Read any good minds lately?
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for more than a few months, you may have worried that I’m obsessed with the idea that AI can read minds. That was the topic of no less than three of these bi-weekly missives in the last thirteen months. But I’m here to reassure you that I’m not totally paranoid, just doing research. For most of the past year, I’ve been working on the cover story for this month’s Discover magazine, and it’s about, you guessed it, AI and mind-reading.
The good news is that (at least without your help) AI can’t read your mind . . . yet. The troubling bit is that the technology is improving rapidly, even more rapidly than researchers expected. The better news is that scientists are harnessing the technology to help people who have, through illness or injury, lost the ability to speak.
As is always the case when there are many sources and a word count to adhere to, there was a great deal of information I was unable to fit into the story. Perhaps the most alarming finding I didn’t have room to expand on is that using devices or apps that can capture brain patterns creates a data trail that the user doesn’t control. That data may be useless right now, but if the technology continues to improve, it could eventually reveal more than you’re comfortable with. And it could give tech wizards patterns to follow if they should later want to read your mind or manipulate it in some way.
Most of us — me included — have given up a great deal of privacy in the name of convenience (or because we need all this connectivity to make a living). But if you want some advice, take a hard pass on apps that monitor your brain patterns.
So yeah, maybe I am a little paranoid.
’til next time,
Avery