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There are quite a few ethical problems. On the reading side, there is interrogation (of suspected spies or terrorists), which is already decades underway with f

There are quite a few ethical problems. On the reading side, there is interrogation (of suspected spies or terrorists), which is already decades underway with fMRI, and brainjacking (a keylogger for your thoughts). As for deep brain stimulation, this is researched to create fearless soldiers, change sexuality, extremely painful torture, radio control movements, and alter emotional states. Even for patients who suffer from severe health conditions such as OCD, depression, or tremors, the treatment can be very disruptive and emotional well-being may decrease, even with successful treatment of the condition (the doctor is happy, the patient less so). The dual use possibilities of this technology are extremely scary, and the involvement of Facebook (supposedly for VR) and DARPA (supposedly to treat anxiety and PTSD in soldiers) does not bode too well.

mattkrause 6y ago
Got some references for "decades" of fMRI interrogation (or, really, anything else)? As far as I know, decoding is challenging with totally cooperative subjects doing simple tasks. Wiggling just a few mm is enough to completely destroy a run.
- BickNowstrom 6y ago
  The brain can't lie (2003) > Brain scans can reveal how you think and feel, and even how you might behave. No wonder the CIA and big business are interested. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/nov/20/neuroscience.science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/nov/20/neuroscience... Technology vs. Torture (2004) > Indeed, a Pentagon agency is already funding Functional MRI research for such purposes. https://slate.com/culture/2004/08/how-technology-will-eliminate-torture.html https://slate.com/culture/2004/08/how-technology-will-elimin... The Legality of the Use of Psychiatric Neuroimaging in Intelligence Interrogation (2005) > For example, an interrogator could present a detainee with pictures of suspected terrorists, or of potential terrorist targets, which would generate certain neural responses if the detainee were familiar with the subjects pictured. U.S. intelligence agencies have been interested in deploying fMRI technology in interrogation for years. It now appears that they can. https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3008&context=clr https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... Zero-Shot Learning with Semantic Output Codes (2009) > As a case study, we build a SOC classifier for a neural decoding task and show that it can often predict words that people are thinking about from functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) of their neural activity, even without training examples for those words. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/theo-73/www/papers/zero-shot-learning.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/theo-73/www/papers/zer... Anecdotal hearsay: I first heard of a brain reading helmet able to successfully reconstruct a numerical password on subjects where the helmet was not trained on (but who consciously had to think about the keycode) in 2001. I also heard this technology was used extensively in Guantanamo Bay and black sites, possibly as a cheap trick to intimidate prisoners into speaking the truth / making them visibly anxious to lie, such tricks dating back to the world wars where they used sedatives and/or uppers disguised as "truth serums", and even the threat of administering these caused subjects to crack. As for unethical deep brain stimulation research see: - Assessment of Soviet Electrical Brain Stimulation Research and Applications (1975) https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792R000600340001-4.