Decades from now when our aug­ment­ed brains have enhanced our cog­ni­tive func­tion and trans­formed near­ly every aspect of our lives, many of us will look back and won­der why we didn’t do more to pre­pare for these inevitable changes. Gov­ern­ment lead­ers may grap­ple with the run­away effects of AI and brain enhance­ment on geopol­i­tics. Com­pa­nies that fail to incor­po­rate neu­rotech­nolo­gies and BCI into their oper­a­tional flow could lose sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket share and be forced to scram­ble in an attempt to regain a foothold in an indus­try they once dom­i­nat­ed.

Work­ers who don’t heed the warn­ings to re-skill or upskill may find them­selves out of a job as entire indus­tries dis­ap­pear. Grad­u­at­ing col­lege stu­dents may dis­cov­er their field of study is no longer rel­e­vant in the busi­ness world, leav­ing them unpre­pared for the chang­ing job mar­ket. Tech inno­va­tors could be caught up in fierce com­pe­ti­tion to snap up employ­ees from a very lim­it­ed tal­ent pool, dri­ving up the cost of inno­va­tion and ham­per­ing its devel­op­ment. And every­day cit­i­zens may be wrestling with the unex­pect­ed con­se­quences of unin­ten­tion­al­ly giv­ing away the rights to their neur­al data.

Rest assured, it doesn’t have to be this way. Read the rest of this entry »

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Akili Inter­ac­tive: Dig­i­tal pedi­atric ADHD ther­a­peu­tic per­forms well with or with­out accom­pa­ny­ing stim­u­lant ther­a­py (Mobi­Health News):

“Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic com­pa­ny Akili Inter­ac­tive has announced the first results of an open-label, mul­ti­site pedi­atric ADHD tri­al pro­vid­ing some patients with the company’s video game-like treat­ment along­side a stim­u­lant med­ica­tion.

Accord­ing to the com­pa­ny, both those who received the AKL-T01 ther­a­py with (n = 130) or with­out (n = 76) accom­pa­ny­ing stim­u­lant med­ica­tion saw sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments one month after Read the rest of this entry »

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Brain tech is here: These gad­gets from CES 2020 rely on your brain­waves to work (CNET):

“The futur­is­tic promise of tech devices that use brain waves to improve sleep, anx­i­ety and con­cen­tra­tion — and even con­trol pros­thet­ic hands — may final­ly be com­ing to fruition, with a slew of new prod­ucts on dis­play at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. Brain tech holds great poten­tial for help­ing us under­stand and con­trol our minds from the com­fort of our homes, but sci­ence still has a long way to go.

Here are some of the coolest brain tech prod­ucts we saw at CES 2020. Some of these prod­ucts are already on the mar­ket, while some are only pro­to­types.” Con­tin­ue read­ing over at CNET

News in Context:

• Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• A call to action: We need the right incen­tives to guide eth­i­cal inno­va­tion in neu­rotech and health­care

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Last month I had the for­tune to join over 1,900 pio­neers from 90 coun­tries at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Annu­al Meet­ing in Tian­jin, Chi­na, to dis­cuss how inno­va­tion can improve the state of the world.

Through­out hun­dreds of pan­els, work­shops, pri­vate meet­ings and social gath­er­ings, we exam­ined how to deal with cli­mate change, how to invest in pub­lic infra­struc­ture, how to bet­ter reg­u­late finan­cial ser­vices, and dozens of oth­er press­ing top­ics. In address­ing these issues, every­one — inde­pen­dent of nation­al­i­ty or dis­ci­pline – brought to the table our most pre­cious asset: the amaz­ing Human Brain.

Dur­ing stim­u­lat­ing and cap­ti­vat­ing ses­sions we explored Read the rest of this entry »