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Ethical Concerns About Personhood, Responsibility, and Privacy in Active and Passive Brain-Computer Interfaces

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Intelligent Systems and Applications (IntelliSys 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 822))

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Abstract

Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are intelligent systems that enable direct communication between the human brain and machines. While BCI systems are promising for future medical and non-medical applications, studies concerning their ethical considerations are growing. However, no previous study has examined how the public’s ethical perception of the BCI technology is affected by the particular BCI type in question. This study thus considered whether the public experienced active and passive BCIs differently in the prominent ethical domains of personhood, responsibility and privacy. Results suggest that active BCIs induce a higher ethical concern regarding personhood, and that women experienced privacy to be more concerning in passive BCIs. There were no other significant differences between the two BCI types in the examined ethical domains. A regression analysis also indicated that a person’s general ethical concern for BCIs was unaffected by their demographical information. This study provides preliminary insights for the development of ethically informed BCI systems.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, 5037, Tilburg, AB, The Netherlands

    Ronja Rönnback, Fenna Blom & Maryam Alimardani

Authors
  1. Ronja Rönnback
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  2. Fenna Blom
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  3. Maryam Alimardani
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ronja Rönnback .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science and Engineering, Saga University, Saga, Japan

    Kohei Arai

Appendix A: Questionnaire Items

Appendix A: Questionnaire Items

Table 4. Questionnaire items used in the Users’ Information Privacy Concerns (UIPC) questionnaire [2]. Some items were slightly modified to fit the current study, as is shown by the text within brackets.
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Table 5. Questionnaire items used in the Frankenstein Syndrome Questionnaire (FSQ) [30]. Some items were slightly modified to fit the current study, as can be seen in brackets.
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Table 6. Questionnaire items used in the Public Attitudes Towards BCIs (PATBCI) questionnaire [27]. Some items were slightly modified to fit the current study.
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Table 7. Questionnaire items used in the public survey on the topic of BCIs (PS-BCI) [28]. Some items were slightly modified to fit the current study, as can be seen in brackets.
Full size table

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Rönnback, R., Blom, F., Alimardani, M. (2024). Ethical Concerns About Personhood, Responsibility, and Privacy in Active and Passive Brain-Computer Interfaces. In: Arai, K. (eds) Intelligent Systems and Applications. IntelliSys 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 822. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47721-8_12

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