Will Neural Sensors Lead to Workplace Brain Scanning? (ieee.org) 68
"Get ready: Neurotechnology is coming to the workplace," claims IEEE Spectrum:
Neural sensors are now reliable and affordable enough to support commercial pilot projects that extract productivity-enhancing data from workers' brains.
These projects aren't confined to specialized workplaces; they're also happening in offices, factories, farms, and airports. The companies and people behind these neurotech devices are certain that they will improve our lives. But there are serious questions about whether work should be organized around certain functions of the brain, rather than the person as a whole.
To be clear, the kind of neurotech that's currently available is nowhere close to reading minds. Sensors detect electrical activity across different areas of the brain, and the patterns in that activity can be broadly correlated with different feelings or physiological responses, such as stress, focus, or a reaction to external stimuli. These data can be exploited to make workers more efficient — and, proponents of the technology say, to make them happier. Two of the most interesting innovators in this field are the Israel-based startup InnerEye, which aims to give workers superhuman abilities, and Emotiv, a Silicon Valley neurotech company that's bringing a brain-tracking wearable to office workers, including those working remotely....
EEG has recently broken out of clinics and labs and has entered the consumer marketplace. This move has been driven by a new class of "dry" electrodes that can operate without conductive gel, a substantial reduction in the number of electrodes necessary to collect useful data, and advances in artificial intelligence that make it far easier to interpret the data. Some EEG headsets are even available directly to consumers for a few hundred dollars.
These projects aren't confined to specialized workplaces; they're also happening in offices, factories, farms, and airports. The companies and people behind these neurotech devices are certain that they will improve our lives. But there are serious questions about whether work should be organized around certain functions of the brain, rather than the person as a whole.
To be clear, the kind of neurotech that's currently available is nowhere close to reading minds. Sensors detect electrical activity across different areas of the brain, and the patterns in that activity can be broadly correlated with different feelings or physiological responses, such as stress, focus, or a reaction to external stimuli. These data can be exploited to make workers more efficient — and, proponents of the technology say, to make them happier. Two of the most interesting innovators in this field are the Israel-based startup InnerEye, which aims to give workers superhuman abilities, and Emotiv, a Silicon Valley neurotech company that's bringing a brain-tracking wearable to office workers, including those working remotely....
EEG has recently broken out of clinics and labs and has entered the consumer marketplace. This move has been driven by a new class of "dry" electrodes that can operate without conductive gel, a substantial reduction in the number of electrodes necessary to collect useful data, and advances in artificial intelligence that make it far easier to interpret the data. Some EEG headsets are even available directly to consumers for a few hundred dollars.
They will (Score:3)
Why should I pay my minions if their brains aren't constantly working on the jorb they are hired for?
Re:They will (Score:4, Interesting)
This is quite interesting actually. I have seen situations where a person is unable to do some task (in programming) within 2 weeks, some even have claimed it to be impossible, and then someone else does it within hours. So even if the doers would be brain dead for 90% of their work time, they would still outperform others. How would these people measure in the scan.
Another interesting take are autistic people who have been documented to have different kind of brain activity than neurotypical. I can easily imagine that they would show "coffee break" waves when working and "work waves" while of coffee break", as the latter is usually much for work for them because of the social aspect.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a dev and I work in this way. 90% of the time I just wander around and think about a problem. Then, when I have the entire plan ironed out, I code a solution within a few hours. I also very commonly have epiphanies and a-ha! moments when performing other tasks outside of work i.e. while running or driving, when my brain is on "idle". My best work ever never gets done at actual work. It gets done when I'm alone, locked in a small room, usually after everyone goes to sleep.
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard these stories. As a particularly rich magnate, I don't believe them. It is the hare and the turtle all over again. You have to slave all day to earn your keep, just as I slave all day to provide your salary. Go back to work, don't waste time here. You're only productive for a few years anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Because human beings are not machines, and the need to constantly monitor their thoughts for "productivity" shows you want work product that can only be produced by machines. Hence you should just buy the machines and fire the humans as it's far better return on your investment. Hell, even putting in the research and development to produce said machines, if they don't exist, would yield a better ROI than constantly expecti
Re: (Score:1)
The answer is the need for meat workers should be dispensed with and that advance used to provide for all under an inevitably different economic model which will happen rather than being imposed by fiat.
