Brain-computer interfaces: Promising tech needs regulating

▤ Summary

Christofer Toumazou, chair in biomedical circuit design at Imperial College London, said: “The applications for neural interfaces are as unimaginable today as the smartphone was a few decades ago. They could bring huge economic benefits to the UK and transform sectors such as the NHS, public health and social care.” But Toumazou warned that if developments are dictated by a handful of companies, then less commercial applications of the technology could be sidelined. “In this way, we can guarantee these emerging technologies are implemented safely and for the benefit of humanity.” According to the Royal Society, the most advanced attempts to send thoughts to date are at the level of artificial intelligence (AI) recognising simple brain patterns that correspond to pre-trained words or answers. Stefan Harrer, a research scientist at IBM, wrote: “By running the to-date largest cohort of healthy test subjects in combination with neurofeedback training techniques and deep learning, we show that our AI-based method is more robust than previous studies attempting to decode brain states from OpenBCI data.” In July this year, Elon Musk announced that by 2020, his company, Neuralink, hopes to start trials in which ultrafine electrodes are inserted into the brain to enable people with locked-in syndrome or paralysis to control a computer or phone. The Royal Society has recommended that the UK government and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) trial new ways of encouraging innovation to prevent a monopoly by “big tech” firms.

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