<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/24/mind-reading-tech-private...> It’s raining on your walk to the station after work, but you don’t have an umbrella. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a rain jacket in a shop window. You think to yourself: “A rain jacket like that would be perfect for weather like this.” 'You're trying to help drug dealers': Zuckerberg faces angry lawmakers at Libra hearing. Later, as you’re scrolling on Instagram on the train, you see a similar-looking jacket. You take a closer look. Actually, it’s exactly the same one – and it’s a sponsored post. You feel a sudden wave of paranoia: did you say something out loud about the jacket? Had Instagram somehow read your mind? While social media’s algorithms sometimes appear to “know” us in ways that can feel almost telepathic, ultimately their insights are the result of a triangulation of millions of recorded externalized online actions: clicks, searches, likes, conversations, purchases and so on. This is life under surveillance capitalism. As powerful as the recommendation algorithms have become, we still assume that our innermost dialogue is internal unless otherwise disclosed. But recent advances in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, which integrates cognitive activity with a computer, might challenge this. In the past year, researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to translate directly from brain activity into synthetic speech or text by recording and decoding a person’s neural signals, using sophisticated AI algorithms. While such technology offers a promising horizon for those suffering from neurological conditions that affect speech, this research is also being followed closely, and occasionally funded, by technology companies like Facebook. A shift to brain-computer interfaces, they propose, will offer a revolutionary way to communicate with our machines and each other, a direct line between mind and device. But will the price we pay for these cognitive devices be an incursion into our last bastion of real privacy? Are we ready to surrender our cognitive liberty for more streamlined online services and better targeted ads? [...]