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792... - Robert Galbraith Heath (1953+) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath > Dr Heath's work on mind-control at Tulane was partly funded by the US military and the CIA. Dr Heath's subjects were African Americans. In the words of Heath's collaborator Australian psychiatrist Harry Bailey, this was "because they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals". Following the discovery by Olds and Milner of the "pleasure centres" of the brain [James Olds and Peter Milner, "Positive Reinforcement Produced by Electrical Stimulation of the Septal Area and Other Regions of the Rat Brain," Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47 (1954): 419-28.], Dr Heath was the main speaker at a seminar conducted by the Army Chemical Corps at its Edgewood Arsenal medical laboratories. Dr Heath's topic was "Some Aspects of Electrical Stimulation and Recording in the Brain of Man." Details of Dr Heath's own involvement in the MK-ULTRA project remain unclear; but Tulane University continues to enjoy close ties with the CIA. Dr Heath also conducted numerous experiments with mescaline, LSD and cannabis.
  - comex 6y ago
    None of your references say that anyone has used fMRI for interrogation, let alone for decades. At most, your first two links say that the CIA and DoD respectively are interested in using fMRI for lie detection, but that's not necessarily the same as interrogation (both agencies currently use polygraphs extensively on their own employees, a case where the subject would be cooperative), and they don't say the agencies have actually put that idea into practice. Your third link cites the first one and does suggest that using fMRI for interrogation is possible, but doesn't say whether anyone has done it. Your fourth link does not mention the government or interrogation. The other two links are not about fMRI. So we're left with the anecdotal hearsay, which might well be true, but even if true, doesn't really show that fMRI was effective against prisoners beyond its use as a psychological trick.
    - BickNowstrom 6y ago
      I feel you are splitting hairs here. Lie detection is necessarily a part of interrogation. The references say they can do this, and have been interested in doing it, so why wouldn't they be using it? The nature of intelligence agencies demands a certain degree of secrecy/anonymity and conjecture. One author of the fourth paper, though never directly researching military or government applications, moved from the U.S. to Canada in large part due to the appropriation and funding from the military for his research. If you allow an argument from authority of the practical use in counter terrorism interrogation, see the works of bioethicist Jonathan Marks https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MpKuUlkAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MpKuUlkAAAAJ&hl=en who in his 2007 paper cites "Correspondence between a[n anonymous] U.S. counterintelligence liaison officer and Jean Maria Arrigo" (2002-2005) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Maria_Arrigo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Maria_Arrigo : > Brain scan by MRI/CAT scan with contrast along with EEG tests by doctors now used to screen terrorists like I suggested a long time back. Massive brain electrical activity if key words are spoken during scans. The use of the word SEMTEX provided massive brain disturbance. Process developed by NeuroPsychologists at London’s University College and Mossad. Great results. That way we only apply intensive interrogation techniques to the ones that show reactions to key words given both in English and in their own language. [Military interrogation takes two forms, Tactical Questioning or Detailed Interviewing. Tactical Questioning is the initial screening of detainees, Detailed Interviewing is the more advanced questioning of subjects.] Note that I did not even make the stronger claim of decades of applied usage -- that you are making me defend and invalidate my references with -- just that it was decades underway. But above quote should satisfy even that.
Ajedi32 6y ago
I would consider those to be ethical problems with specific applications of brain-machine interface technology, not with the implantation process itself.

