Chile advances in discussion of pioneering project to regulate neurotechnologies

Chile advanced Tuesday in the discussion of a pioneering bill in the world that seeks to regulate the use of neurotecnologías, an initiative that has been followed closely by academics, international organizations and large technology companies.

The Senate unanimously approved the rule, which is still pending in the Chamber of Deputies, and which seeks to prevent brains from being intervened without consent to protect them from advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

“With this, the legal regulation of the protection of people with respect to these scientific and technological advances begins to materialize,” said Andrés Couve, Minister of Sciences.

Last September, Chile became the first country in the world to include neuro-rights in its Constitution thanks to an amendment to the fundamental law.

Both this reform and the bill are part of an agenda that began to be promoted in 2019 thanks to the ideas of the Morningside Group, an American group of prestigious academics that has been warning governments for years about the need to protect mental integrity .

For many experts, the rapid advances of the big technology companies like Facebook, IBM or Neuralink (of the tycoon Elon Musk) in the field of artificial intelligence involve scientific opportunities, but also potential risks in the possibility of cognitively altering the human mind.

“Nowadays, technologies such as brain-brain interfaces are being industrialized that allow reading the unconscious, emotions or increasing intellectual capacities,” said Senator Guido Girardi (left), the main promoter of the proposal.

These technologies, he added, can help treat diseases such as Parkinson’s or depression, but at the same time they are “so powerful that they can affect people’s freedom, thought and free will.”

With these advances, Chile is at the forefront in terms of neuro-rights worldwide, even ahead of the United States, where the Morningside Group also presented the initiative to the environment of President Joe Biden.

In parallel, Parliament is also analyzing a bill aimed at preventing large platforms such as Google, Facebook or Instagram from manipulating the behavior of their users with the information they extract from them.