deBating CognitIon

About the author

Here I am maybe a decade after the meeting about alertness monitoring I described under “Author Commentary.” I was at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in San Fran with some friends/labmates. Left to Right: Jonas Olaffson, David Leland, Josh Berg, and me.

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deBating CognitIon by Brendan ZaChary AllIson

“Why did you pull me over?”

“Sir, you’re driving while thunk.”

“Huh?”

“The CloudTop headset you’re wearing indicates you’re unfit to drive due to high distraction. You were driving thunk. You know. Lost in thought. So you were not paying sufficient attention to driving.”

“Well yeah I just had a fight with my boss and I’m thinking about starting my own business and one of my kids is sick and-”

“Sir, statements like those only further support that you were not sufficiently attentive to driving. Your headset has a warning on the label: Please think responsibly.”

“Come on, officer, I didn’t really do anything wrong.”

“You know how many accident scenes I’ve worked? People think it’s OK to think and drive. It’s not. It used to be called driving while distracted but we didn’t have tests for it back then. Look here. Your headset indicates a distraction quotient below the legal limit of 0.08, indicating that less than 8% of your available cognitive capacity was devoted to driving.”

“I’ll fight this in court, officer. I know a lawyer with the American Cognitive Liberties Union.”

“You’d be up against a lot more lawyers from Mothers against Thinking and Driving. Anyway, I’m not here to debate this by the roadside. Like you, I need to focus on other things.”

“Have you really thought about the moral ramifications of what you’re doing?”

“Yes. And I am now.” The cop’s headset beeped and she smiled. “In fact, thanks to this engaging conversation, now I get a break until I’m safe to work again. Please remain here.” She got in her car, then followed regulations by looking for something vapid to read. She found a new post on bcifi.org and soon returned to safe thoughtlessness.

Author Commentary

In 1997 and 1998, my then-PhD advisor (Jaime Pineda) and I met repeatedly with Chris Berka and Dan Levendowski of Advanced Brain Monitoring (ABM). We were thinking about pursuing a funding proposal called an STTR to develop an alertness monitoring system for truck drivers. This was before cell phones were prominent, but truck drivers at the time often had some sort of communication system we could have used. From a scientific perspective, even back then, monitoring alertness was not only possible but fairly easy – see e.g. Jung and Makeig (1997) or earlier work from Gevins, Pope, Donchin, and other.

The fatal problem wasn’t technical nor scientific. We soon worked out that truck drivers and especially their insurers would strongly resist any such system

ABM is still going strong more than 25 years later. Congrats to them for being one of the early companies in the field and staying active this long. They still sell a B-Alert system that seems conceptually similar to what we discussed way back then.

Disclaimer: I never worked for or with them. Our last email exchange was some years ago.

UPDATE DEC 26: I chatted with Chris Berka via LinkedIn. She said the comments here are OK with her.

Realism

I just said above this was scientifically and technically realistic in the late 1990s. Today, it would be even easier, especially with dry, active electrodes. The main obstacles involve ELSI – ethical, legal, and social issues. Would you wear a device that reads your brain activity if required for your job? You’d probably want to make sure the information wouldn’t be misused.

Large-scale alertness monitors for workers are probably only feasible if required. Laws might be passed requiring alertness or other “fitness for duty” technologies for people in attention-critical situations. Militaries can of course order people to use them, and militaries have spent (mostly wasted) quite a lot of money exploring brain-based alertness monitors. Companies might require them for safety, such as with miners. I heard that the company linked in the last sentence did a trial of their system with 2000 people, which would be the largest BCI trial to date – yet I’ve also heard nothing about it being implemented.

This is also realistic because it addresses a lot of other ethical and practical issues that we discuss in BCI-land, and should. Who owns data recorded from your brain? What if information from your brain is used without your knowledge or consent? I explore these concerns in other stories. These questions will continue being discussed and I hope we see regulations and guidelines that are appropriate. That is, they inform and protect people without unnecessarily stifling innovation.

Hope

Would such a future be good or bad?

Good: Driving while distracted or otherwise unfit to drive is a widely recognized problem. Devices like these could help keep dangerous drivers off the road while increasing awareness of the risks of driving while thunk.

Bad: Right now, this sort of technology would terrify people. We need a much better regulatory infrastructure and other protections, as well as different mindsets from both the end users (like drivers) and decisionmakers like trucking companies and insurers.

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