Mind-Reading Machines: How Far Should They Go?

Scientists have developed a computer program that predicts the mental patterns a picture will elicit, and thus can tell what somebody saw simply by looking at their brain's activity.

The decoder, described today in a study published in Nature, is not quite a mind reader -- but it points in that direction, raising ethical questions about mental privacy and the possible dangers of knowing our minds too well.

My Wired News story about the study should come out shortly, but in the meantime I'd like to present some of the neuroethical discussions that were left on the cutting room floor.

"It's important not to go overboard at the moment," said John-Dylan
Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist who wasn't involved in the study. Mind reading isn't yet possible, he said, "but as soon as it's relevant for proactical applications, it's vital to think about the ethics, and the ethics are quite difficult."

On the one hand, you have these mind-reading scenarios, where you develop technologies that we want -- helping people communicate through brain signals. If they can't express themselves anymore, they can communicate via their thoughts....

Then you have topics that are ethically debatable, such as lie detection. There you're in conflict between two different values: you don't want to invade mental privacy, you think that's something special, that our thoughts are private and nobody should access them from the outside. On the other hand, you have an innocent person who can't demonstrate their innocence because you protect the right to privacies. You must choose between them, and it's not a simple decision.

Then there's clear-cut decisions: in economics, can we take a brain-reading device and use it to optimize the marketing strategy? Not now, but maybe in a few years time -- and then we have to say, do we want to develop some addictive product because we've optimized the way it pushes the reward buttons in the brain? That's something I'd say is ethically highly dubious.

In a research summary distributed to journalists by study leader Jack
Gallant, the authors discussed the problems of using a potential mind reader in the courtroom.

The potential use of this technology in the legal system brings with it most of the problems that are already known regarding eyewitness testimony. Many psychology studies have demonstrated that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Witnesses often have poor memory but often do not realize that their memory is poor; their recollections tend to be biased by intervening events, inadvertent coaching, and rehearsal (prior recall); and they often confabulate stories to make logical sense of events that they cannot recall well. These errors are thought to stem from several factors: poor initial storage of information in memory; changes to stored memories over time; and faulty recall. Any brain-reading device that aims to decode stored memories will inevitably be limited not only by the technology itself, but also by the quality of the stored information
(an accurate read-out of a faulty memory only provides misleading information). Therefore, any future application of this technology in the legal system will have to be considered with extreme caution

On the subject of mental privacy, wrote the researchers,

It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30- to 50-year time frame. As an analogy, consider the current debates regarding availability of genetic information. Genetic sequencing is becoming cheaper by the year, and it will soon be possible for everyone to have their own genome sequenced. This raises many issues regarding privacy and the accessibility of individual genetic information. The authors believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent.

What do you think, Wired Science readers? Should police of the future be able to obtain a search warrant for someone's mind? Would it be wrong for a company to sell their products with neuroscientific help?
Identifying natural images from human brain activity [Nature]

Image: California State University

See Also:

• Microsoft Wants to Read Your Mind
• JPL Scientists Stand Up To Government For Right To Privacy
• The Neuroscience of Politics, Yet Again
• Beauty In the Brain of the Beholder
• Experts Debunk NYT's Brain-on-Politics Op-Ed

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