Chile wants to regulate technologies that don't yet exist

The idea of ​​the South American country is to become the first state in the world to legally protect citizens' "neuro-rights", guaranteeing their mental privacy in the not too distant future

(photo: Tomasz Frankowski / Unsplash) July 4, 2021. 155 representatives, elected from the most disparate social backgrounds - students and professors, doctors and unemployed, actors and housewives, social workers and journalists - come together to start an immense job: writing the new constitution of Chile, sending in oblivion that which came into force in 1980, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Most of them are far to the left than President Sebastián Piñera, elected a year before millions of Chileans took to the streets against the glaring economic and social inequalities that tear Chile apart, and intend to reaffirm rights that have been sidelined for decades. However, some have much more ambitious ideas.

"We are working together with universities and the Academy of Sciences to develop a constitutional reform project that ensures that no one can intervene in your brain without your consent and that no one can attack your privacy", he announced Guido Girardi, doctor and senator of the center-left party Partido por la Democracia who pushed for the creation of a ministry for science, technology, knowledge and innovation in the South American country. Anticipating by years a battle that will undoubtedly be at the center of political discussion in the future, Girardi is the public face of the campaign to include a brand new category of rights in the new Chilean constitution: those to mental privacy.

“Protecting mental integrity”

The idea is to become the first state in the world to legally protect the neuro-rights of citizens, regulating immediately technologies that are still under development but which would “increase, decrease or disturb” people's mental integrity without their consent.

In addition to the ongoing debate within the constituent assembly, an ordinary bill is also moving in this direction that touches four fields: the protection of data contained in the human mind; the definition of the limits beyond which the technologies of reading (and, above all, writing) of the brain cannot be pushed; the regulation of access to these technologies and the protection against algorithmic bias.

At the center is an innovative interpretation of the concept of privacy that focuses on neural data and information regarding our processes and mental states that can be obtained by analyzing them. As Abel Wajnerman Paz explains in Rest of World, the bill "proposes to treat neural data as a special type of information that is intimately related to who we are and that partly defines our identity." By ensuring that neural data are legally considered to be organic tissue, the law would require the explicit permission of citizens before being able to obtain their brain data. As in the case of any organ, the data could not be sold, but only donated for altruistic purposes.

The future is already here

We are not dealing with laws based on science fiction: some neurotechnologies capable of reading and interpreting the psychic states of persones are already here. In some cases, they are being developed for noble reasons, such as relieving symptoms for those with Parkinson's disease or depression by stimulating the brain with electrodes, or allowing deaf people to hear by stimulating the acoustic nerve. However, the first abuses are already being seen: just think of the SmartCaps, intelligent headgear that monitor brain waves to measure fatigue and prevent accidents at work which can also be used to control the work rate of their employees and possibly punish them.

Even in the case of the most famous neurotechnology among the layman in the world - Neuralink of that hype machine that is Elon Musk - it is possible to imagine applications that are not exactly commendable. In fact, if on one hand the technologies of reading the brain could identify any pathologies, it is difficult to think that without robust regulation it would not be exploited for commercial - or worse, military purposes.

"These are technologies that endanger the very essence of the human being, their autonomy, their freedom, their free will", commented Guido Girardi in an interview. "If they can read your mind even before you are aware of what you are thinking, it could implant emotions or memories that you have not really experienced in your brain: we will not be able to distinguish between thoughts that are ours and those that are the result of external designers ".

Girardi's opinion is closely linked to that of Rafael Yuste, a professor at Columbia University and one of the most respected neurobiologists in the world. Aware of the fact that within a decade some of the neurotechnologies that today seem like science fiction to us will be widespread, Yuste believes that, if we do not act now to stem the possible drift, these technologies can be used to alter people's thoughts and dictate theirs. interests, but also to create humans with artificially enhanced cognitive abilities.

"To avoid a two-speed situation with some humans enhanced and others who are not, these neuro-technologies must be regulated according to principles of universal justice, recognizing the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," he argues Yuste, who in March asked the United Nations to create an international commission of experts to work on neurological rights in view of an international treaty. A fundamental step to avoid the emergence of neurodight havens where citizens' neural data are at the mercy of any unscrupulous company.


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