The old movie "Village of the Damned" scared us with alien children who could read the thoughts of Earthlings and had come to take over. Their teacher practiced thinking of a brick wall, just a brick wall, brick wall, as he waited for the explosive in his briefcase to kill the entire class of alien children, and himself, to save the planet. They could see he was thinking of the brick wall brick wall brick wall and immediately became suspicious...but too late. They all perished, along with the man who had blocked his thoughts of imminent death from being read. Will the technology Nita Farahany describes allow us to think of a brick wall? Or will our brains betray us?
(Psychologist here.) I have some basic fears. The tech is great...to be freed that way. But it leads to questions about hacking. More AI means climate change gets even worse. That makes mental health worse.
What happens to privacy when 1 crosses state/international lines?
The past devices were typical AAC. AlphaTalker before the ipad. Now, there are many different apps 1 can use on the ipad. We see this when Senator Fetterman speaks using the device that also shows a transcript to him of what 1 just said.
What long-term physical and psychological harm is going to happen from these implants to those who have them/those around them? What will we find out in 10, 20, 30+ years? (Not just climate change and the worsening mental health.)
Thanks, Nita. Great piece and I wish you best of luck with the negotiations. Reminds me a lot of William Gibson and/or Masamune Shirow and elements of human/computer interfaces they've depicted over the years.
The old movie "Village of the Damned" scared us with alien children who could read the thoughts of Earthlings and had come to take over. Their teacher practiced thinking of a brick wall, just a brick wall, brick wall, as he waited for the explosive in his briefcase to kill the entire class of alien children, and himself, to save the planet. They could see he was thinking of the brick wall brick wall brick wall and immediately became suspicious...but too late. They all perished, along with the man who had blocked his thoughts of imminent death from being read. Will the technology Nita Farahany describes allow us to think of a brick wall? Or will our brains betray us?
The idea that this system could end up in the hands of a psychopath or sociopath is terrifying.
(Psychologist here.) I have some basic fears. The tech is great...to be freed that way. But it leads to questions about hacking. More AI means climate change gets even worse. That makes mental health worse.
What happens to privacy when 1 crosses state/international lines?
The past devices were typical AAC. AlphaTalker before the ipad. Now, there are many different apps 1 can use on the ipad. We see this when Senator Fetterman speaks using the device that also shows a transcript to him of what 1 just said.
What long-term physical and psychological harm is going to happen from these implants to those who have them/those around them? What will we find out in 10, 20, 30+ years? (Not just climate change and the worsening mental health.)
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Thanks, Nita. Great piece and I wish you best of luck with the negotiations. Reminds me a lot of William Gibson and/or Masamune Shirow and elements of human/computer interfaces they've depicted over the years.
This, plus the multimodal profiling that is inherent to modernity, will be a lot of leverage for others to pull on.