In this fourth episode of the series, we are joined by José del R. Millán. Dr. Millán is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he runs the Clinical Neuroprosthetics and Brain Interaction Lab and holds the Linda Steen Norris & Lee Norris Endowed Chair in Neuroengineering in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also a professor in the Department of Neurology at Dell Medical School, co-director of the UT CARE Initiative and associate director of Texas Robotics. Dr. Millán has made several seminal contributions to the field of brain-machine interfaces (BMI), especially non invasive EEG-based BCIs. Many of his achievements revolve around the design of brain-controlled robots. While his work prioritizes the translation of BMI to people who live with motor and cognitive disabilities, he is also designing BMI technology to offer new interaction modalities for able-bodied people that augment their abilities. In this episode, we discuss various elements of Dr. Millán’s work, including neuroplasticity and brain signaling as a skill, noninvasive EEG-based mobile robots, VR-based neurorehabilitation, BCI-controlled wheelchairs and exoskeletons, telerobotic surgery, enhancing human driving capabilities with BCI technology, the importance of 'shared control' between human and machine, integrating AI and machine learning with brain-computer interfaces, and the evolution of non-invasive BCIs towards sleeker, more user-friendly designs.

In this third episode of our mini-series on brain-computer interfaces, we are joined by Steffen Steinert. Dr. Steinert is an Assistant Professor in the Ethics and Philosophy section at Delft University of Technology. His research focuses on fundamental theoretical issues of ethics and philosophy of technology - particularly the relationship between values and technology, and the link between emotions and technology. In this episode, we discuss various aspects of Dr. Steinert’s work, including the ethics of affective brain-computer interfaces, autonomy and BCIs, transformative experiences and informed consent, emotional contagion on social media, technology-induced value changes in society, and value-sensitive design approaches to emerging technologies.

In this second episode of our mini-series on brain-computer interfaces, we are joined by Susan Schneider. Dr. Schneider is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University, where she is the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. She specializes in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, metaphysics, and the philosophy of cognitive science. Dr. Schneider has written several influential books, including most recently Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind. In addition to being an academic philosopher, Dr. Schneider is a very successful public philosopher. She frequently writes opinion pieces for outlets like the New York Times and Scientific American, and appears on TV shows on stations such as PBS and The History Channel. This episode covers many topics, including philosophical questions about the self and consciousness in the context of future brain chips, the possibility of mind uploading, quantum mechanics and Susan’s new theory of consciousness that she calls ‘superpsychism’, surveillance capitalism and privacy concerns surrounding AI and brain-computer interfaces, AI digital twins, brain-to-brain interfaces and questions about the unity of consciousness, what Susan calls the Global Brain Hypothesis and the new control problem, AI regulation and the AI global arms race, the concept of AGI and what it takes to create it, and epistemological issues surrounding AI as they relate to the opacity of AI systems and the hallucination problem for large language models.