More states adopt laws to protect the information generated by the brain and the nervous system of a person, as technology improves the ability to unlock sensitive health details, mental states, emotions and a person’s cognitive functioning.
Colorado, California and Montana are among the states that recently required the safeguard of the brain data collected by devices outside of medical environments. This includes headphones, headphones and other portable consumer products that aim to improve sleep, concentration and aging by measuring electrical activity and sending data to an application on user phones.
A report by the Neurorights Foundation, a plea group that aims to protect people from the abusive use of neurotechnology, revealed that 29 of the 30 companies with neurotechnology products that can be purchased online have access to brain data and “provide no significant limitation to this access”. Almost all can share data with third parties.
In June, the American Medical Association called for greater regulation of neural data. In April, several democratic members of the American Senate Commerce Committee, Science and Transport asked the Federal Trade Commission to know if companies operate the brain data of consumers. Juliana Gruenwald Henderson, assistant director of the FTC public affairs office, said the agency had received the letter but had no additional comments.
Although current devices collect relatively basic information such as sleep states, defenders of cautious cerebral data that future technologies, including artificial intelligence, could extract more personal and sensitive information on the medical conditions of people or the most internal thoughts.
“If you collect data today, what can you read for five years, because technology is progressing so quickly?” said the senator from the Democratic State Cathy Kipp, who sponsored the Colorado neural data protection bill when she was in the House of State Representatives.
Both as excitation and concern about the construction of AI, at least 28 states and the US virgin islands have promulgated a certain type of regulation of AI separate from confidentiality invoices protecting neural data. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” of President Trump included a 10 -year judgment on the states adopting the laws to regulate AI, but the Senate deleted this provision of the bill on budget reconciliation before voting to approve it on July 1.
The spirit of laws in Colorado, California and Montana is to protect the neural data itself, so as not to regulate any algorithm or AI that could use it, said Sean Pauzauskie, medical director of the Neurorights Foundation.
But neurotechnology and AI go hand in hand, said Pauzauskie. “A large part of what these devices promise are based on the recognition of models. AI really stimulates the conviviality and the meaning of models in brain data.”
Cristin Welle, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said that AI’s ability to identify the models changed the situation in his field. “But the contribution of a person’s neural data on an AI training set should be voluntary. It should be an opt-in, not a fact.”
Chile in 2021 has become the first country to adopt a constitutional amendment for neurorights, which prioritizes human rights in the development of neurotechnology and the collection of neural data, and UNESCO has declared that neurotechnology and artificial intelligence could together constitute a threat to human identity and autonomy.
Neurotechnology can resemble science fiction. The researchers used a cap with 128 electrodes and an AI model to decode the electrical signals of the brain of thoughts in speech. And two years ago, a study described how neuroscientists rebuilt Pink Floyd’s song “Another Brick in the Wall” by analyzing the brain signals of 29 epilepsy patients who listened to the song with electrodes located in their brain.
The objective is to use neurotechnology to help people with paralysis or disability of speech, as well as to treat or diagnose traumatic brain lesions and brain disorders such as Alzheimer or Parkinson disease. The Neuralink and Synchron of Elon Musk, funded by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, are among the companies with current clinical trials for devices located in the brain.
Pauzauskie, a hospital neurologist, began to worry four years ago of the border vagueness between clinical use and the consumer of neural data. He noted that the devices used by his patients with epilepsy were also available for online purchase, but without protection offered by the Portability Act and Health Insurance in Medical Insurance.
Pauzauskie approached Kipp two years ago during a constituent meeting of his hometown of Fort Collins to propose a law to protect the brain data from Colorado. “The first words of his mouth that I will never forget were:” Who would be against people with their own brain data? “” He said.
Brain data protection is one of the few questions that unite legislators through the political aisle. Bills in California, Montana and Colorado have been unanimously unanimously unanimously. The Montana law will come into force in October.
The laws on the protection of neural data of Colorado and California modify the general law on the confidentiality of consumers of each State, while the law of Montana is added to its law on existing genetic confidentiality. Colorado and Montana require initial express consent to collect or use neural data and separate consent or the possibility of withdrawing before disclosing this data to a third party. A company must provide consumers with a way to delete its data when they operate in the three states.
“I want a very hard line in the sand that says, you have this completely,” said the senator of the Montana state, Daniel Zolnikov, who sponsored the bill on neural data from his state and other private life laws. “You must give their consent. You have the right to delete it. You have full rights on this information.”
For Zolnikov, the Montana bill is a plan for a national law on the protection of neural data, and Pazauskie said that supporting regulatory efforts by groups like AMA opens the way to new federal and state efforts.
Welle has agreed that federal regulations are necessary in addition to these new state laws. “I absolutely hope that we can find something at the national level which can devote the law on the neural rights of people because I think it will be more important than we can even imagine it for the moment.”
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