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When Barack Obama unleashed the Transhuman\/Technocrat initiative called Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) in 2013, it was certain to cause alarm bells as the brain was \u201cmapped\u201d and then manipulated. Do you have a right to your own autonomous thoughts? \u2043 TN Editor<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
As sci-fi thriller \u201cInception\u201d topped box offices across the world, audiences were delighted and appalled by its futuristic story of a criminal gang invading people\u2019s dreams to steal valuable data.<\/p>\n
More than a decade on, the technology envisioned by filmmaker Christopher Nolan is likely not far off, according to experts in Chile, who have moved the security debate beyond burglar alarms to safeguarding the most valuable real estate people ever own: their minds.<\/p>\n
The South American nation is aiming to be the world\u2019s first to legally protect citizens\u2019 \u201cneuro-rights,\u201d with lawmakers expected to pass a constitutional reform blocking technology that seeks to \u201cincrease, diminish or disturb\u201d people\u2019s mental integrity without their consent.<\/p>\n
Opposition senator Guido Girardi, one of the authors of the legislation, is worried about technology \u2014 whether algorithms, bionic implants or some other gadgetry \u2014 that could threaten \u201cthe essence of humans, their autonomy, their freedom and their free will.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this technology manages to read (your mind), before even you\u2019re aware of what you\u2019re thinking,\u201d he told AFP, \u201cit could write emotions into your brain: life stories that aren\u2019t yours and that your brain won\u2019t be able to distinguish whether they were yours or the product of designers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Prevent manipulation\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Scores of sci-fi movies and novels have offered audiences the dark side of neurotechnology \u2014 perhaps invoking criminal masterminds ensconced in secret strongholds, manipulating the world with a dastardly laugh while stroking a cat.<\/p>\n
In fact, the nascent technology has already demonstrated how it can have significantly positive applications.<\/p>\n
In 2013, then-US president Barack Obama promoted the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neuro-technologies) initiative, which aimed to study the causes of brain disorders such as Alzheimer\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s and epilepsy.<\/p>\n
Back in Chile, Science Minister Andres Couve told AFP the neuro-rights debate \u201cis part of a consolidation of a new scientific institutionality in the country that is now capturing international attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
But many are worried about the potential for nefarious actors to abuse technological advances.<\/p>\n
Chile\u2019s President Sebastian Pinera proposed at last week\u2019s Ibero-American summit in Andorra that countries legislate together on the thorny issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call on all Ibero-American countries to anticipate the future and to adequately protect, now, not just our citizens\u2019 data and information, but also their thoughts, their feelings, their neuronal information, to prevent these from being manipulated by new technologies,\u201d the conservative Pinera said.<\/p>\n
The Chilean bill contains four main fields of legislation: guarding the human mind\u2019s data, or neuro-data; fixing limits to the neuro-technology of reading and especially writing in brains; setting an equitable distribution and access to these technologies; and putting limits on neuro-algorithms.<\/p>\n
Spanish scientist Rafael Yuste, an expert on the subject from Columbia University in New York, told AFP some of these technologies already exist, and even the most remote will be available within 10 years.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018A new Renaissance\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
They are already being applied to animals in laboratories.<\/p>\n
Scientists have experimented with rats, implanting images of unfamiliar objects in their brains and observing how they accept those objects in real life as their own and incorporate them into their natural behavior.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can enter there (into the chemical processes of the brain) and stimulate or inhibit them, you can change people\u2019s decisions. This is something we\u2019ve already done with animals,\u201d said Yuste.<\/p>\n
The science has opened the possibility of designing hybrid humans with artificially enhanced cognitive abilities.<\/p>\n
The risk is that, without proper safeguards, the technology might be used to alter people\u2019s thoughts, employing algorithms via the internet to re-program their hard wiring, to dictate their interests, preferences or patterns of consumption.<\/p>\n