A new United Nations report is sounding the alarm on another potential risk of our constantly evolving world: technology that could allow governments to “read minds” via brainwave interfaces. While your inner thoughts are mostly safe for now, the U.N. is worried this may not always be the case.

‘Significant risks’
The U.N. believes this type of “neurotechnology” is advancing so quickly that “governments’ ability to access and manipulate people’s brains could one day pose a threat to fundamental human rights,” said The New York Times, which first published the U.N. report. Neurotechnology “raises profound human rights challenges when applied to the administration of justice,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in the report, and its “expansion beyond clinical settings into investigative, judicial and correctional contexts introduces significant risks.”

This is not the first time the U.N. has issued warnings about the matter. The organization has been concerned about military applications of neurotechnology, especially “brain-computer interfaces, which translate brain activity into commands that can control devices such as computers or robotic prosthetic limbs,” said Politico. The U.N. fears that if a “brain-computer interface is used inappropriately by the military, it could lead to human rights abuses.”

In 2022, UNESCO also published a report on the ethical issues of neurotechnology. Unlike “many other frontier technologies, neurotechnology can directly access, manipulate and emulate the structure of the brain, which is central to notions of human identity, freedom of thought, autonomy, privacy and well-being,” said UNESCO’s report. Still, this marks the first time the U.N. as a whole is waving such a large red flag.

‘Number of recommendations’
The U.N. proposes in its report some solutions to safeguard advancing neurotechnologies. It lists a “number of recommendations, including establishing regulations consistent with international law, recognizing thoughts as ‘highly sensitive personal data’ and requiring explicit consent for the use of neurotechnology in criminal justice settings,” said the Times.

The report also gives “states an opportunity to establish clear rules to regulate the use of neurotechnology, based on human rights,” said Jeremy Laurence, a spokesman for the U.N. Human Rights Office, to the Times. This should be accomplished before the technologies “become routine in investigations, courts and prisons.”

October 6 “may go down as one of the most consequential days in the history of mathematics,” said The Economist. Less than a month after claiming to have solved the long-standing Navier-Stokes problem, OpenAI released 722 papers proving or disproving math problems spanning from algebraic geometry to number theory. The announcement, dubbed mathpocalypse, has left many questioning the future of their field of study and whether there will be any human-led math in the future.

What did the commentators say?
“If you want some sense of what things feel like now in math, imagine a hunter-gatherer who has spent his entire life learning to survive deep in an unforgiving rainforest,” and then a “giant resort hotel springs up right next to him with a helipad and heated pools and Airbnbs,” said Scott Aaronson, the chair of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, to Sky News. 

This is “heartbreaking” for our community, said Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta Magazine. Math problems are posed less because answers will be “practical and important” but rather because they “represent interesting journeys.” As we “struggle to solve a problem,” we might “come up with intriguing tools and connections,” stumble on new ideas, and “answer new questions.” AI models “just skip to the end.” 

Some researchers have stopped positing open conjectures to ensure they are not “scraped by bots,” said Cepelewicz. Others are publishing papers prematurely to avoid getting “scooped” by AI. The fear is that new blood will no longer be attracted to modern mathematics, resulting in a “whole lost generation.”

“Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship but a demonstration of power,” said the Association for Human Mathematics in a statement. “We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centers human understanding.” 

But the “floodgates are open,” said Joseph Howlett at Scientific American. This is the “biggest math breakthrough in two decades.” Yet the “consequences of this race are becoming harder and harder to predict.” 

What next?
Verifying OpenAI’s claimed breakthroughs will take years. Many of the papers are more than 100 pages long, and only 127 are “accompanied by a code guaranteeing logical consistency (a norm in the field),” with internal reasoning published for only 10, said The Economist. “For now, the mathematical problems AI is revealing are more existential than numerical.” 

A demonstrator throws a Molotov cocktail during clashes with police following a protest against Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella in Bogota. Thousands of Colombians took to the city streets across the country to oppose the policies of the new right-wing leader.
Pierre Bioult / AFP / Getty Images

The popularity of the NBA, which begins its season on Tuesday, skyrocketed starting in the early 1980s. And the heightened salience of the growing fast-paced sport in American popular culture has created its own literary canon, including these four standouts.

‘The Breaks of the Game’
David Halberstam embedded himself with the 1979-1980 Portland Trail Blazers and describes the daily travails of a team struggling to return to championship form. It’s “one of the best books I have ever read about American sports,” said Christopher Lehmann-Haupt at The New York Times about the 1981 book.

‘Hoop Dreams: A True Story of Hardship and Triumph’
Ben Joravsky movingly chronicles the lives and challenges of the celebrated film documentary’s protagonists, Arthur Agee and William Gates, both of whom hailed from troubled Chicago neighborhoods. “Hoop Dreams” is “at once a heart-wrenching and uplifting story of survival,” said Publisher’s Weekly about the 1995 book.

‘Showtime’
The 1980s-era Los Angeles Lakers won five NBA championships, and Jeff Pearlman covered the dramatic achievements of the team on the hardwood in addition to its off-court exploits. The 2014 book functions as an “excavation of a long-lost era, as well as a pulsing, utterly relevant roadmap into our 21st-century sports celebrity culture,” said Dave Zirin at The Nation.

‘The Whore of Akron’
Esquire’s Scott Raab followed LeBron James in the years before and after he left the Cleveland Cavaliers in a 2011 book that doubles as a kind of memoir of the writer’s tumultuous personal life. It’s a story of a “truly talented writer pouring his heart and soul into a book about a city he loves,” said John Krolik at Cavs: the blog.