Neuroenhancement in “natural” and tech forms
We live in a society obsessed with self-improvement—and in the midst of advancing biotechnologies, optimized decision making, and complex mechanizations, meditation has erupted around the world, even emerging as the fastest growing health trend in America.
Meditation as a neuroenhancer seems a natural, nonthreatening alternative to an imagined cyberpunk future where people have chips implanted in their brains. At the 2015 International Neuroethics Society Meeting, meditation was promoted as a low-risk method of green, sustainable neuroenhancement.
Yet, the core underpinning of meditation and the idea that our mind can just as naturally include tools external to the brain are starkly similar.
The “Extended Mind Theory” is a unique hypothesis that takes the mind to exist beyond the brain, to include external devices like a notebook or computer. It can sound like a futuristic, transhumanist concept, coming out of scifi and driven by advancing technology, but real, legal actions have taken an alignment to the idea that thinking can require external extensions beyond the brain itself: the Law School Admissions Test(LSAT) decided in 2019 to develop changes to its “Logic Games” section because drawing diagrams is such an integral component of those, creating a barrier to blind people. It is true too that the extended mind theory feels more tangible with tech—our relationship to our smartphones is complex, and there have long been discussions of how our brains are changing to a life integrated with tech.
Meditation, with its roots in Buddhism, similarly purports the idea that our brains can be shaped and trained, that the mind is open-ended and not brain-bound. Buddhism sees the self as “dependently arising,” meaning the mind exists only insofar as its relation with the external world and other people. The concept of mind in Buddhism is akin to the extended mind theory, yet the result of the neuroenhancement that each spurns as a narrative (natural enhancement in one; dystopian cyborgs in another) are so different.
Naturalness frequently comes up in ethical arguments for biotechnologies, with “unnaturalness” being morally suspect. There are backings in the philosophy community that naturalness isn’t a factor towards morality. Still, what is natural/unnatural is central to social norms, and ethical policies are only as effective as the social norms they facilitate for the public. In that sense, it’s important to tackle what the idea of naturalness is, and how we draw the line.
Neuroenhancement encompasses many things, from generally-uncontroversial actions like sleeping, eating, exercising, or learning a second language, to modifications such as implants, electrical simulation, and pharmaceuticals. Further to come are forms of AI that provide neuroenhacement through the way we “meld” with the tool itself.
Controversial, “unnatural” means of enhancement seem to change the nature of humans, or the identity of the individual. But we’ve established that the mind isn’t cleanly separated from external factors. The you who gets enough sleep is the natural you, and therefore you should get enough sleep so as to not be uncharacteristic and debilitated. Is the you who takes a drug that allows you to not need as much sleep also the natural you in the same way?
People with depression lose neural connections that psychedelics can promote the regrowth of. One patient implanted with an experimental brain-computer interface for predicting epileptic seizures said of the implant: “it was me, it became me, […] with this device I found myself”
When technology is integrated not just into life but into your personhood, what makes us human can’t be defined simply as what is “not artificial”.
Furthermore, what about enhancement isn’t natural? Healthy individuals seeking enhancements have been a feature of history since ancient times.
From neuroenhancement to AI for self-improvement
Our neuroenhancers facilitate productivity. Students want a competitive edge for studying, and workers want a few more hours to grind. But do we want to work without sleep just because we can? Do we want a culture where all college students take cognitive-enhancing drugs because everyone does? Or are they other paths to take, that are not so short sighted, and have human wellbeing at their core?
If the extended theory of mind is true, we have different ways of building neuroenhancements that are softer to humans than drugs and implants (while drugs and implants might of course still be necessary in various cases).
We can build AI technologies that take advantage of the human brain’s tendency to “incorporate” the information, environment and tools that it is playing with as part of itself. Build AI that enhances or cognitive functions while becoming part of the extended human mind.
Cognitive science is based on the metaphor that the mind is an information processing machine. This metaphorical view, of seeing the mind as a machine, has helped us quantify many functions, understand the processes the mind uses, the knowledge it needs to access. However, some of our productivity metaphors focus in blunt ways on optimizing human brains (and by extent human beings) as if they truly were straightforward machines.
But we aren’t. We naturally get tired after a certain amount of time, we get overstimulated and unfocused when we are multitasking too many things or are too distracted. We lose our enjoyment for work when we are interrupted too much and don’t find a state of flow or indicators of progress. Our minds have natural ebbs and flows, and sometimes are hugely creative and able to see the big picture, sometimes need to daydream to feed some of that creativity.
Trying to make the human mind more productive in blunt machine like ways seems rather pointless, when we have true machines in our society, and enough of an understanding of what human minds do well versus what machines do well. We now also have enough of an understanding of cognitive function to be able to build software and AI based systems that truly work well with the human mind, as the human mind is.
It is our belief at wellbeing AI that the future in productivity and neuroenhancement will be a future of AI and software products which are designed with a deep understanding of how the human mind works. Such technology will allow us to “extend” our minds by interacting smoothly and seamlessly with the human mind, compensating for and boosting its points of “weakness”, and supporting its strengths.
To some extent, such principles are already available in existing technologies. We have cars because we are not good at moving very fast for very long. We have ways of storing information because we are not good at remembering it perfectly to transmit it to other members of our community. We have easels and brushes because we are good at drawing new images, that have never been drawn before, and pencils and diagram-drawing software because that is how we like to organize and visualize projects. These kinds of technologies don’t make us more like a machine, but rather use whatever the “machine” (in its multiple embodiments in our culture) can truly provide to support us in our humanity and high level cognitive functions.
In the future, AI and tech based startups will have to ask themselves – how does my product interact with the human mind? ⇒ If you are building a SaaS that provides solutions related to storing and organizing knowledge (I am writing this in Notion) – how are you making sure that the ways your software is organizing knowledge make sense to the human brain?
⇒ If you are building a calendar app – how do you make sure the use of time is optimized for humans and their perceptions and habits?
⇒ If you are building a recruitment pipeline – how do you make sure actual human candidates are comfortable to be evaluated in that way, and that you are evaluating deep human skills that matter, not skills that can be learned within 3 months?
Further AI based neuroenhancements will be embedded in the very SaaS products we interact with at work. It will have to answer questions like the following: Is this product making it easy for me to do my job? It is reminding me of what I need to keep in mind (not everything), helping me ease my cognitive load and use the most of my working memory? Is it inspiring me, creating a space where I can be in the flow, making me more creative? Does it help me get ideas, and stay focused? Is it helping me share initial work with people that would have the right impact on such work and can nurture it? Do I have a good feeling of doing my best work, and having time for leisure after interacting with this software? Is it supporting my leisure routine and goals, rather than throwing me in information overload, or interrupting my most precious moments at the end of the day with loved ones?
Most of all, does it make me feel like I am productive in a cognitive high level way, and increases my happiness, protecting my life and person in its entirety, rather than reducing me to a cog in the system that has to move faster and faster, with no time to think, feel and create.
Authors: Katherine Chou (p.1) and Dr. Dr. Ana-Maria Olteteanu (p.2)
Do you like this vision of the future? Would you like to contribute to it? Contact us here and we will find a unique & authentic way for you to help and be part of our community. Subscribe if you want to keep on hearing from us.