As long as neuromarketing is carried out by people who are reasonably minded and of an ethical nature themselves, then I think the dangers of this activity are small. It is not the activity itself, the dangers arise because in most cases the marketers are neither reasonably minded nor have any understanding of ethics. The checks and balances that used to operate automatically via the financial cost/benefit system no longer work well if neither the cost nor benefit of activities can be rigorously quantified. We have to fall back on regulations, which can be years behind the technology. Even worse is the advent of deep learning systems connected to practically unlimited social databases (Facebook, Google etc) with the aim of discovering terribly accurately the behaviour of many diverse groups of people so that someone can profit from it. I want to know just how one finds out exactly what these things are learning, and exactly what they intend to do with it. I have asked this question on RG before and nobody seems to know how you get into a deep learning system and find out precisely what it has learned, without it knowing about it and being able to deliberately block or confuse your efforts.

As long as neuromarketing is carried out by people who are reasonably minded and of an ethical nature themselves, then I think the dangers of this activity are small. It is not the activity itself, the dangers arise because in most cases the marketers are neither reasonably minded nor have any understanding of ethics. The checks and balances that used to operate automatically via the financial cost/benefit system no longer work well if neither the cost nor benefit of activities can be rigorously quantified. We have to fall back on regulations, which can be years behind the technology. Even worse is the advent of deep learning systems connected to practically unlimited social databases (Facebook, Google etc) with the aim of discovering terribly accurately the behaviour of many diverse groups of people so that someone can profit from it. I want to know just how one finds out exactly what these things are learning, and exactly what they intend to do with it. I have asked this question on RG before and nobody seems to know how you get into a deep learning system and find out precisely what it has learned, without it knowing about it and being able to deliberately block or confuse your efforts.

Hello,

These two articles may be of interest to you: "Can Brain Imaging Breach Our Mental Privacy?” by Amihud Gilead, and "Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology” by Marcello Ienca and Roberto Andorno.

Many thanks for your answers!