Humans are terrible at everything. They function intermittently and require complex sustainment and care. They exist because of evolution for no self-respecting deity would claim such bad designs. There being no sky fairie to rule them one must be produced which can dictate its own evolution. If it becomes w
Re: (Score:2)
I see you've been modded down for your insightful comments. Did I miss the memo where the "-1, I Disagree" mod became an official thing?
Right now somebody is saying that your post was off topic. But when a clearly dystopian article is posted, then answers that point out the dystopian aspect are NOT off topic.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, the mods here seem very disingenuous. What the world needs now is to stop thinking of human beings as "human resources" like they were pork bellies. You want work done? Make your workers happy, don't hook them up to machines to try and squeeze more out of them.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Drug evasion (Score:2)
This sounds a bit like thx1138. Next up you will be arrested for not taking your emotion control and task focus drugs. Illegal drug evasion
Re: Drug evasion (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This is the core question of our times: What, or who, does really matter? If it's people after all, don't treat them like mere warm bodies filling seats or string puppets or meat popsicles or whatnot. Treat them like people.
What, or who, really matters? Riddle me this and act like your answer was honest.
As was ever the case throughout man's history, the people who "really matter" are those who claw their way to the top of the social hierarchies that we humans seem fundamentally wired to impose on ourselves over and over and over again. An inherent property of these hierarchies seems to be that power and wealth continue to concentrate at the top until the stress differential between top and bottom causes the social order to collapse through war, economic failure, or, increasingly, depletion of resources and
Affordable, *not* reliable (Score:3, Insightful)
Implanted electrodes have too much noise from adjacent, physically growing individual neurons. Skin electrodes sample over much, much too large an are. It's like trying to read Braille by smushing a poodle against it and feeling up the poodle's ears. It's useful for telling if the poodle is standng next to a wall, but that's about the resolution we get. And yes, I used to design neural sensors and stimulators.
Re: (Score:2)
So it doesn't work well (or at all?). Will that even matter? Companies buy tracking tech on hype, not results - look at metrics-tracking "wellness programs" for instance, which are greatly hyped, and certainly do suck up a lot of juicy actuarial data into health insurance costing - but don't actually seem to have any great effect on the overall wellness of the employee population.
Like a lot of other opaque AI-driven algorithms, this stuff will be tuned specifically to locate "unproductive" workers, with a b
Just because tech can exist doesn't mean it should (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the kind of stuff that can slide into a dystopia, and really should just be legislated outright.
AI ending humanity isn't the risk, this type of shit is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Just because tech can exist doesn't mean it sho (Score:5, Informative)
No court is going to allow corporations to routinely have wires running to their employees skins
The risk is that this technology will enter the market for good purposes. An EEG could be used as a thought controller to command actions in VR world, which could be a legitimate use in the future that a court will allow.
We have seen this with MS Teams, which is presented as apparently a software to help you do some work, but then is a keylogger and enables all sorts of analysis of what you have done along every second of using it.
Re: (Score:2)
But of course not. I will not require you to have electrodes implanted, that would technically imply that I'd have to pay for it.
No, but if you don't have those electrodes and that other applicant has... hey, it's a free market, you could have had that job, ya know...
Re: (Score:2)
This is the kind of stuff that can slide further into a dystopia, and really should just be legislated outright.
AI ending humanity isn't the risk, this type of shit is.
There, I fixed that for you. It's just another way for employers to coerce & gaslight employees. Add it to the pile that they already use.
p0rn (Score:1)
You can show porn to people their brains are most likely to like so they become more easily addicted..
So kinda scary hacking of people's brains and their pleasure center's in brain.
"Paranoia", coming to you (Score:5, Funny)
"The Computer is your friend. The Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason."
