スライド 1

Will “the Ultimate Privacy” be Invaded?
Mind-Reading Technology
and the Privacy Problem
Mineki Oguchi & Masayoshi Someya
February 29, 2008
UTCP Seminar Series
@ The University of Tokyo
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Introduction 1
 Background
 An increasing number of neuroscientific researches
which try to read “contents” of mind from brain images
have been reported in recent years.
⇒ “Mind-Reading” or “Brain-Reading”
 “Mind-reading” attracts public attention and expectation
as new techniques to guess what a person perceives,
thinks, prefers, or feels.
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Introduction 2
 At the same time, there is spreading concern that these
mind-reading techniques can be a threat to “the ultimate
privacy” of mind.
 Will this concern become a reality?
 What is “the ultimate privacy” of mind at all?
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Outline 1
Introduction
Section 1: Current State of Mind-Reading Technology
►1a: Unconscious Racism (Phelps et al., 2000)
►1b: Lie Detection with fMRI (Langleben et al., 2002)
►1c: Brain Fingerprinting (Farwell and Donchin, 1991)
►1d: Brain Decoding (Kamitani and Tong, 2005)
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Outline 2
Section 2: Theoretical Problems of Mind-Reading
►2a: Criteria for Individuating Mental states
►2b: Situation-Dependency of Folk Psychological Concepts
►2c: Interpersonal Difference in Neural Correlates
►2d: Comparison with Psychological Reading Technologies
Section 3: What is “the Ultimate Privacy”?
►3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism
►3b: Brain in the Image
►3c: Ethical Coping and Conclusion
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Section 1:
Current State of Mind-Reading Technology
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1a: Unconscious Racism
 Phelps et al. (2000) investigated the relationship between
unconscious racist attitude and amygdala （扁桃体）
activity.
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1a: Unconscious Racism
 Phelps et al investigated, by using fMRI, the relationship between unconscious racist
attitude and amygdala activity.
 In this experiment, American White subjects were scanned while they were shown
pictures of Black and White male faces and asked to indicate if each face was the
same with or different from the one immediately preceding it. After scanning, subjects
took two psychological tests - the Implicit Association test (IAT) and the eyeblink
startle response test - which examine their unconscious emotional evaluation of
Black and White social groups. In addition to these tests, they completed the Modern
Racism Scale which measures their conscious, self-reported beliefs toward Black
people. The image data scanned under White faces condition were subtracted from
those under Black faces condition to analyze the degree of amygdala activity, which
was significantly correlated with the intensity of unconscious racism bias marked by
IAT and the eyeblink startle response test, but not with the intensity of conscious bias
measured by the Modern Racism Scale.
 From the results, Pelpes et al has guessed that amygdala is especially related with
unconscious response to a different racial group.
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1b. Lie detection with fMRI
 Langleben et al. (2002) have guessed that anterior
cingulate cortex（前部帯状皮質） and superior frontal
gyrus（上前頭回） play a key role in deceiving.
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1b. Lie detection with fMRI
 Using the Guilty Knowledge Test (which assesses whether suspects conceal
information about a crime), Langleben et al investigated which brain regions are
activated when subjects are intentionally deceiving.
 First, subjects were given a playing card along with some money and asked to
memorize it. Then, they were told that they would be able to keep the money as a
reward if they succeeded in concealing the identity of the card from a computer. They
had to reply to questions appearing on a screen by pushing “Yes” or “No”.
Experimenters scanned subjects’ fMRI images under both lie and truth conditions
and subtracted statistically-averaged data under the truth condition from those under
the lie condition. This research showed that brain regions activated when a subject
was telling a truth were also activated when he/she was telling a lie, but anterior
cingulate cortex, superior frontal gyrus, and left premotor, motor, and anterior parietal
cortex were activated only when a subject was deceiving the computer.
 Langleben et al have guessed that anterior cingulate cortex and superior frontal
gyrus play a key role in inhibiting true responses, which is an essential part in the
process of deceiving.
