/ News
Phone app companies will soon be able to sell details based on your brainwaves
Information collected from apps could be sold to companies based on signals given off by brainwaves, experts have predicted.
Brain-computer interfaces have been widely used for medical and research purposes since the 1920s, primarily in patients with paralysis.
But as the technology becomes cheaper it has broken out of the lab and into the consumer app world, with a burgeoning market for devices, including games, self-monitoring tools, and touch-free keyboards.
The interfaces work by recording brain activity and transmitting information to a computer, Slate reports.
Electroencephalography (EEG), is the most common form and is typically used via a headset with a small number of electrodes placed on different parts of the skull.
For medical and research purposes, scientists are able to interpret signals from the patients' brains and relay messages to other devices such as artificial limbs, wheelchair, or voice box.
It can also detect electrical signals made by brainwaves, monitoring attention levels and emotional state, Sean Vitka, a law student at Boston College Law School and Grady Johnson of the Open Technology Institue write.
In the last few years, the cost of EEG devices has dropped considerably, with a consumer headset available for around £65 ($100).
Car manufacturers are also exploring the use of BCIs to detect drivers' tiredness levels and improve reaction times.
But there is now a growing neuromarketing industry, where market researchers use data from these BCI devices to measure the attention level and emotional responses of focus groups to different advertisements and products - and companies are rushing to bring them to consumers.
There is now a growing neuromarketing industry, where market researchers use data from these same BCI devices to measure the attention level and emotional responses of focus group
NEUROMARKETING - THE 'X-FACTOR' OF THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY
Such 'neuromarketing' monitoring techniques are a new idea - and headsets portable enough to use are becoming essential for television advertising companies to compete with the 'accountability' of internet advertising.
American television company Nielsen, which pioneered much of the monitoring technology we take for granted today, is now testing EEG headsets as a way of monitoring audience reaction.
In 2011, a British company used EEG brain monitors to 'watch' the pleasure centres of viewers as they sit through Britain's most expensive advertising slots in the X Factor final.
Yet it is feared companies could not only detect whether users are paying attention to adverts, and how people feel about them, but that health insurance companies could use EEG data to work out deductibles based on recorded stress levels.
Vitka and Johnson write: 'Health insurance companies could use EEG data to determine your deductible based on EEG-recorded stress levels.
'After all, we live in a world in which banks are determining creditworthiness through data mining and insurance companies are utilizing GPS technology to adjust premiums.
'With these devices in place, especially with a large enough data set, companies will be able to identify risk indicators for things like suicide, depression, or emotional instability, all of which are deeply personal to us as individuals but dangerous to their bottom lines. '
In August, researchers at the Usenix Security conference showed these early consumer-grade devices could be used to dupe wearers into giving up their personal information.
The researchers were able to significantly increase their odds of guessing the PINs, passwords, and birthdays of test subjects.
The technology bloggers are concerned that because today's health privacy laws only apply to health care providers, health insurers, and those who provide services on their behalf, most companies' ability to use BCI data or sell it to one another is unchecked.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2298930/Phone-app-companies-gather-information-users-soon-able-sell-details-based-brainwaves-experts-predict.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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