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Brain Scanner Can Tell What You're Looking At
palegray.net writes "Wired News brings us an article about brain scanning systems that can accurately tell what you're looking at by analyzing your brain's electrical activity. Using a database constructed of readings taken on test subjects who were shown thousands of photographs, the system works in real time to decipher what you're seeing. Naturally, there are some ethical concerns over some potential applications for this technology. Definitely a new twist on "input devices.""
It's amazing how far we've come to understand how our zombie food really works. Think about it, we can chemically alter it with a degree of precision, we can take minutely detailed images of it to determine any number of things, we can influence and stimulate it to any number of ends. Now we're on the verge of seeing each others dreams. I wonder what Tom Cruise has to say about this...
Seriously, is it supposed to look like that?
With such powerful technologies, and with such rapid development there's going to be an everpressing need for privacy laws that protect our thoughts, literally.
Naturally, there are some ethical concerns over some potential applications for this technology
Whose code of ethics are they following here? The legal profession's? The medical profession's? The psychiatric profession's? The military's? All these organizations have different codes of ethics. Who's concerned that this may be against their code of ethics?
There are certainly moral concerns.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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probably the only constructive use in the world for the goatse image, and you ignore him?
The government will certainly misuse this technology too, no matter the legal protections. We have something called the Constitution that supposedly protects us against the government spying on us, but we're all seeing how much good that does.
So it's not out of luddism that I hope they belay this advance; rather, I want to wait until we've rebalanced our government and society to ensure our freedom and rights will not be abused.
In the meantime, why not cure cancer? That's an unambiguous good. Go work on that!
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Or better yet, we work to turn the instruments on those same people. Transparency is key and requires just as much work as enforcing your privacy. Who watches the watchers?
If the tech was available now to monitor everyone's brain and tell what they were thinking (generally), how many random public shootings (VA tech, Columbine, etc) would it take for the general public to want it to be mandatory?
Like the proven infallible technology in Minority Report? Can't wait.
And yet they invented it anyway. I guess you could use it to study how the brain processes images, but for the life of me I can't think of a truly beneficial, non-evil application.
Uh, how about research into artificial sight for the blind, or restoring visual comprehension to persons with brain damage? A tool is a tool, an object that is neither good or evil. It's how people use it that's the problem.