BCIs: Good for Business and the Future of Humanity

This event took place on Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 4:00 PM UTC.

Venue: Austin Convention Center, Room 18CD Evan Coopersmith, Sumner Norman, Taryn Southern Brain computer interface (BCI) technology is advancing rapidly. Scientific researchers, industry, and neuro-ethicists are all grappling with the implications of a technology that accesses our innermost attributes — our intentions and preferences. Effective altruists rightly see opportunity to restore movement to paralyzed individuals and deliver targeted and personalized medicine to those with neurological disorders. Capitalists rightly see incalculable market potential by increasing the productivity of professionals everywhere. Longtermists see a revolution in how humans interact with machines and each other. BCI presents an unprecedented opportunity for human agency and productivity, but also introduces ethical and privacy concerns that technologists and academics must address to avoid potential dystopian outcomes like thought and sentiment decoding by authoritarian regimes. Aligning ethical and monetary incentives is the goal and this panel of thinkers, technologists, and AE, a company focused on increasing human agency, will discuss how we get there.