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1c: Brain Fingerprinting
 Farwell claims that we can detect a suspect’s lie and
reveal his/her connection with crime by using brain
fingerprinting.
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1c: Brain Fingerprinting
 There is another neuroscientific lie detection technique called “brain fingerprinting”.
 This technique is based on the measurement of changes in the amplitude of Event
Related Potentials (ERPs) called P300. P300 wave will be observed when a subject
receives familiar stimuli such as familiar words, phrases, pictures, etc. Brain
fingerprinting is expected to be used in criminal investigation. A suspect is shown
relevant objects or pictures which are known only by the real culprit and his/her P300
is recorded and analyzed. L. Farwell (who invented brain fingerprinting technology
and founded his company selling it) claims that we can detect a suspect’s lie and
reveal his/her connection with crime by using this technique.
 Since the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, this technology has attracted public
attention as a new method of detecting terrorists.
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1d: Brain Decoding
 Kamitani and Tong have developed a new decoding
technology which enables us to predict the orientation of
lines perceived by subjects.
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1d: Brain Decoding
 In recent years, “the decoding approach” has become active, which try to read
contents or states of mind by picking up activated regions from a relatively wider
brain area.
 For example, Kamitani and Tong have developed a new technology which enables
us to predict the orientation of lines perceived by subjects using fMRI images of
primary and secondary visual cortices (V1 and V2).
 The information about the orientation of perceived lines is represented in “columns”
or groups of neurons smaller than 1/10 mm in diameter. However, these columns are
too finely spaced to be resolved by fMRI because its voxel is only about 3×3×3 mm
in size. So Kamitani and Tong analyzed each voxel datum by a neural network
decoder trained by supervised learning and successfully predicted what stimulus
orientation a subject is viewing. Each voxel datum had very weak orientation
selectivity, but they got stable orientation selectivity by collectively decoding them.
 And they could also predict which stimulus orientation a subject is attending to when
seeing a diagonal plaid stimulus with considerable accuracy.
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Section 2:
Theoretical Problems of Mind-Reading
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2a: Criteria for Individuating Mental States
 To establish “the ecological validity” outside a laboratory
⇒ Mental states to be read should not be just specific to
the task involved in a mind-reading experiment.
Ex.) unconscious emotional evaluation of a certain racial group when
seeing a picture of a Black and lying in fMRI▪▪▪
⇒ Rather, it should be the common state of mind found
across various relevant tasks.
Ex.) unconscious racist attitude in general
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2a: Criteria for Individuating Mental States
 In principle, however, there are an infinite variety of
mental states interpretable as correlated to each brain
activity.
⇒ Nonetheless, each brain activity is considered not just as
being correlated to the state of mind specific to each
experimental condition.
 This is because we place uncritical reliance on our folk
psychological criteria for individuating mental states.
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2a: Criteria for Individuating Mental States
 Brain imaging studies cannot directly provide or verify
criteria for individuating mental states.
⇒ Brain imaging technologies such as fMRI or PET are
highly “theory-laden”: researchers analyze brain image
data through complicated statistical processing against
the background of a certain theoretical map about
mental process or cognitive activity.
 Therefore we have to search for the criteria “outside” the
brain imaging studies.
⇒ How to ensure the criteria will become a big problem for
the further development of mind-reading research.
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2b: Situation-Dependency
of Folk Psychological Concepts
 Even if we continue to adopt our folk psychological
criteria ▪▪▪
 Most folk psychological concepts have a situationdependent character.
Ex.) There are various types of lying in various situations in our dairy
life.
▪ lying for disguising or quibbling
▪ deception in sports and poker
▪ irony and exaggeration as humor
▪ diplomatic remarks and flattery words
▪ self-deception
and so on ▪ ▪ ▪
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2b: Situation-Dependency
of Folk Psychological Concepts
 Can we lump them into the same category in terms of
their truth/falsehood?
 Is there any state that can be taken as a common factor
in all these mental activities?
