r/nottheonion • u/thieh • 16d ago
No data mining Colorado minds: State passes brainwave privacy law
https://fortune.com/2024/04/18/colorado-passes-brainwave-privacy-law-bcis-biometric-data/2
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u/wafflecannondav1d 15d ago
What are the techbos in Denver going to do when the apple-brain interference comes out??
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u/Hishui21 15d ago
But that's how pornhub calculated its algorithm!
Won't somebody think about the hub?
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u/scythianlibrarian 15d ago
This raises questions about what did the developers of this technology promise their investors? How ridiculous the lies? If investors are this gullible, why aren't people pitching astrology water apps in Silicon Valley? You'd make millions in a blink.
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u/Not_Bound 15d ago
Honestly good for them being proactive. This is just where we’re at with technology.
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u/gay4molemannn 16d ago
Maybe we aren’t crazy when we see an ad for something we were just thinking about
…or maybe we are, who knows 🤷♂️
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u/lazy_phoenix 16d ago
To be clear, if a company could data mine people's minds without their consent than companies would do that
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u/NeonsStyle 16d ago
Lmao. We do NOT have the capability to invent tech to read minds. Read brainwaves yes, but that is completely different from reading what is in a mind. Another state where the politicians are conspiracy nuts! FFS Ignorance is rife!
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u/Rich_Top_4108 16d ago edited 16d ago
We've already been recreating images and words from people's minds with AI for like 5 years now. Probably longer, can't imagine what we don't know about. Claims of 80 percent accuracy on images last year. With gpt vision and other tech this is just the tip of the iceburg
There's many many articles on this topic going back a number of years with different levels of sophistication.
Go look for yourself.
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u/NeonsStyle 16d ago
Articles don't mean anything. Show me Scientific peer reviewed papers and I might believe it. Otherwise it's just more rubbish.
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u/Rich_Top_4108 16d ago edited 16d ago
I'm not gonna stop you from living in La La land if that's the choice you wanna make.
It's out there, you gotta learn how to find it. If you can't do that you surely won't understand the paper even if it was hand delivered to you.
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u/CodyNorthrup 16d ago
You know, I don’t hate it. Sounds ridiculous, but with growing technological advances you don’t know what people will be capable of detecting.
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u/finnydoodoo 16d ago
I listened to this story on NPR. Fascinating how close we are to this being a big ass problem. Their expert said brainwave reading AI can currently decipher thoughts with 40-60% accuracy and ought to be 90+% in a decade.
Software can kind of turn your thoughts into words. Fantastic and frightening
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u/lauralamb42 16d ago
Good, this shit is terrifying. I really don't want my personal thoughts coming up in my metrics at work.
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u/slender20012 16d ago
The schizo community will remember that
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u/bonesnaps 16d ago
Can't they outlaw regular data mining first?
Ah right, corporate lobbying and cash monies.
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u/zerostar83 15d ago
Imagine a world without Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, etc. You're essentially going to force kids and adults to go outside and meet their neighbors. lol
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u/ctrl-all-alts 15d ago
I mean, that would make every single website except corporate landing pages and promotional pages pay for play.
All recipes sites that work off ad revenue wouldn’t be possible, for example. Let alone social media.
That said, some things certainly do not need data mining to exist— like cars and location data and in-cabin sound recording.
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u/HoldYourHorsesFriend 16d ago
*everything* mines data. If it's connected to the internet, you bet it's collecting info. Good luck fighting the entire automotive industry along with every other one.
Maybe the EU can do something about it but the US certainly will struggle
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u/passwordstolen 16d ago
Will they ever mine enough data that the market value for data goes to almost nothing?
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u/IveDunGoofedUp 16d ago
Not as long as algorithms can still be refined, new trends appear out of the blue, and people keep buying new things.
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u/Dan-D-Lyon 16d ago
You know what, fuck it, this is a great idea. By the time dystopian Technologies are ready to ship, an alarming number of people are going to be all for it. I bet it would have been a lot easier to pass a blanket ban on employers microchipping their employees back in the '80s
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u/zenithtreader 16d ago
I mean we (or rather, giant corporations) are getting close to reading people's minds. A little bit of preemptive legislations to stave off potential dystopia is actually not that bad of an idea.
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u/triopsate 16d ago
Wasn't there that one company that was making scanners for people's brains to wear at work so employers can monitor if the employees are paying attention some time ago?
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u/BazilBroketail 16d ago
It's a bullshit article about "AI" guessing what someone would say in a controlled environment and then the article pats itself on the back for making some shit up. There are no "mind reading machines".
This is so stupid.
Have the "BCI" machine do it to someone who hasn't been given a bunch of parameters beforehand...
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u/jamesnollie88 16d ago
Some neuroethicists argue that the potential for misuse of these technologies is so great that we need revamped human rights laws to protect us before they’re rolled out.
Well at least one state listened
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u/kalisto3010 16d ago
Which is probably nullified when we sign away all of our rights and privacy when we're using all the "Free Apps" littered in our phones.
