s co-operation.”
It is terrifying. Especially for husbands who just want to watch baseball.
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