Welcome to the most dystopian news story of the year
Mind-reading headphones for employers to monitor your brain activity!
Somehow I missed this story when it first broke earlier in the year, but this means you probably did too. I so wish the headline was a stupid joke, a fake news story from some dodgy website no one takes seriously (like The S*n), but no, this story comes from mainstream media such as the super-sensible and grownup Guardian. I even watched the conference on YouTube where a chillingly robotic woman at the World Economic Forum boasted of the merits of this horrifying technology. Now I was aware this kind of thing was in development, but it’s worse than I’d realised. Much worse.
Mind-reading headphones that your boss makes you wear at work are a real thing that actually exist now. There is not one word of exaggeration in that statement.
Here is what they look like:
Futurist and “legal ethicist” Nita Farahani explained the following after showing the audience a short video:
“You may be surprised to learn that it’s a future that’s already arrived. Everything in that video that you just saw is based on technology that’s already here today. Artificial intelligence has enabled advances in decoding brain activity in ways that we never thought possible.”
Now, I, as an alleged science-fiction writer, have been worried about the potential of such technology for a long time, and as such, I did the most responsible thing I could. I slept on it. Why? Because so many terrifying things are happening in the world, I didn’t want to burden myself or my readers with more potential horror. Only the potential horror is actual horror now and cannot be ignored.
As Farahani explained, workers are already having their brain activity monitored in over 5,000 companies around the world and this technology is rapidly advancing thanks to, you’ve guessed it, AI.
“Are you ready for brain transparency?” we are enthusiastically asked by these insane WEF weirdos. Seriously, this crap could go beyond slavery if we let it.
Like, yeah, sure! I’m totally okay with you delving into my mind! You want some nudes while you’re at it? I’ll even give you access to my personal devices. You want to put a camera in my bathroom? Shit, why not?
In some countries, employers already demand workers switch their webcam on at all times while they’re working from home. Who needs privacy? We are, after all, the full property of our employers and have no value as individuals. Let’s look at how we can get even more invasive, shall we?
So these headphones that I wish weren’t real, what are they and what do they actually do? Well, according to Farahani, they monitor your brain activity and can tell when you’re focusing on your job, day dreaming, chatting to your colleagues, or even browsing social media. They can send a live feed of your brain activity to your employer who can look into your mind at any time. They can even tell when you’ve got the hots for a co-worker and this can be used to enforce policies against office romance. What the fucking fuck?
Incidentally, I met my wife at work. Could you imagine a boss reading our thoughts and punishing us or firing us? Why are we giving these bastards such power over our lives?
It really is no exaggeration to say this technology can read your thoughts, but it’s only in a relatively limited capacity for now. For example, it can see faces that you’re picturing in your mind, as well as shapes and numbers, as Farahani explains:
“We can pick up emotional states, whether you’re happy or sad or angry. We can pick up and decode faces that you’re seeing in your mind. Simple shapes, numbers, your PIN number to your bank account.”
Full mind reading is coming very soon, isn’t it? Honestly, I’m tempted to work for one of these fuckers so they can see me fantasising about a guillotine coming down, over and over again.
The WEF are talking about sending brain data to your doctor, and you know it’s a matter of time until they’re selling it to third parties and obviously, handing it over to the government. Wait, you don’t consent to that? Tough shit, it’s in your employment contract. Your mind is our property now. You don’t like that, you don’t eat.
The video that was shown at the WEF conference discussed a hypothetical scenario where one of your co-workers has committed wiretap fraud so the police have come into the office to check everyone’s brain data. If your brain data is “in sync” with the accused, guess what? You’re getting arrested too.
That might be your mate who has committed a crime you know nothing about, but you’re under suspicion for talking to them on your break. Jesus fucking Christ.
So-called futurist and legal ethicist Nita Farahani acknowledged there are potential dangers, but she was somehow unaware there is no ethical way for an employer to have this technology. The technology’s very existence is the danger. There is no justification for your boss accessing your brain data. None whatsoever. Same goes for your government.
Farahani’s lack of understanding of this point can only be described as evil, but not in a malevolent way, more of an “I don’t understand human needs” kind of way. This leads me to suspect she is an actual robot. Perhaps she comes from the same production line as Mark Zuckerberg. Alternatively, she could be one of those aliens David Grusch was talking about. I mean it’s not like this timeline could get any weirder.
“You can get a bonus as reward for your brain metrics,” Farahani explained, like we should be excited about switching our humanity off for a day.
Farahani kept insisting this technology will be brilliant for boosting happiness in the workplace, leading me to suspect they’ll be drugging us to ensure we enjoy our slavery. Or perhaps, giving us an electric shock if we don’t smile enough.
At one point, Farahani spoke of using: “brainwave technology in a responsive way to give the person a little buzz, literally, when their mind starts wandering.”
Worryingly, this technology is not just intended for the day job either. Farahani talked about you taking the headphones home - so you can listen to music, of course! Nothing to do with monitoring your brain activity outside of work.
