Paris: In a timely response, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has announced to develop an “ethical framework” aimed at addressing the human rights issues raised by neurotechnology and AI brain implants.
The UNESCO announced this while expressing concern about the rapid progress of neurotechnology, accelerated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its potential threat to human rights and mental privacy.
The combination of "warp speed" advances in neurotechnology, such as brain implants or scans that can increasingly peek inside minds, and Artificial Intelligence pose a threat to mental privacy, UNESCO warned a conference in Paris Thursday July 13.
During the event, Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences, said:
"We are heading towards a future where algorithms will allow us to decode people’s mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms that control their intentions, emotions, and decisions."
In May 2023, scientists in the United States revealed they had used brain scans and AI to turn "the gist" of what people were thinking into written words -- as long as they had spent long hours inside a large fMRI machine, according to news agency AFP.
In the same month, Elon Musk-led brain-computer interface company Neuralink announced that it has received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to begin its first-in-human clinical study, meaning actual humans could have a Neuralink device implanted in their heads.
The US FDA had only two months back, in March 2023, rejected Neuralink's bid to implant a chip in a human brain over safety risks.
Recently neurotechnology has been supercharged by artificial intelligence algorithms which can process and learn from data in ways never before possible, said Mariagrazia Squicciarini, a UNESCO economist specialising in AI.
"It's like putting neurotech on steroids," she told AFP.
UN officials are of the view that while the technology could potentially transform lives, it may also carry a hefty price.
UNESCO meanwhile conversed with Hannah Galvin, an epilepsy patient who had a neurotech device implanted in her brain to detect seizures and alert her to lie down. The device however only exacerbated Galvin’s condition. She reported experiencing up to 100 seizures daily, which triggered the device relentlessly, according to AFP.
Galvin, who later had the device removed, told UNESCO, "I felt like there was someone in my head, and it wasn’t me. And I just got more and more depressed. I didn’t like it at all."
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