Is AI Threatening our Freedom?

Lucy Rados '25  ~  November/December 2023

Buffalo, although some may not think of it as the hotbed of intellectual discussion, actually has a wonderful series of speakers that come through the University at Buffalo’s Distinguished Speakers Series. This past November, I was able to attend a discussion by Nicholas Thompson and Nita Farahany, as they came to discuss a topic very pressing in today’s world: Artificial Intelligence. In particular, this discussion talked about the legal ramifications of AI and its being unregulated.

Thompson is not an AI specialist but the CEO of the Atlantic. However, he is fascinated by AI and its possibilities. He began by speaking about his questions about AI, and his experience attending AI conferences. At one point, he mentioned how at some conferences, people believe that AI could come to replicate a human brain. But when that same question was posed to this audience, people were much more skeptical, feeling that there is something essential in the brain that is innately human, whether that be a soul or something else, and either way, impossible for technology to recreate. However, this is a rather disturbing thought, that there is not something essential to humanity that makes it not able to be replicated.

In particular, this whole night had a major focus on EEG technology, which measures brain wave activity. Farahany began her talk with a video showing a hypothetical workplace where everyone wears earbuds that monitor how focused one is, and is eerily close to mind reading, just by tracking brain waves. In this not so distant future, collaborators on a crime could be discovered simply based on if their brain activity matched at the same time. Frighteningly, this technology already exists. This seems horribly ominous; however, there are certainly benefits to this technology. For instance, knowing more about the brain and its activity could be transformative for people with degenerative illnesses such as dementia, and especially for people with locked-in syndrome, where one is able to take in information and think, but not communicate or move. With brain wave technology and AI, affected people could be able to communicate and much could be discovered about these illnesses

A main focus of their joint discussion was Cognitive Liberty, protecting our ability to think and function without monitoring. Soon, new products will hit the market, such as Airpods and Apple Watches with EEG technology. Watches, for instance, could track the brain waves to make your fingers type as they head to your hands; using AI, it would learn what those brain waves meant and translate them into words. Though this seems convenient, the data being collected could also threaten our freedom. How the brain works is essential to who we are as individuals. One frightening example is in a Wall Street Journal 2019 investigation, which discovered middle schoolers in China who were made to wear headbands with EEG technology that tracked their attention span. This data was aggregated and sent to teachers, parents and the government, totally unprotected. The data mining itself is scary, not to mention the negative impacts this has on young students– sometimes kids zone out, especially when they’re younger, and policing of this is sure to lead to mental health issues. 

Another, less scary, example was of a trucking company that uses hats to track how tired a driver is. This is beneficial, as it prevents accidents before it is too late. What is important about this particular method is that the data overwrites itself with new data, so it cannot be collected. To Farahany, and I agree, this seems like the best way. Once data is collected and stored, it is not at all unfeasible that it be sold to the highest bidder, which is a terrifying thought, and unfortunately, there is no benevolent overseer of AI. AI can even use brain waves to piece together information about what a person is hearing or seeing. It has been able to recreate images and words by processing brain waves. Does the possibility for good really discount what could become a total lack of autonomy?

Farahany’s work as a neuroethicist has been advocating for cognitive liberty. She wrote a book, The Battle for Your Brain, that discusses the possibilities of the aforementioned technologies and how they could be used negatively. She told the audience how, after publishing this book, in which she suggested possible new technologies different companies might soon propose, those same companies then contacted her to ask how they could protect cognitive liberty in designing those very technologies. Although it is good they asked, the fact that they are developing technologies using EEG and AI demonstrates that the mind-monitoring future Farahany’s video showed is not too far away.

Also coming to the UB Distinguished Speakers Series in March: Amanda Gorman, first National Youth Poet Laureate of the US.