Merging Minds: The Conceptual and Ethical Impacts of Emerging Technologies for Collective Minds

Abstract

A growing number of technologies are currently being developed to improve and distribute thinking and decision-making. Rapid progress in brain-to-brain interfacing and swarming technologies promises to transform how we think about collective and collaborative cognitive tasks across domains, ranging from research to entertainment, and from therapeutics to military applications. As these tools continue to improve, we are prompted to monitor how they may affect our society on a broader level, but also how they may reshape our fundamental understanding of agency, responsibility, and other key concepts of our moral landscape.In this paper we take a closer look at this class of technologies – Technologies for Collective Minds – to see not only how their implementation may react with commonly held moral values, but also how they challenge our underlying concepts of what constitutes collective or individual agency. We argue that prominent contemporary frameworks for understanding collective agency and responsibility are insufficient in terms of accurately describing the relationships enabled by Technologies for Collective Minds, and that they therefore risk obstructing ethical analysis of the implementation of these technologies in society. We propose a more multidimensional approach to better understand this set of technologies, and to facilitate future research on the ethics of Technologies for Collective Minds.

Overlapping minds and the hedonic calculus

“…First, neural mindmelding occurs if two brains are connected in ways that mimic the connections within a single brain (Danaher & Nyholm, 2021;Hirstein, 2008Hirstein, , 2012Lyreskog et al, 2023). This kind of connection might result from technology known as a brain-to-brain interface, albeit likely from a version more advanced than anything currently on the horizon.…”

Decentralising the Self – Ethical Considerations in Utilizing Decentralised Web Technology for Direct Brain Interfaces

“…We have previously called for more attention to be directed towards conceptual and ethical issues arising from emerging TCMs (Lyreskog et al, 2023 ). While there is a growing literature on the ethics of BCI and BBI technology, highlighting issues such as autonomy, privacy, and responsibility (Hildt, 2015 , 2019 ; Trimper et al, 2014 ), we argue that new conceptual frameworks need to be developed to accommodate the novel entities which will be brought about by TCM networks, and that it is crucial to take into account the type of relations constituting the network as well as technical specifics.…”

“…In order to analyse how (other) moral values may be at stake, we need to be able to discern for whom those values may be at stake. Simply put: if multiple people share the same (albeit artificial) neuronal network, it may be unclear who exactly is contributing to which mental content and processing (Lyreskog et al, 2023 ). Let us consider an example.…”

“…Technologies for Collective Minds (TCMs) are “technologies which facilitate and/or enable networks of two or more individuals who are sensing, thinking, and/or making decisions jointly in real time” (Lyreskog et al, 2023 ). These include brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and brain-to-brain interfaces (BBI), as well as alternative combinations of brain- and computer interfaces which may be referred to as brain-computer-brain interfaces (BCBIs) where the computer component, such as an artificial intelligence (AI) essentially functions as a co-thinker.…”

“…These include brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and brain-to-brain interfaces (BBI), as well as alternative combinations of brain- and computer interfaces which may be referred to as brain-computer-brain interfaces (BCBIs) where the computer component, such as an artificial intelligence (AI) essentially functions as a co-thinker. These types of emerging technologies and constellations are not only potentially socially disruptive, but may also generate novel and substantial ethical challenges (Lyreskog et al, 2023 ; Danaher & Petersen, 2021 ; Hildt, 2015 , 2019 ; Trimper et al, 2014 ). While some of these ethical issues may be taken to be intrinsic, for instance responsibility distribution or identity disruption, other issues such as privacy, transparency, safety and security may be to some degree contingent on the design of emerging and future TCM platforms.…”