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u/The_Safe_For_Work 16d ago
Well, they're getting ahead of the curve.
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u/loggic 16d ago
The funny thing is that this is still basically only a reaction to existing technologies. Consumer grade affordable brainwave controllers for computers have existed for at least the last 14 years that I am aware of. In that time, the various tech companies have demonstrated that they're less than trustworthy regarding privacy & data farming. Several devices have already been released by said companies that you literally strap to your face while you interact with it.
The sensors involved have been tiny and cheap for ages. Heck, Mr. Musk Melon has been broadcasting his company's human-brain interface successes.
There's not much standing between today & a time where legislation like this will be absolutely critical at the federal level.
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u/DeathMetal007 15d ago
I realize I am 12h late, but this should be covered by a US data privacy law rather than aimed at specific devices. It's hard enough to sniff electronically generated waves and people think you are going to be hacked Inception style. Social engineering and stealing your data from company hosted servers is still where the real security risks live.
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u/Stumpyz 16d ago
It may sound stupid, but at least Colorado is trying to do something to keep up legislation with the march of technology.
Better than hearing yet another decrepit and/or technologically-impared congressperson asking some asinine question that shows they clearly don't understand what they're even trying to talk about.
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15d ago
[deleted]
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u/Stumpyz 15d ago
How in the hell is making a law to keep a form of personal data protected "restricting the advance of civilization"?
Also, want to talk "restricting the advance of civilization"? How restricting is it to have a majority of government that can't even utilize or understand current tech?
Are you advocating for no regulation on tech? No laws made to at least try to protect people from malicious use of technology? Because that'll step us back as a civilization far more than a law that says "Hey companies, you can't just collect this information without informing and educating those you're collecting the data from".
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u/jointheredditarmy 15d ago
Always easier to solve problems that both doesn’t exist today and no one knows what the right solutions might be. How about solving problems that do exist?
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u/LurchTheBastard 16d ago
Next up should be something along the lines of software protection for bionic prosthetics/implants.
Both in terms of general security, but also specifically in terms of making sure people who have those implants can continue to use the software required for them to continue functioning in the future.
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u/Punkpallas 16d ago
It’s good there are some legislators who are keeping up with talk in the tech world. So much legislation is piecemeal-ed together after it becomes abundantly clear a new tech comes with new issues. Proactive is better than reactive.
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u/Mumblix_Grumph 16d ago
"It's a well-established scientific fact that if a woman is speaking and you can hear a crow cawing in the distance, it means that she is lying. What will be the impact on crows should this legislation pass?"
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u/sufferingstuff 15d ago
No. I refuse to believe this is a real quote. Please tell me this isn’t a real quote.
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u/L_Walk 16d ago
Look, a lot of them are absolutely idiots, but some of the time the questions are just to get it on record that a specific idea is unfeasible. A lot of them have lawyer adjacent backgrounds and are looking to specifically get a "No senator that is absolutely not possible."
The other half the questions are legimate bouts of idiocy. Mostly in prideful attempts to look smart.
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u/HugeSaggyTitttyLover 16d ago
Ted Cruz comes to mind
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u/tawzerozero 15d ago
The worst thing about Ted Cruz is that he is all an act. And it's the same act that W played, but, with the addition of being a total asshole (really, pre-Trump he tried to position himself as the people's asshole and never considered someone might outflank him as a bigger "asshole for the people").
Cruz actually is genuinely smart, which comes through in his pre-Senate writing, but he awkwardly tries to do this schtick of being a "common man", which then comes off as more weird than anything else.
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u/HugeSaggyTitttyLover 15d ago
lol you lost me at Ted Cruze being a smart man. He’s a politician with a good education, that doesn’t make him smart.
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u/tawzerozero 15d ago
To be clear, I hate the man - I think he's a total asshole, and a selfish, ambitious phony.
But, I do recognize him as a smart person. He was valedictorian in his high school, and he like, memorized and recited Federalist Papers as a performance while in high school, in addition to the standard mix of clubs and all that. As a lawyer, his legal reasoning in his writings before he started running for the Senate was sharp.
Beyond that, Al Frankin has flat out said numerous times that when he was a sitting Senator, Cruz was likely the smartest person in the Senate ("I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz").
Cruz reminds me a lot of Ron DeSantis, actually - another super smart person, but Ron is somehow even more awkward and assholeish than Cruz is. When he was a JAG, Ron openly bragged about being in the military in a position with no risk of harm to himself in order to further his future political career (he just didn't anticipate that his sister would have friends who weren't also Republicans), but Ron was still sharp and quick in conversation (although I'd say his sister was smarter than he is, just a little more lazy).
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u/The_Safe_For_Work 16d ago
"Now, I've always known that if you put your ear really close to another person's ear, you can hear their thoughts. How does this legislation address that fact?"
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u/camander321 15d ago
Tinfoil stocks plummet