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Government Biotech

Scientists Propose 'Neuro-Rights' to Protect Brains From Future Manipulation (reuters.com) 63

Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Reuters: Scientific advances from deep brain stimulation to wearable scanners are making manipulation of the human mind increasingly possible, creating a need for laws and protections to regulate use of the new tools, top neurologists said on Thursday.

A set of "neuro-rights" should be added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations, said Rafael Yuste, a neuroscience professor at New York's Columbia University and organizer of the Morningside Group of scientists and ethicists proposing such standards. Five rights would guard the brain against abuse from new technologies — rights to identity, free will and mental privacy along with the right of equal access to brain augmentation advances and protection from algorithmic bias, the group says.

"If you can record and change neurons, you can in principle read and write the minds of people," Yuste said during an online panel at the Web Summit, a global tech conference.

"This is not science fiction. We are doing this in lab animals successfully."

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Scientists Propose 'Neuro-Rights' to Protect Brains From Future Manipulation

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  • by drew_92123 ( 213321 ) on Sunday June 13, 2021 @04:06PM (#61483838)

    ...my 80GB data module being installed so I can have some adventures as a data courier

  • We've seen what QAnon could do to previously reasonable minds (we'll ignore the unreasonable minds who found it comforting instead). If you can change someone's mind with complete utter bullshit then is that really somehow less awful than doing it with chemicals or implants that they consented to?
    • The idea is that there might be legitimate reasons to want implants, without turning your consciousness over to complete control.

      Whether implants are a good or bad decision, or how it compares to an entirely separate issue, is beside the point (and smells like Whataboutism.) We know implants are coming, we just don't know fully know all the specific applications and pitfalls. What's the problem with establishing some baseline human-rights guardrails and sanity checks? Do you have any actual objections to th

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday June 14, 2021 @03:34AM (#61485080) Homepage Journal

        The most important issue IMHO is what happens when we get performance enhancing implants. If you can pay to give your child an implant that gets them perfect scores on every test it's obviously going to be a major advantage and potentially start an arms race.

        So what if you can't afford such an implant? You either remain a second class human who doesn't have access to the best jobs or to power within democracy, or maybe a corporation offers the upgrade for "free"... Kinda like many web services are "free", if you discount the ads and them mining your brain for useful data. They promise they will switch the telemetry off in your most intimate moments, of course.

    • Forget social networks, I want to know where is the line between this and advertising.

    • I had similar thoughts from reading the summary. What about established mind-manipulating technologies? Public school systems, news media, social media, parenting, psychedelics, religion, interrogations, etc...? Is it only an issue if it's an invasive procedure, and everything else gets a pass?
  • for BookFace and Twatter?

    Bookface especially because of their VR/AR line of business.

  • To use for talking points. I wonder how many folks are going to start claiming mind control now that this article is out.

    As if we didn't have enough nutjobs. Thanks media and so called scientists.

  • Just think what this will do to the field of marketing.

  • ... a good idea. But I find myself strangely compelled to vote against it.

  • by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Sunday June 13, 2021 @04:55PM (#61483954) Homepage

    as are other human rights by: thugs/criminals and a whole list of governments -- you know who I mean!

  • by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Sunday June 13, 2021 @05:03PM (#61483964)
    In principle this sounds like an excellent idea.

    Sadly, however, if the technology were to be developed that could allow closer integration between brain/mind and technology, then the greater threat might come from a hostile foreign power. Just think of it: press a few buttons and you could have angry mobs taking to the streets, causing insurrection and chaos of such magnitude that an entire nation could easily become distracted.

    While that might easily be more than enough to worry about, the idea of legislation written with this specific scope in mind opens the door to other challenges. During the testimony provided and the numerous interviews he has given since, Christopher Wylie, formerly of Cambridge Analytica, laid out very clearly how his company collected sufficient information not merely to be able to understand people, but to manipulate how they thought. Cambridge Analytica employed really disgusting practices in the 2016 election, designed specifically to discourage people of color from voting in the US Presidential election. That wasn’t data gathering, it was psychological manipulation on a mass scale. So if the scientists worried about direct manipulation of the brain/mind as discussed in the OP and the linked materials, are they also worried about more sophisticated versions of Cambridge Analytica? Where, exactly, should the line get drawn?
    • by kerashi ( 917149 ) on Sunday June 13, 2021 @06:32PM (#61484156)

      All of this even before one considers whether free will exists at all in most people. I mean, the number of people unable to think for themselves (and thus extremely susceptible to such tactics) is staggering. Even though I'd like to think I have a very refined BS detector, it would be a stretch to suggest that even I am immune. It's almost as if all humans are are complex pieces of hardware, running software that develops based on input received during development. The average human is very predictable, even when trying not to be.

      • I think the degree of free will varies between each instance of meatbag, but that it's generally at the low end. Trying to test free will (even in thought) is like trying to measure a particle's position and velocity at the same time. You can get the gist of it, but the more you try to pin it down, the more it eludes you. The spiritual among us would call it the incomprehensible mind of God.

        • Have you ever the pondered the possibility that you've been manipulated into believing you have free will? Just asking.
          Like, how would you tell the difference between the experience of genuine free will and being under the illusion of free will?
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      press a few buttons and you could have angry mobs taking to the streets

      That's literally what we have now, it's they reason they took Trump's Facebook and Twitter accounts away.

