Do Publics Share Experts’ Concerns about Brain–Computer Interfaces? A Trinational Survey on the Ethics of Neural Technology

Abstract

Since the 1960s, scientists, engineers, and healthcare professionals have developed brain–computer interface (BCI) technologies, connecting the user’s brain activity to communication or motor devices. This new technology has also captured the imagination of publics, industry, and ethicists. Academic ethics has highlighted the ethical challenges of BCIs, although these conclusions often rely on speculative or conceptual methods rather than empirical evidence or public engagement. From a social science or empirical ethics perspective, this tendency could be considered problematic and even technocratic because of its disconnect from publics. In response, our trinational survey (Germany, Canada, and Spain) reports public attitudes toward BCIs ( N = 1,403) on ethical issues that were carefully derived from academic ethics literature. The results show moderately high levels of concern toward agent-related issues (e.g., changing the user’s self) and consequence-related issues (e.g., new forms of hacking). Both facets of concern were higher among respondents who reported as female or as religious, while education, age, own and peer disability, and country of residence were associated with either agent-related or consequence-related concerns. These findings provide a first look at BCI attitudes across three national contexts, suggesting that the language and content of academic BCI ethics may resonate with some publics and their values.

Attitudes about Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) technology among Spanish rehabilitation professionals

“…The interviews were recorded and transcribed as plain text. Then, a set of analytical tools for text analysis using computer-assisted interpretative practices were used (Rockwell and Sinclair 2016;Manning et al 2014).…”

“…We used in depth-interviews with open-ended questions. The questions were based on the study by Sample et al (2019), but this time they included questions that addressed the impact of the use of BCI technology on users, caregivers, children, people with disabilities, potential risks, and society at large. Participants were first provided with an overarching introduction about BCI technology and the purpose of the study.…”

“…Data analysis was carried out by coding the verbatim transcripts using qualitative software (Rockwell and Sinclair 2016). Each interview transcription was analyzed as whole.…”

“…With a preliminary coding following ethical and social concerns raised in the relevant scientific literature (Sample et al 2019;Burwell et al 2017).…”

“…See Table 1 for descriptive information on the instrument used. As a detailed analysis of the survey has already been described elsewhere (Sample et al 2019), in this study we focus on the analysis of the interviews (transcribed into text) with text mining tools. Nonetheless, we will briefly explain below some aspects of the elaboration of the survey relevant to our own study.…”