How might neurotechnology impact AI safety for good or for ill? Looking forward to participating in the Australian AI Safety Forum 2026 at the University of Sydney on 7-8 July in order consider this idea . We would love to hear from others here on the blog about the neural democratisation of AI hypothesis and how it might relate safety (see below).
Michael Bain (UNSW), Allan McCay (Usyd) Avinash Singh (UTS)
“Neurotechnology, neural democratisation and AI safety”.
https://www.aisafetyforum.au/events/2026-forum/program/cmq944q46000905jr8f1z8snx
Abstract
A recent paper introduces the "neural democratisation of AI" (Bain & McCay, 2024), suggesting that advanced neurotechnology will increase data and help neuroscientists build better brain models. AI researchers could leverage these insights to create more sample- and energy-efficient, human-like models, lowering the barrier to frontier AI development. However, this democratisation presents economic, regulatory, and geopolitical risks. If a broader range of companies and countries can develop frontier models, regulation becomes significantly harder, potentially compromising safety. While it is open whether neurotechnology will fundamentally advance AI, emerging approaches already integrate user brain states with multimodal input. For example, EEG wave patterns can improve transformer performance by reweighting attention during token-processing (Short et al., 2026). This lightning talk will outline the hypothesis and its safety implications. Will neural democratisation undermine safety by multiplying regulatory targets, or might brain-inspired AI yield safety gains as Mineault et al. (2025) have suggested?
References
"The neural democratisation of AI" by M. Bain, A. McCay. AI & Soc 39, 2589–2591 (2024).
"Steering Transformer Attention with Human EEG" by C. Short, S. Basart, S. Erisken; Proc. First Workshop on NeuroAI Multimodal Intelligence, PMLR 308:199-204 (2026)
“NeuroAI for AI Safety” Preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.18526 (2025), P. Mineault, N Zanichelli, J Z Peng, A Arkhipov, E. Bingham, J Jara-Ettinger, E Mackevicius, A Marblestone, M Mattar, A Payne, S Sanborn, K Schroeder, Z Tavares, A Tolias
Mike and I started work on these ideas with this paper “The neural democratisation of AI”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-023-01706-0
Looking forward to continuing the discussion – Mike, Avinash and I will all be there for our lightning talk and are keen to chat about these ideas at the Forum or hear views of others others working in related areas on this blog if Australia is too far!
