What if every time your mind wandered off while writing an article, you could, with the aid of your concentration implant, prod it back to the task at hand, finally completing those life-changing projects you’ve never gotten around to finishing?
These applications remain fantasies, of course. But the mere fact that such a thing may be possible is partly what prompts Dr. Yuste, the neurobiologist, to worry about how this technology could blur the boundaries of what we consider to be our personalities.
Such blurring is already an issue, he points out. Parkinson’s patients with implants sometimes report feeling more aggressive than usual when the machine is “on.” Depressed patients undergoing deep brain stimulation sometimes wonder if they’re really themselves anymore. “You kind of feel artificial,” one patient told researchers. The machine isn’t implanting ideas in their minds, like Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the movie “Inception,” but it is seemingly changing their sense of self.
What happens if people are no longer sure if their emotions are theirs, or the effects of the machines they’re connected to?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/sunday/brain-machine-artificial-intelligence.html
