Did you really think your thoughts are private? Well, maybe just for the moment but very soon that might be a thing of the past. It seems we are hurtling towards the dystopian world of 1984 or Brave New World, and their shockingly outlandish ideas are unnoticeably meandering their way into the safety of reality.

Last year, the AI body language-reading courtroom lie detector was introduced to read minds. Regardless of whether it actually works, the problem is that we accept what this police-state gadget tells us as the absolute truth. This is almost identical to the “hair analysis” and “fingerprint comparisons” which also were accepted as absolutely true in times gone by, but eventually exposed as nothing more than just lies.

However, in the last few years, significant and objectively measurable steps have been made towards actual mind-reading technology. Researchers at the Universities of New York and California have created a machine that allows them to reconstruct images in a person’s mind using brain scans, and shockingly, the results seem irrefutable. Shortly after that, person to person mind messaging followed, using digital brain connections. And after that, came machines that could decode and process what someone was looking at in real time. And after that came computers that could translate thoughts into words. And finally, now, we are on the verge of commercially available mind-reading technology.

Recently in London, Microsoft unveiled their vision for AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology. As one of the leaders in this field, Microsoft pioneered innovations such as cloud computing, computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing with the aim of developing systems that anticipate our needs rather than solely responding to our demands. In June 2019, the 4th annual AI summit will take place in London’s ExCel exhibition center where all the leading global companies discuss the future uses of AI. 

Should these advances in technology worry us? Will it eventually lead to a state where one could get arrested for thought crimes? Will we lose our abilities for independent thought? Who will ultimately control these machines? These are just some of the questions that will need answering prior to embracing these innovative technologies into our society.