Unregulated AI Brain Chips Pose Mental Privacy Threat: UN

UN Warns of Mental Privacy Risks from Unregulated AI Brain Chips

According to Agence France-Presse, the United Nations (UN) has issued a warning about "potentially harmful" breakthroughs in neurotechnology, implying that AI brain chips and scans might allow artificial intelligence to intrude on private human thinking.

"It's like putting neurotechnology on steroids," said Mariagrazia Squicciarini, a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation economist.

Some are advocating caution as artificial intelligence improves the field of neurotechnology. According to Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO's associate director general for social and human sciences, the technology has "far-reaching and potentially harmful" possibilities.

"We are on a path towards a world in which algorithms will enable us to decode people's mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions, and decisions," Ramos told AFP.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that technology is "advancing at warp speed," according to AFP.

While technology can potentially change people's lives, UN authorities have indicated that it may come at a cost. UNESCO met with Hannah Galvin, an epileptic lady with a neurotech gadget implanted in her brain to detect seizures and alert patients when it was time to lie down.

The gadget eventually made Galvin's life worse, as she reported suffering up to 100 seizures each day, which repeatedly activated the device.

"I had the impression that someone in my thoughts wasn't myself. And I became increasingly depressed. "I didn't like it at all," Galvin told UNESCO after having the gadget removed.

However, the technology might be "fantastic" for others, allowing blind people to see and paralyzed people to move, according to Squicciarini, according to AFP.

"Neurotechnology has the potential to solve many health problems, but it also can access and manipulate people's brains, producing information about our identities and emotions." "It could jeopardize our rights to human dignity, freedom of expression, and privacy," UNESCO's director-general, Audrey Azoulay, warned in June when she advocated a "common ethical framework at the international level."