It’s worth highlighting your boss won’t actually need to manually monitor your brain activity because AI will do the job for them. It will monitor every employee constantly, alerting them every time one of you is not concentrating hard enough. This means no mental lapse will ever be missed.
If you think this mind access is already beyond creepy, Farahani spoke of doing away with the keyboard and mouse and letting you control devices directly with your mind through Neural Interfaces.
No, just no.
“While we can’t decode complex thought just yet,” Farahani said with emphasis on yet, “there is a lot we can already decode that’s quite relevant for the workplace environment”. Breathtakingly, she seems blissfully unaware of the horror of that sentence. Don’t worry though, Farahani assured us this technology is for your safety! For example, it can see you when you’re feeling tired and tell you not to drive.
Okay, wow, I’m so glad technology can tell me when I’m feeling tired because otherwise, how would I know?
The whole presentation was one batshit justification after another to mask what this is really about: squeezing every last drop of productivity out of a worker. If you read workers’ emotional states, all you’re going to see is misery, exhaustion and resentment. No one is going to be happy about being monitored this way - and the ones who are most resentful will likely be fired.
Among the many obvious problems with this technology, there is one problem specific to people like me. (Yes, I’m making this about myself because I’m the centre of my universe.)
I’m a writer. I have a creative mind. This means I cannot stop my mind from wandering, no matter how hard I try. The only time I’m capable of fully concentrating is when I’m creating, and even then, it’s only in bursts. I’m pretty sure I’ve got ADHD, although I’ve never been diagnosed.
Under this technology, my employer would receive updates to say my mind is not properly focused on the task at hand, and what would happen then? Would I be disciplined because I can’t control how my brain is wired? Would I be buzzed? Would I have my salary docked for skiving, even though I’ve learned to be productive by working harder when I do have focus? Would I be fired for not being sufficiently robotic? Because that’s what this is ultimately about: turning us into robots.
They told us that robots would take over manual labour so humanity would be free to enjoy the beauty of life. They never told us workers do not count as humans and will be turned into actual robots, but that’s what’s happening, step by step.
Workplace micromanagement is going to an extreme: delivery drivers are tracked to ensure they take optimal routes at optimal speed, office workers are monitored to ensure their keyboards remain in constant use, workplaces make staff swipe in and out of every room so every second is accounted for. Everything that can be monitored is monitored and wastage is penalised.
There is no consideration that that five-second breather you take between calls, or that brief chat with a colleague about what you did at the weekend is what enables you to keep functioning. It’s what helps you tolerate a workplace that’s paying you so little, your earnings go in one hand and out the other.
When I used to work in call centres, the micromanagement was horrendous. We had to type notes during calls so we could move immediately onto the next call, and we would get told off if we didn’t/couldn’t. Every activity was logged with an aux code and timed to ensure maximum efficiency and our targets were unachievable.
In one job, we had to ask for permission to use the toilet. In another, we weren’t allowed to use the toilet outside of scheduled breaks, and if we did, our pay was docked. Everything we did was on a stop watch. If our average call length was one second over target, our managers would threaten us with disciplinary action - and this was constant. You can imagine what these fuckers would do with a headset that could read our brainwaves.
I can see you were not sufficiently happy when speaking to that customer. That’s an attitude problem you’ve got there! The AI did not detect enough cheer in your voice.
You think I’m kidding here? Exaggerating? Not only is this technology real, but my last employer would tell us off for not being upbeat or making small talk with customers who were yelling because their broadband was not working. Managers would pounce on us if we left our seat outside of break time and bully us with last-minute schedule changes. We were robots who were not allowed one second of non-productivity, and our outside lives, our families, did not matter.
In the job that made us ask for permission to use the toilet, I was sometimes given the role of toilet monitor person (not an official title). I would sit in front of a screen, monitoring call volumes, and any grown adult who wanted to take a piss had to call me to ask for permission. If numbers on a chart said no, I was supposed to say no.
My first day on the job, I said “no” to a woman and changed my mind when she explained she was pregnant. I then refused to say no to anyone ever again. I was the good toilet monitor person, but some of the others were not so good.
Honestly, thinking back, toilet monitor was a much more dystopian role than I’d realised at the time - and we truly are entering dystopian times.
Every horror science-fiction writers warned you about is coming true. The technology is either here or just around the corner. Personally, I’m hoping for a sudden technological plateau because history tells us these capitalist fuckers who had a centuries-long slave trade will abuse any technology to leverage control over us.
If they can turn brainwave-monitoring headphones into full mind-reading devices, they will, and if they can turn those into mind-control devices, they will do that too. Whoever gets that technology first has absolute power, and if we consent to this first wave of technologies, they could sneak in improved versions without us even knowing.
Is full mind control even possible? Honestly, I’ve no idea, but partial mind control is definitely on its way and you can read more in this article from Scientific American. A few years ago, I had no idea employers would be monitoring our brainwaves in 2023 and yet here we are. If we don’t stand up to this technology right now, freedom really doesn’t have long left.
Well shit, that’s just plain terrifying
Your stuff scares the shit out of me. It makes me less angsty that I am 65 and not as long for this world, but scared for my 3 year old grandson.