This Nautilus interview with neuropsychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones explores freedom of thought in a time of fast-changing technology and AI. Freedom of thought, says McCarthy-Jones, is “as close to an absolute right as there is in the Constitution.” But even as this right has been explored and lauded through the ages, it hasn’t actually been defined. McCarthy-Jones also discusses how smartly designed public places help to promote group thinking, from green spaces to spacious, well-lit buildings. A conversation with thought-provoking remarks and ideas to chew on.
I think what’s maybe a more immediate threat from new technologies is not brain-reading but more what is called behavior-reading. That is, the idea of measuring our observable behavior—what we like on Facebook, what websites we visit, what music we like, etcetera—that from knowing those facts about us, people could impute our mental states and can have a good idea of what it is we’re thinking—and knowing what kinds of buttons they should press to get us to act in a certain way. The combination of that knowledge with AI technologies could be a really huge threat to our autonomy.
One of my colleagues from Brazil and I were talking at a conference, and he was telling me about how the design of their capital city, Brasília, was intentionally put together by planners to try to avoid street corners—because street corners were places where people would be able to assemble and potentially think things together, which could be threatening to the ruling regime. So city planning can have an important effect upon the public’s ability to think together.
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