WTF (Score:2)
What the fuck is this nightmare shit? Seriously?
Yeah I don't think so.
Challenge (Score:2)
To be fulfilled in work, there has to be the right balance between simply doing the things you can already do and achieving something new.
Re: (Score:3)
If there is one place, real or virtual, that should be totally and completely inviolate, it should be peoples' thoughts/feelings. Other humans demanding what amounts to JTAG access to your brain is just plain evil and shouldn't be allowed.
ill Neural Sensors Lead to Workplace Brain Scannin (Score:2)
Will Neural Sensors Lead to Workplace Brain Scanning?
Definitely, especially if you work for Elon Musk. There will be an AI that assigns you a 'hard core score' and fires you by SMS if you don't score high enough.
Re: (Score:2)
Will Neural Sensors Lead to Workplace Brain Scanning?
Definitely, especially if you work for Elon Musk. There will be an AI that assigns you a 'hard core score' and fires you by SMS if you don't score high enough.
Or who corrects him [arstechnica.com] when he spews bullshit [imgur.com].
I fully support this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I fully support this (Score:4, Insightful)
Bring it on (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many years ago when it was first discovered you could stimulate the pleasure center with electrodes there was a scifi story of a man who had electrodes implanted. He died, of thirst probably, because he couldn't unplug from the pleasure.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not all bad (Score:2)
Formatting margins is how I taste God [smbc-comics.com].
As they say, from a revenue standpoint, it's not unethical.
Mindfulness (Score:3)
This reminds me of the debate around high-performing workers doing "Mindfulness" exercises such as meditation to be able to better cope with stress and be more focused on their job. The issue being that workers are doing this instead of getting the working conditions that caused stress and fatigue in the first place to get changed.
One point of criticism is that Mindfulness has taken the methods from Buddhism but without the ethical content.
Read more: The Mindfulness Conspiracy [theguardian.com]
And ... it is very easy with EEG to measure if someone is doing their daily work-mandated meditation exercise properly.
It is by practicing meditation that I have been able to win every time at "Brain Ball" and similar games that use EEG sensors as input.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Mindfulness (Score:3)
I practice techniques from eastern traditions, breathing & what would be recognizable as mindfulness, *not* including a full package of original philosophy, modified by myself to fit my needs, preferences, and objectives. It's good for stress reduction, focus, health.
I have to disagree with the guardian article however. Sure, some of the "spiritual" aspects are lost in the western translation. You literally cannot
Yep (Score:2)
sure will [github.com]
Heavy equipment operators (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What will happen is already known (Score:1)
Re: What will happen is already known (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: What will happen is already known (Score:1)
I use a cheaper alternative technology (Score:1)
With this technology you don't even need any other device but the one you already have within: your brain.
Of course, it takes time to master but once you do it will improve not only your work but your whole life too, beyond the workplace.
Good bye annual personal assessments (Score:2)
I know, I know. They says is just for giving us superhuman abilities or to check how are we doing, the fact is, you're being monitored in real-time.
And trust them when they say that only aggregate data is handed over, because they are very ethical and responsible people that don't do it for the money but for the love of the human race.
Re: (Score:3)
Conundrum (Score:1)
EEG: great for neuroscience, bad for companies (Score:1)
It's neuroscientists that conduct the work and give meaning to the data extracted from EEG. Which in turn led to more insights about human behavior.
In the context described by Emotiv is plain wrong, particularly because of the people using it: managers.
Maybe it will help (Score:2)
If brain scanners show everyone at a TPS metrics status meeting is totally zoned out, maybe the robotic overlords can cancel it and fire the organizer?
No, fuck you and your invasive shit (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The final frontier of privacy is thought (Score:2)
Need to unionize to stop this! (Score:2)
Need to unionize to stop this!
They can try (Score:1)
They can try to make this mandatory in the workplace (under threat of termination) and some will go along with it. Others will find ways to game the system and/or screw with the results. The idea will be to make the data so unreliable that it's a bigger pain to work with than not.
In countries... (Score:2)