 It is crucial for mind-reading technology to individuate
mental states without dependence on the particularity of
a task or a situation.
⇒ The situation-dependency casts doubt on the
generalizability or wide applicability of mind-reading
technology.
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2c: Interpersonal Difference
in Neural Correlates
 Brain image technology generally requires establishing a
baseline on the basis of data on an individual subject.
⇒ To overcome this constraint and generalize mindreading technology, at least the neural correlate of a
certain type of mental state we seek to read off should
be largely common to different individuals.
⇒ In fact, it seems that there is such commonality in a
certain instance.
Ex.) Kamitani and Tong reported that the information about orientation
is represented in an early stage of visual processing in the way
common to primates.
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2c: Interpersonal Difference
in Neural Correlates
 However, the existence of such commonality may be
due to the fact that the processing of orientation has
been structured as a innate “brain module” dedicated to
a domain-specific task.
 It is highly likely that the neural correlate of a more
abstract and complex task are interpersonally different if
such a task is handled by a domain-general mechanism
without a module.
 If so, it’s still a mere dream that we will succeed in
constructing a technology for reading high-level mental
activities in detail.
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2d. Comparison with
Psychological Reading Technologies
 We can observe the precedence of psychological
reading technologies over neuroscientific ones in some
researsches.
Ex. 1) Unconscious racism
▪ Phelps et al could demonstrate the activated amygdala as a
neural correlate of an unconscious racist attitude “from the inside”
just because they could utilize the psychological methods (IAT and
the eyeblink startle response test) measuring the attitude “from the
outside” antecedently.
⇒ If so, doesn’t it follow that we have only to use
psychological tests to read mind and that we don’t need
to examine the inside of the brain?
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2d. Comparison with
Psychological Reading Technologies
Ex. 2) Lie detectors
 The problems of brain fingerprinting
▪ There cannot be independent testing of its validity since the
technology is proprietary and undisclosed.
▪ Subjects can interfere with the construction of the baseline by
performing certain covert acts. (Rosenfeld, 2005)
 The problems of lie detector using fMRI
▪ Its accuracy is not high enough to identify individual deceivers,
remaining only enough to show a between-group difference.
▪ There is no common activated region shown across all subjects.
(M. Nagamine)
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2d. Comparison with
Psychological Reading Technologies
 There is another research trend which tries to develop a more
reliable lie detector using “micro-expressions” (P. Ekman).
▪ Micro-expressions are involuntary facial expressions which last for
a brief period of time less than 1/4 seconds when one hides certain
feelings.
▪ Sejinowski have attempted to detect micro-expressions by a
computer system and to utilize them as reliable signs about lies.
⇒ Here, too, the approach “from the outside” as reading
facial expressions precedes one “from the inside” of the
brain.
 The inside of the brain might be, after all, not the best
place for reading mind. (Prof. Nobuhara)
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Section 3:
Ethical Coping and Conclusion
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3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism
 Now, the fear seems to be groundless that mind-reading
technologies may open new possibilities to expose the
information about personal privacy covertly.
 Rather, we should think about its “value” that many
stakeholders (medical institutions, insurance companies,
judicial agencies, and probably the public) hopefully find
in mind-reading technologies.
 Compare with the debate on genetic exceptionalism in
bioethics.
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3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism
 Genetic exceptionalism
▪ Gene information needs special protection because it
essentially differs from other medical information in that it
is related to “the ultimate privacy” of an individual.
(1) Gene information predicts the future health condition of an
individual.
(2) Genes contain information about his/her kin group members and
even about local community members, and so it has a risk for
promoting discrimination against these groups.
⇒ Thomas Murray Criticized these grounds▪▪▪
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3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism
 Murray’s Criticism
(1) ➨ Other kind of medical information (hepatitis B carriage, HIV
carriage, or high cholesterol) is also highly predictive of the future
health condition.
(2) ➨ Information about venereal disease or tuberculosis can also
suggest the possibility of infection to the family or colleagues of a
patient, so other medical information also has caused
discrimination in various situations.
