A few years ago, when researchers successfully demonstrated the use of augmented reality (AR) to treat PTSD by examining which parts of the brain it impacted, no one would have thought that scientists would be able to able to use artificial intelligence (AI) to turn brain activity to text. According to The Guardian, scientists at the University of California (UC) have been able to do so using electrode arrays implanted in the brain. Although the results are not too revolutionary, and AI commits mistakes more often than not, the fact that this is now possible is an achievement in itself. While, in the AR experiment, scientists were looking at which part of the brain gets impacted by certain images and videos to decode neural response, in the UC experiment, AI converted brain activity to numbers related to aspects of speech. The AI, with great difficulty, could only do this for the 50 sentences in which it was trained. Even there, it showed glaring errors.
As the research gets better, it can be used to improve responses from persons with speech disabilities. But, such research raises ethical questions on how advanced we want our machines to be. Even if the machine requires electrodes to read parts of the mind, for which consent must be given, that does not make for a convincing argument once it is able to do much more. Although research for scientific purposes certainly needs to be advanced, nations also need to come together to decide what is ethical, and what isn’t. So far, this debate has been raging between the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk; it is now time that nations, too, discuss this.
