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I hope this is taken seriously. There is the potential threat of treating malcontents and other social deviants with these new approaches -even if they have not committed a crime. I hope awareness will result in there being severe restrictions on the use of these new approaches.
Would you get a neuro-implant financed by neuro-advertising? We manipulate you, but just a little!™
Why even bother with "neuro-advertising"?

Just get the brain to release dopamine whenever the subject thinks of one of your clients’ products.

And when they think of the implant.

"- Oh, so you’re going to get that implant? - Yeah, but it’s just to improve my odds at finding a job. Once I have it, I’ll have it removed"

"- So... you found a job? - Yeah! - And... you still have the implant? - Oh! Hell yeah! It’s the best thing that ever happened to me! I can’t imagine what I’d do without it!"

The judges agree 10/10 10/10 10/10

hynotoad wins again!

We need a constitutional right to cognitive liberty. The first amendment doesn't cover freedom of thought.
Chile la already discussig this scenario for their new Constitution. One of the first in the world even.
It's more interesting that this is appearing on something as mainstream/everyday as Reuters.

And honestly they're not wrong about there needing to be fundamental rights against neural editing, free will suppression, and similar in regards to neural implants. Essentially public opinion puts tech down as being far outside of socially acceptable norms when it comes to surveillance and manipulation (and they'll end up in hot water as it becomes more public what's being recorded and how it's used).

This is why I stick to psychedelics for my mind expansion and avoid social “past times”. I play music and make content rather than buy it.

Mass media is no different. Stimulating chemical habit in lock step with political goals of a ruling class is the holy grail of every human society. Right now the ruling political class is the tech advanced “west”.

These scientists are a bit late to debate.

Creating demand through marketing is terribly inefficient. Imagine the ability to produce and commoditize whales[1]. As long as the cost of neuro-implantation is less than the return on investment the incentive to maximize neuro-implantation exists.

Of course, just like many ad-free experiences today, it's always the consumer's choice whether they want to pay to not be manipulated.

[1] https://www.brandunited.com/article/whales-in-customer-base/

Protection from algorithmic bias? Really?

It's not ideal that algorithmic biases exist - and to the extent that it's feasible unbiased algorithms should be used, and mitigations provided for biases that cannot be avoided completely.

However, it's not always possible - and we probably shouldn't avoid all progress just because it cannot be universally applied.

In image recognition (within the visible spectrum) people of dark complexion will always have an algorithmic bias against them - as will any relatively low contrast picture.

This isn't the result of racial biases in researchers, or the data sets, or the ever oppressive totalitarian system - black people reflect less light so their features are harder to distinguish.

There's simply no possibility for any racially unbiased facial recognition algorithms.

I don't know the solution here, but it should be a considered response and not a knee jerk reaction.