 There isn’t any essential difference between gene
information and other kind of medical information.
 Genetic exceptionalism may encourage genetic
determinism or genetic reductionism.
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3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism
 Weak Genetic exceptionalism
▪ One’s gene information is closely related to that of
other members of his/her kin group and thus its effect
upon discrimination can be relatively more serious than
that of other medical information.
▪ Such a relative specificity gives us a sufficient reason to
protect gene information more heavily than other
information.
⇒ The need for more concrete debate concerning
insurance, employment, education, marriage, loan, and
criminal investigation, as well as medical care.
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3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism
 The lesson is▪▪▪
• The privacy of gene information stems not from the
inherent essential specificity but from various socioeconomic demands for the information.
• Privacy information to be protected was not given at the
outset, but determined by the social environment which
seeks to utilize it.
 Apply this conclusion to the case of mind-reading▪▪▪
• What provides “the ultimate privacy” for the brain is not
the brain itself but their socio-economic surroundings.
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3b: Brain in the Image
 Mind-reading technology remains unpromising.
⇒ Then, even if a social structure which gives brain or
mind “the ultimate privacy” is brought into being, can
there be any room for the ethical problem of privacy
invasion at all?
 Even if brain information lacks appropriate substance for
its purposes, the substance is constructed by socioeconomic demands and such a fictional substance is
used in various actual situations.
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3b: Brain in the Image
 Racine et al (2005) investigated press coverage of fMRI
in the U. S. and found three trends.
1) neuro-realism : the press reports about neuroscientific experiments
as if fMRI images visually “prove” brain activities without regard to
enormous complexities of data acquisition.
2) neuro-essentialism : many expressions in which the word “brain” is
used as a grammatical subject (for instance, “Brain prefers”, “Brain
scares”) give the impression that we can assimilate “the person” or
“the self” with the brain.
3) neuro-policy : media coverage prompts the public to think that we
can use the results of fMRI investigations to promote political
agendas (the regulation of pornography, the bilingual education
problem, and so on).
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3b: Brain in the Image
 “Neuro-realism”, “Neuro-essentialism”, “Neuro-policy”
 From these trends, we can predict that brain information
will gradually be taken as a kind of personal information
having a certain socio-economic utility, hypostatized as
“the ultimate privacy”, and inflated in value without a due
consideration as to whether it has a real value
appropriate for its purposes.
➨ How should we cope with this problem?
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3c: Ethical Coping and Conclusion
 The major factor of the problem lies in the fact that brain
information is cognitively far more complex than other
private information and thus vulnerable to misuse and
abuse.
⇒ Sheri Alpert (2007) claimed that brain information needs
a special legal protection to avoid misuse and abuse, in
view of our overwhelming tendency to attribute simplistic
explanations to complex phenomena.
 This is ethical coping required from the relative
specificity (cognitive complexity) of brain information,
after the denial of strong exceptionalism.
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3c: Ethical Coping and Conclusion
 In addition to a legal protection, we must not neglect the
effort to improve the public understanding of
neuroscience.
⇒ For such an effort will create a basis for stopping the
movement of hypostatization and inflation of the privacy
value, and eliminate the necessity of special legal
protection itself, and thus prepare the social environment
to distribute brain information in an appropriate and
useful way.
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3c: Ethical Coping and Conclusion
 We ought to cope with the brain-privacy problem with
two pillars 1. legal protection as a tentative step
2. building of neuroscentific literacy as a substantial step
 The necessity and urgency of the latter, which is
included in the problem of scientific literacy in general,
should be emphasized more strongly in that it is directly
connected to ethical coping with the privacy invasion.
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3c: Ethical Coping and Conclusion
 What must be done now is▪▪▪
 not to treat neuroimaging technology as
potentially capable of reading mind and to
hypostatize and inflate “the ultimate privacy of
mind” more and more
 but to assess what is really going on and to find
out the specific measures for disarming the
surroundings which generate such a move.
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End
Thank you for your kind attention!
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