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When Your Inner Thoughts Are No Longer Just Yours

Neural data after a round of fMRI scanning.

When Your Inner Thoughts Are No Longer Just Yours

Neural data after a round of fMRI scanning.Credit...

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· 8:00 min

By Trevor Paglen

Dr. Paglen is an artist and the author of the book “How to See Like a Machine: Images After A.I.”

Nov. 12, 2026

The possibility we could one day read one another’s minds is more real than ever today, thanks to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. The technology is moving fast, and the paranoia that science may open the inner recesses of our minds to manipulation no longer seems so outlandish.

Many researchers have the laudable intention of learning about the brain, but in doing this work they may be opening the door to our inner worlds’ being exploited for commercial gain. It’s a terrifying future we aren’t prepared for.

I learned this for myself a year ago at Cornell University, when I spent three hours, over two days, strapped in an fMRI machine (which can show the real-time changes in blood flow in the brain). Lying in the scanner, I concentrated on a sequence of seemingly random images projected onto a screen a few feet from my eyes, while the machine rancorously probed the gray matter of my brain. Pictures of traffic lights, cars, airplanes and trees were meant to elicit a “boring” response from my amygdala (which governs fight-or-flight responses). Images of grotesque A.I.-generated faces or people making threatening gestures were meant to excite that part of my brain.

Trevor Paglen, at left, entering an fMRI machine as part of an experiment at Cornell University; at right, an edited compilation of images shown to Dr. Paglen in the machine.Credit...via Paglen Studio (L) and Kuceyeski Lab (R)

In art school, I was taught to read images deliberately and slowly in the same way we might read and critique bits of literature or morsels of philosophy. In the fMRI machine, however, an image is just a visual stimulus to elicit a neurological response.

On my second day of scanning, I learned that my amygdala is highly responsive to a certain type of “boring” image: pictures of small airplanes against a big sky.

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Source: The New York Times · Trevor Paglen

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Topic
Health
Country
🇺🇸 US
Publisher language
EN
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