Earlier this year, the Constitutional Law Center hosted NYU’s Barry Friedman who discussed how government authorities are using artificial intelligence to make sense of the vast amount of data collected on all of us, presenting intimate pictures of our lives. Professor Friedman credited George Orwell with foreseeing this in his dystopian novel, 1984.

But Orwell was prophetic in an even more fundamental way. He predicted that one day science will be able to read data accumulated in human brains, breaking down the walls of mental privacy and penetrating through the last bastion of human freedom: our thoughts and feelings. This day is here. As Professor Nita Farahany describes in her latest book, The Battle for Your Brain, the ability to read thoughts, beyond reach in Orwell’s time, is gradually becoming a reality, thanks to the field of neuroscience. This can be a force for good. For example, access to a person’s brain data—acquired with consent—can help a disabled individual to control his body with his thoughts, or can make a very early prediction about a neurological disease. But there are also serious downsides. “Once we become aware that others can access what we are thinking, feeling, or imagining, we may attempt to censor even our thoughts, lest we be ridiculed or ostracized for having ideas that go against the grain,” writes Professor Farahany. “Worse still, if governments gain power to track the contents of our brains, they can arrest us and punish us for thought crimes.”

Join us for a discussion with Professor Farahany about advances in neuroscience and opportunities as well as challenges that it presents. She will be in conversation with Professor Hank Greely, who among other roles is the Director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School, moderated by Professor Michael McConnell.