Riding the (brain)waves - how foresight can inform EU regulation of new technologies

What would you do if your employment contract required you to wear a device that measured your attention levels, compared your remote working attention with that in the office and made suggestions about when you should take breaks? 

Would you be more or less likely to come forward as an eyewitness to a crime if it entailed putting on a device that read your brain to see when you recognised someone? 

How about using a meditation device that plays you different sounds depending on your brain state – waves when you’re distracted, say, or birdsong when you’re focused? 

These are all possible applications of neurotechnology – technological devices that interact with neural activity, either to modulate or monitor that activity. While the devices above might sound futuristic, there is a lot of research being done in this area that could see them coming onto the market in the not-too-distant future. 

Here at the EU Policy Lab, we have a team dedicated to exploring the future impact of technologies. The team does this in several ways – you might have read about recent work on highlighting innovations across critical areas for the EU, suppressing indoor air pathogens, or exploring new funding opportunities  for emerging areas such as Quantum technologies. All of these have generally been focused on pinpointing what is emerging and prioritising what seems most important. 

With the recently-launched study on foresight for the anticipatory governance of neurotechnology, we’re taking things in a slightly different direction. Rather than what technologies or applications are the most promising, we will be looking at what these technologies could mean in terms of governance and how the EU can make the most of this technology while protecting people’s health, safety and rights. Using foresight methods and tools, the various levels of EU governance can be better prepared for emerging challenges, while also benefiting from the new developments. Complex innovations such as neurotechnologies require an all-of-government approach, working across sectors and policy domains, as well as bringing expertise from different fields of science and policy – just what the EU Policy Lab was set up to do.   

We’re not alone in considering this as interesting area for exploration. UNESCO and the OECD have already done some work in this area. 

We’re just at the beginning of looking at this fascinating area, so we don’t even have all our questions yet, never mind the answers. But to give you an idea, these are some of the issues we might be looking at, based on the above examples: 

• Will the current employment rights framework provide adequate protection for employees who are required to use neurotechnology to monitor their productivity? 
• Will there be legal implications if someone can be associated with a crime on the basis of someone else’s brain activity? 
• If you use a device that monitors your brainwaves, how can you be confident that the readings are only being used for the purpose you have chosen? 
• How can the EU make sure that neurotech is developed ethically, while at the same time fostering innovation? 

 
So please keep an eye on the blog for updates as the work progresses.