In 2019, Vox journalists feared that companies would be able to read people's minds, and called for legislation to enshrine the right to freedom of conscience, the inviolability of thoughts, and protection from their alteration. The Observer suggested that advertisers and large companies could replace users' consciousness by imitating the work of the brain.
But Adrian Carter, a neuroethicist at Monash University in Melbourne, says the technology hasn't yet reached a point where it's a cause for concern. Companies get enough information from smartphones that the human brain is unlikely to become a new source of information for them.
As Facebook noted, mind-reading technology was far from phone number list commercial application. Researchers began looking for a way to penetrate people's minds through sleep.
In July 2020, American scientists introduced the Dormio device and a new method of influencing humans, which they called targeted dream incubation. The researchers found that a person in a transitional state of sleep, hypnagogia, is susceptible to external stimuli.
Dormio determined when a person was between sleep and reality based on data on loss of muscle tone, changes in heart rate and changes in skin conductance. The glove then transmitted this information to Jibo, which was placed next to the subjects.