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Jill Maschio, PhD
AI-Generated Brain and Behavioral Modification: Life’s Lessons Lost in Place of Transcending
Lindsay Fox said, “learning from mistakes and not duplicating them is what life is about”. It takes cognitive processing of the consequences of one’s actions in order to feel regret, shame, and remorse for mistakes made. Once a person comes to the reality of the damage or harm the individual may have caused, the common response is that memory conditions behavior so that the person avoids repeating the mistake. And, instead of the memory setting the person back, it allows the individual to grow and adapt.
Hashem Al-Ghaili proposed an interesting new twist to incarcerating prisoners. His idea, the Cognify Method (Nova, 2024), would include behavioral modification by implanting new memories in prisoners’ brains with AI-generated virtual reality. This procedure would implant a new memory within the neural pathways linked with the memory of the crime. This process would allow prisoners to experience remorse for their criminal behavior and would potentially reform them before they are returned to society. The invulnerability of these memories is tailored to the crime committed and customized according to the offense and the person’s rehabilitation requirements.
The Prison of the Future – Cognify
As a society, we have always tried to decide on interventions for the human mind. An early treatment for mental illness, for example, was to drill holes in the skulls of patients. Walter Freeman, a physician lobotomist, brought this treatment to America and called it the transorbital lobotomy in 1936. Walter’s lobotomy was performed by inserting an ice pick into the eye region to the brain to severe it. In 1967, Freeman was banned from performing this surgery because of side effects, and over 100 of his patients had died from cerebral hemorrhage. At the time, scientists did not know enough about the brain to understand how the procedure would affect the person when disrupting the neural communications within the brain.
Going back to the idea of Cognify (Nova, 2024), science has given us reason to believe that memories can be embedded. We can look at the research done about false memories to help us understand this phenomenon. According to Elizabeth F. Loftus, a memory expert with over 40 years of experience, a person can have false memories. This phenomenon is often associated with a traumatic experience, where the person believes false or incorrect information about an event. She and her colleagues’ experiments showed that a false memory could be formed simply when a person suggests new and miscued information after a person has had an experience and formed a memory of it. It does not stop there. Research has also indicated that autobiographical false memories can be reversed (Oeberst, Wachendörfer, Imhoff & Blank, 2021).
In psychology, unconditioned behavior is cognitive behavioral therapy, where a therapist reverses undesirable behavior through reconditioned techniques. Cognify would be a way to condition a criminal’s behavior using AI to what society sees as acceptable behavior. If a false memory can be reversed through the power of suggestion, it seems not farfetched that a memory implanted in the brains of criminals can also be reversed.
Potential Consequences of Implanting Memories
The idea of implanting a memory has several complications. According to Schacter (2013), our memories are already subject to error. Short-term memory processes information that then goes through a consolidation process called protein synthesis. That process results in a stable memory—or long-term memory. However, during the consolidation process, the memory is fragile and subject to disruption (Nadar et al., 2000). Once a memory is consolidated through protein synthesis, it is more resistant to interference but can still be altered and modified.
In addition, based on animal research, Nadar et al. (2000) explained that when the animal retrieves a consolidated fear memory, the memory undergoes a transformation (shown in humans as well). During the retrieval process (e.g., a fearful memory), the memory is vulnerable to being reconstructed until it is reconsolidated into a stable long-term memory. During that time, the memory may be fragile and vulnerable to changes again. According to Schacter (2013), author of Seven Sins of Memory, if the new information reconsolidated with the memory is biased or incorrect, then the memory is distorted.
If society were to implement the Cognify idea in the brains of prisoners, then science could embed memories for other reasons, such as learning a new task or skill and being more intelligent. Maybe this is how humans will become superintelligent and merge with AI, which would align with the desire of computer scientist companies and futurist authors, such as Ray Kurzweil and SingularityAI. AI computer companies, scientists, and transhumanists see technology as a way of transcending our bodies from what they consider to be flaws.
However, it takes processing an experience in our minds to determine that the mistake has a consequence. This allows us to potentially feel shame and regret and condition us so that we avoid making a similar mistake. Our mistakes and learning from them are part of what makes us human. Implanting memories and altering memories is a complex process.
According to LeDoux (2002), the brain is hardwired to innately store information so that we can adapt to an ever-changing world. Nature has predetermined that if the brain cannot store information, it cannot modify and remember. The brain is believed to birth several thousand new hippocampal cells daily (Gould et al., 1999). Different factors may influence whether a new birth cell goes on to become a functioning one. One factor may be novel experiences. By having a new experience, the newly birthed brain cells in the hippocampus may have a better chance of surviving if they migrate to an existing neural network (e.g., the cerebral cortex) to assist in learning (Gould; Shors et al., 2011). An enriched environment may also be critical to neuronal survival (Kemperman, Kuhn, & Gage, 1998). Once they migrate and “latch” onto a neural network, Vernon Mountcastle identified that neurons self-organize into six layers within the cerebral cortex (2015). There may be several benefits to neuronal layering, and one perhaps is for faster communication.
If we all use AI to implant memories, then the brain has a way of adjusting. So, it may make adjustments by not “birthing” as many neurons, which would disrupt neuroplasticity and our ability to learn from our experiences and adapt to our ever-changing world. As a result, humans may experience atrophy. It’s the use-or-lose-it concept at play here. According to Braden (2024), the disruption to neurogenesis and neuroplasticity may be passed on to the next generation through epigenetics- changes to how genes are read. The process of implanting memories could transform humans by altering the original human. Doing so changes human biology, behavior, individuality, and humanness.
Use or lose it top Gregg Braden’s urgent message.
References:
Burlington Free Press. (2015). Vernon B. Mountcastle. American Neurological Association. https://myana.org/vernon-b-mountcastle
Gould, E., Tanapat, P., Hastings, N. B., & Shors, T. J. (1999). Neurogenesis in adulthood: A possible role in learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(5), 189-192. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(99)01310-8
Kempermann, G., Kuhn, H.G. and Gage, F.H. (1998) Experience induced neurogenesis in the senescent dentate gyrus J. Neurosci. 18, 3206–3212. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.18-09-03206.1998
LeDoux, J. E. (2002). Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. Viking.
Nader, K., Schafe, G. & Le Doux, J. Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval. Nature 406, 722–726 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35021052
Nova, P. (2024, July 8th). The Cognify method: The future of prison sentences with AI memory implants. SynthADS. https://www.synthads.ai/post/the-cognify-method-the-future-of-prison-sentences-with-ai-memory-implants#:~:text=Named%20The%20Cognify%20Method%2C%20this,brief%20period%20passing%20in%20actuality.
Oeberst, A., Wachendörfer, M. M., Imhoff, R., & Blank, H. (2021). Rich false memories of autobiographical events can be reversed. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (13): e2026447118 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2026447118
Schacter D. L. (2013). Memory: sins and virtues. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1303(1), 56–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.12168
Shors, T. J., Anderson, M. L., Curlik II, D. M., & Nokia, M. S. (2011). Use or lose it: How neurogenesis keeps the brain fit for learning. Behavioural Brain Research, 227, 450-458. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2011.04.023