mattkrause 6y ago

Got some references for "decades" of fMRI interrogation (or, really, anything else)? As far as I know, decoding is challenging with totally cooperative subjects doing simple tasks. Wiggling just a few mm is enough to completely destroy a run.

BickNowstrom 6y ago
The brain can't lie (2003) > Brain scans can reveal how you think and feel, and even how you might behave. No wonder the CIA and big business are interested. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/nov/20/neuroscience.science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/nov/20/neuroscience... Technology vs. Torture (2004) > Indeed, a Pentagon agency is already funding Functional MRI research for such purposes. https://slate.com/culture/2004/08/how-technology-will-eliminate-torture.html https://slate.com/culture/2004/08/how-technology-will-elimin... The Legality of the Use of Psychiatric Neuroimaging in Intelligence Interrogation (2005) > For example, an interrogator could present a detainee with pictures of suspected terrorists, or of potential terrorist targets, which would generate certain neural responses if the detainee were familiar with the subjects pictured. U.S. intelligence agencies have been interested in deploying fMRI technology in interrogation for years. It now appears that they can. https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3008&context=clr https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... Zero-Shot Learning with Semantic Output Codes (2009) > As a case study, we build a SOC classifier for a neural decoding task and show that it can often predict words that people are thinking about from functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) of their neural activity, even without training examples for those words. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/theo-73/www/papers/zero-shot-learning.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/theo-73/www/papers/zer... Anecdotal hearsay: I first heard of a brain reading helmet able to successfully reconstruct a numerical password on subjects where the helmet was not trained on (but who consciously had to think about the keycode) in 2001. I also heard this technology was used extensively in Guantanamo Bay and black sites, possibly as a cheap trick to intimidate prisoners into speaking the truth / making them visibly anxious to lie, such tricks dating back to the world wars where they used sedatives and/or uppers disguised as "truth serums", and even the threat of administering these caused subjects to crack. As for unethical deep brain stimulation research see: - Assessment of Soviet Electrical Brain Stimulation Research and Applications (1975) https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792R000600340001-4.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792... - Robert Galbraith Heath (1953+) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath > Dr Heath's work on mind-control at Tulane was partly funded by the US military and the CIA. Dr Heath's subjects were African Americans. In the words of Heath's collaborator Australian psychiatrist Harry Bailey, this was "because they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals". Following the discovery by Olds and Milner of the "pleasure centres" of the brain [James Olds and Peter Milner, "Positive Reinforcement Produced by Electrical Stimulation of the Septal Area and Other Regions of the Rat Brain," Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47 (1954): 419-28.], Dr Heath was the main speaker at a seminar conducted by the Army Chemical Corps at its Edgewood Arsenal medical laboratories. Dr Heath's topic was "Some Aspects of Electrical Stimulation and Recording in the Brain of Man." Details of Dr Heath's own involvement in the MK-ULTRA project remain unclear; but Tulane University continues to enjoy close ties with the CIA. Dr Heath also conducted numerous experiments with mescaline, LSD and cannabis.
- comex 6y ago
  None of your references say that anyone has used fMRI for interrogation, let alone for decades. At most, your first two links say that the CIA and DoD respectively are interested in using fMRI for lie detection, but that's not necessarily the same as interrogation (both agencies currently use polygraphs extensively on their own employees, a case where the subject would be cooperative), and they don't say the agencies have actually put that idea into practice. Your third link cites the first one and does suggest that using fMRI for interrogation is possible, but doesn't say whether anyone has done it. Your fourth link does not mention the government or interrogation. The other two links are not about fMRI. So we're left with the anecdotal hearsay, which might well be true, but even if true, doesn't really show that fMRI was effective against prisoners beyond its use as a psychological trick.
  - BickNowstrom 6y ago
    I feel you are splitting hairs here. Lie detection is necessarily a part of interrogation. The references say they can do this, and have been interested in doing it, so why wouldn't they be using it? The nature of intelligence agencies demands a certain degree of secrecy/anonymity and conjecture. One author of the fourth paper, though never directly researching military or government applications, moved from the U.S. to Canada in large part due to the appropriation and funding from the military for his research. If you allow an argument from authority of the practical use in counter terrorism interrogation, see the works of bioethicist Jonathan Marks https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MpKuUlkAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MpKuUlkAAAAJ&hl=en who in his 2007 paper cites "Correspondence between a[n anonymous] U.S. counterintelligence liaison officer and Jean Maria Arrigo" (2002-2005) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Maria_Arrigo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Maria_Arrigo : > Brain scan by MRI/CAT scan with contrast along with EEG tests by doctors now used to screen terrorists like I suggested a long time back. Massive brain electrical activity if key words are spoken during scans. The use of the word SEMTEX provided massive brain disturbance. Process developed by NeuroPsychologists at London’s University College and Mossad. Great results. That way we only apply intensive interrogation techniques to the ones that show reactions to key words given both in English and in their own language. [Military interrogation takes two forms, Tactical Questioning or Detailed Interviewing. Tactical Questioning is the initial screening of detainees, Detailed Interviewing is the more advanced questioning of subjects.] Note that I did not even make the stronger claim of decades of applied usage -- that you are making me defend and invalidate my references with -- just that it was decades underway. But above quote should satisfy even that.

Ajedi32 6y ago

I would consider those to be ethical problems with specific applications of brain-machine interface technology, not with the implantation process itself.