  • I am pretty sure planting devices in someone and enslaving people is already illegal. This acts like it is currently legal for someone to kidnap you and install a device in your brain. This neuro rights thing sounds like a way for some people to get actual control and power for themselves. Another assault on science that they want to control. This will result in a mountain of regulations and approvals (for a small fee and authority genuflect) for companies and companies and especially startups doing researc

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Pretty much. This is illegal for the same reason subliminal messages in ads are illegal in any civilized country. The additional measures scientific advances make possible here are only a change in degree, not nature.

  • In what way are the things proposed to be banned legal today?
  • Look folks, after the devastating years of 2020 and 2021, I just can't support the rights of people to refuse any medical procedures. It's really about saving lives and your rights come in a distant last place when it's about that. We also might need to implant devices into people's brains to correct their white supremacy and racist, anti-semitc,homophobic, and transphobic behavior. President Biden will need all the tools available if he hopes to beat white supremacy.
  • You only have to look at how some countries ignore human rights and international law today to see that those countries will take whatever advantage this gives their elites.

  • ... write the minds of people ...

    I'll ignore the brain-slug version of mind-control and say this can provide some answers to the nature/nurture debate. Are people hardwired for homosexuality and pedophilia (IE. The male brain doesn't equate breasts with desirable sexual partner.) or does some childhood event teach them sexual attraction to children or same-sex adults? Then the question becomes, how much is hardwired? Rule-breaking, drug addiction, religion/violence?

  • by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Sunday June 13, 2021 @07:47PM (#61484294)

    MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo), also known as Miguel, is the earliest executable image of a human brain. It is a snapshot of the living brain of neurology graduate Miguel Ãlvarez Acevedo (2010-2073), taken by researchers at the Uplift Laboratory at the University of New Mexico on August 1, 2031. Though it was not the first successful snapshot taken of the living state of a human brain, it was the first to be captured with sufficient fidelity that it could be run in simulation on computer hardware without succumbing to cascading errors and rapidly crashing.

    - The rest of the story is here. [qntm.org]. It's quite horrifying in an understated way.

  • I think everybody has the right to be free of the Universal Rights Declaration since it's pretty much a free-for-all.
  • Good Soldiers Follow Orders

  • If they could piggyback a vector on to say, a vaccine, that would hybridize our dna with say, photo luminescent plankton or fireflies, so sensors could pick up changes to our endocrine systems, then that would certainly be an interesting world to live in.
  • Been saying this for years. At some point, politicians will misuse brain scans, and that includes in the US, where law enforcement will try to get away with the claim it is physical evidence, and therefore does not violate 4th or 1st Amendment rights.

    It needs to be banned, not just behind a warrant, but ever, at all. Not no way, not no how.

    It's bad enough the panopticons already existing in places like China will start using it. The boot stepping on a human face, already forever, doesn't need still more

  • For me the extraction of information is the bigger issue on the horizon. Lie detectors could evolve into "thought crime detectors". Recent developments are making our inner thought processes increasingly knowable.

    University of Columbia Researchers Translate Brain Signals Directly Into Speech
    https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

    We even have the field of "neuro marketing" now, based on the idea that consumers might believe and say they like feature X, but their brain signals say otherwise.
    https://duckduckgo.com/? [duckduckgo.com]

    • Yeah, I can already imagine this technology in the hands of the self-righteous that are already highly tuned to sense "dogwhistles" and "microaggressions", and whose greatest source of pleasure is the life ruination for anyone they disagree with.

      We grew accustomed to being spied on, and then having our personal dossiers traded by corporations, and then getting digitally strip searched just to board an intra state flight. Now hundreds of millions of people every day get censored in real time depending on wha

  • Most (or all) of what they talk about is already protected by existing laws, so it is rather dubious. What would be interesting is to transfer some of this to digital brains. If one believes that the brain is just a biological computer (which seems to be what most scientists believe and most frown upon those who believe otherwise) then experiences like torturous pains are just the result of specific electrical patterns that could be simulated in a computer. To put it in completely practical terms, there mus
  • by nbritton ( 823086 ) on Monday June 14, 2021 @10:54AM (#61486196)

    Of course they would, completely overlooking the fact that the a vast majority of neurodivergent persons are tormented every day to try to "fit in" because we live in an ableist normnormative society that views disability at best as being a medical problem.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • by xalqor ( 6762950 )

      According to the summary, the proposal is for ALL people to have the following rights:

      Five rights would guard the brain against abuse from new technologies — rights to identity, free will and mental privacy along with the right of equal access to brain augmentation advances and protection from algorithmic bias

      So... Yes.

      If you mean protection from personal torment because people overlook your needs and struggles... That's not addressed for *anyone* by the proposal in this article.

  • Imagine if a population could be made happy at the touch of a button. As in, perfectly content with their status in life and the services provided to them. Is that a leftwing dream or a rightwing dream? I'm not a politician but that would be very tempting for any country with a large population whose growth and living standards are declining.
  • how will fox news, OAN, and Newsmax possibly stay in business?

  • I'll take protection from incessant ads and clickbaits, please.
  • So, in the future, when my cranial hardware gets cracked by Ukrainian thugs I'll spend my days pumping and not dumping penny stocks, liking anti-vax comments on facebook and buying every copy of "Catcher in the Rye" I can find. I think someone has already released this tech....

    SD

  • We all know "free to play" games uses psychological tactics to hook young kids on games. They even get the same response as doing drugs on the brain scans. Why not ban those tactics?

    We also know casinos not only use the same tactics to keep people hooked on the slot machines, but they also change the environment by removing clocks, changing lighting and using special carpet patterns to keep you captive. Why not ban those as well?

    Let's not stop there. We know the governments themselves uses manipulation, lik

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