Whether they’re harvesting your data or serving you ads, consumer electronics brands have always wanted to get inside your head. Now, a hip neurotech startup says its devices can do exactly that.
The startup, called Neurable, recently announced it was licensing its “non-invasive” brain-computer interface headphones to consumer product manufacturers. First covered by TechCrunch, the company is casting a pretty wide net in its search for licensees, including the health, gaming, and productivity industries.
“Through Neurable’s licensing platform, OEMs can directly integrate its AI-powered brain-sensing technology into existing hardware, such as headphones, hats, glasses, and headbands, while maintaining full control over product design, user experience, and distribution,” Neurable said in a press release.
While buzzy companies like Elon Musk’s infamous Neuralink seek to plant hardware inside human brains, Neurable is trying to circumvent the operating room altogether.
The company has previously partnered with audio brand Master & Dynamic to put out the MW75 Neuro LT brain-scanning headphones, which are meant to monitor your focus and give you a numerical score as you work. At a suggested retail price of $700, it’s difficult to tell how legitimate the brain-scanning performance is, given a lack of critical reviews and the historical challenges non-invasive BCI has faced with noise interference and signal degradation.
There’s also the question of who, exactly, the potentially invasive tech is serving. Neurable maintains a $1.2 million research partnership with the Pentagon to study whether its wearable BCI can track Air Force service members’ cognitive fitness. Beyond the ethical concerns of a company doing business with the US military establishment, such a move also raises some important questions about how responsible a steward Neurable will be with the brainwave data its devices collect.
When it comes to service members being made to use BCI gadgets, “one could certainly imagine how enforced use of such devices could create a very dystopian basis for behavioral control,” James Giordano, former chief of neuroethics at Georgetown University Medical Center warned the Military Times of the Pentagon contract.
Going forward, it’s anyone’s guess who will step up to partner with Neurable on expensive brain-monitoring devices — nevermind convince consumers to pay good money to have their innermost cognitive processes poked and prodded by a defense contractor.
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