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AI-Powered ‘Thought Decoders’ Won’t Just Read Your Mind — They’ll Change It
For centuries, mentalists astounded crowds by seeming to plumb the depth of their souls — effortlessly unearthing audience members’ memories, desires, and thoughts. Now, there’s concern that neuroscientists might be doing the same by developing technologies capable of “decoding” our thoughts and laying bare the hidden contents of our minds. Though neural decoding has been in development for decades, it broke into popular culture earlier this year, thanks to a slew of high-profile papers.
In one, researchers used data from implanted electrodes to reconstruct the Pink Floyd song participants were listening to. In another paper, published in Nature, scientists combined brain scans with AI-powered language generators (like those undergirding ChatGPT and similar tools) to translate brain activity into coherent, continuous sentences. This method didn’t require invasive surgery, and yet it was able to reconstruct the meaning of a story from purely imagined, rather than spoken or heard, speech.
Critics claim that we might lose the “last frontier of privacy” if we allow these technologies to progress without thoughtful oversight. Even if you don’t subscribe to this flavor of techno-dystopian pessimism, general skepticism is rarely a bad idea.
GOP Takes On Federal Reserve in Battle Over Digital Dollar
It’s been one week since Congress returned from summer recess and Republican lawmakers are wasting no time in bringing legislation back to the House floor to block a central bank digital currency, FOX Business has learned.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., on Tuesday afternoon will reintroduce the Central Bank Digital Currency Anti-Surveillance State Act, a Republican-backed bill that aims to prevent the Federal Reserve and its member banks from issuing a digital version of the dollar and using it to implement monetary policy.
Central bank digital currencies, more commonly referred to as CBDCs, have become increasingly popular over the last three years. As many as 130 countries, representing 98% of the global economy, are exploring digital versions of their currencies; 11 countries, including China, have fully implemented a CBDC.
Republicans like Emmer say a CBDC would enhance the surveillance state, which is why Communist China is among the first countries to establish one.
Governments can use CBDCs to gain unfettered access to private citizens’ financial data. The potential access to, and exploitation of user data significantly outweighs the benefits of low transaction costs and increased financial inclusion, critics say.
‘Dr. Google’ Meets Its Match: Dr. ChatGPT
In June, Riley Lyons, a fourth-year ophthalmology resident at Emory University School of Medicine, and his colleagues reported in medRxiv, an online publisher of health science preprints, that ChatGPT compared quite well to human doctors who reviewed the same symptoms — and performed vastly better than the symptom checker on the popular health website WebMD.
And despite the much-publicized “hallucination” problem known to afflict ChatGPT — its habit of occasionally making outright false statements — the Emory study reported that the most recent version of ChatGPT made zero “grossly inaccurate” statements when presented with a standard set of eye complaints.
The relative proficiency of ChatGPT, which debuted in November 2022, was a surprise to Lyons and his co-authors. The artificial intelligence engine “is definitely an improvement over just putting something into a Google search bar and seeing what you find,” said co-author Nieraj Jain, an assistant professor at the Emory Eye Center who specializes in vitreoretinal surgery and disease.
But the findings underscore a challenge facing the healthcare industry as it assesses the promise and pitfalls of generative AI, the type of artificial intelligence used by ChatGPT: The accuracy of chatbot-delivered medical information may represent an improvement over Dr. Google, but there are still many questions about how to integrate this new technology into healthcare systems with the same safeguards historically applied to the introduction of new drugs or medical devices.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Promises It Will Stop Buying Smartphone Location Data
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has offered a slim olive branch to one U.S. senator and the many rights groups critical of the agency’s use of commercial and seized smartphone data. According to the office of Sen. Ron Wyden, the CBP said it will stop “utilizing Commercial Telemetry Data (CTD)” — AKA users’ location data — by the end of September. Or it will so long as it doesn’t see a “critical mission” that would necessitate buying up commercial data.
The CBP is just one of many federal agencies (especially law enforcement agencies) that use commercial data sold by the massive, shady network of online data brokers. The agency falls under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, which past reports show had been buying phone location data of millions of U.S. citizens from the open market.
Though it is illegal to obtain data off a cellphone without permission or a warrant, federal lawyers have argued that this kind of data is up for grabs since it’s available on the open market.
2024 GOP Contenders Clash Over COVID Records as They Warn Against Future Mandates
Amid an uptick in coronavirus cases, Republican presidential candidates are taking aim at limited, local returns to masking requirements — using those moves as an opening to warn against broader restrictions.
In recent days, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has lambasted front-runner Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic’s early stages. The former president, meanwhile, is, pledging to cut federal funding for entities such as schools and airlines that mandate masks or vaccines.
The renewed focus on COVID-19 comes after a late-summer rise in hospitalizations. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the green light Monday to updated COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.
Landmark Google Trial Opens With Sweeping DOJ Accusations of Illegal Monopolization
U.S. prosecutors opened a landmark antitrust trial against Google on Tuesday with sweeping allegations that for years the company intentionally stifled competition challenging its massive search engine, accusing the tech giant of spending billions to operate an illegal monopoly that has harmed every computer and mobile device user in the United States.
The effects of Google’s alleged misconduct are vast, DOJ lawyer Kenneth Dintzer told the court.
“This case is about the future of the internet, and whether Google’s search engine will ever face meaningful competition,” Dintzer said, adding that Google pays more than $10 billion a year to Apple and other companies to ensure that Google is the default or only search engine available on browsers and mobile devices used by millions.
The deals guarantee a steady flow of user data to Google that further reinforces its monopoly, the U.S. government said, leading to other consequences such as harm to consumer privacy and higher advertising prices.
Slouching Toward ‘Accept All Cookies’
We are all shedding data like skin cells. Almost everything we do with, or simply in proximity to, a connected device generates some small bit of information — about who we are, about the device we’re using and the other devices nearby, about what we did and when and how and for how long.
Sometimes doing nothing at all — merely lingering on a webpage — is recorded as a relevant piece of information. Sometimes simply walking past a Wi-Fi router is a data point to be captured and processed. Sometimes the connected device isn’t a phone or a computer, as such; sometimes it’s a traffic light or a toaster or a toilet. If it is our phone, and we have location services enabled — which many people do, so that they can get delivery and Find My Friends and benefit from the convenience of turn-by-turn directions — our precise location data are being constantly collected and transmitted.
We pick up our devices and command them to open the world for us, which they do quite well. But they also produce a secondary output — all those tiny flecks of dead skin floating around us.
Our data are everywhere because our data are useful. Mostly to make people money: When someone opens up their phone’s browser and clicks on a link — to use the most basic example — a whole hidden economy whirs into gear.
