How does it work

The scientist does not say anything about whether he will wear virtual reality headsets on prisoners’ heads, but what is seen in the video presentation is not far from this.

Al-Ghaili calls his own system Cognitiveize. Instead of keeping prisoners in prison for a long time, they will be rehabilitated by exposing them to artificial memories in a virtual environment. The system creates personalized content generated by artificial intelligence to create a long-term memory model, converted into visual information and transmitted to the prisoner’s brain as well as parts of the DNA and RNA associated with memory formation. New memories intertwine with existing memories, eliminating cognitive dissonance.

There is no ready technology yet, but Cognify is just an offer. But Al-Ghaili says animal experiments have proven that the process could work in humans in the future. For example, a study published in the journal Nature in March, testing mice, showed that memories can be formed with the help of broken and repaired DNA strands. This is how we can “plant” false memories.

Certainly, There are ethical implications and impacts to considerIf such a system becomes a reality. Questions arise about this approach, because the essence of imprisonment is precisely that a person remains behind bars in full consciousness for a certain period of time, understanding where he is and what is happening to him. If prisoners are to be in virtual reality with false memories, this undermines the essence of prison practices. Only as a result of this will there be no place for violence, theft and other crimes, we will be able to receive people with literally new views on life.

Al-Ghaili says Cogify could emerge within a decadebut only “if we can overcome the ethical constraints that prevent such technologies from being tested.”

See how it works: video