We are inching closer to the sci-fi future that we only used to see in movies. With flying and self-driving cars already in existence, the idea of AI prisons is now being floated where criminals would be conditioned to regret their actions and even get new memories.

Virtual Prison Where Criminals Become Patients

It sounds a lot like a dystopian concept, and a lot of people agree. Yemeni molecular biologist and science communicator, Hashem Al-Ghaili presented a concept where criminals will live their sentence in a virtual world where they would be subjected to various forms of conditioning.

With the incarceration rate in the US per 100,000 now higher than in other countries, the virtual prison, which is being called Cognify, serves as a solution as the criminals will only be put in the AI prison in just a few minutes.

As the criminals are put under, the facility will be capable of creating and implanting artificial memories directly into the person's brain. Generated by AI, the "memories" will be vivid and life-like that the prisoners would not be able to discern from reality.

The experience won't be the same for all participants as it will depend on how heavy their crimes are. For instance, violent offenders may experience memories that can trigger empathy and remorse as they see their crime through the perspective of the victim.

It won't always be first-hand experience from the victim's perspective. The artificial memories can also be designed to trigger consequences and trauma, wherein the prisoner would experience the grief of the family left behind by the victim.

How It Works

The criminals will be given the choice between finishing their sentence through prison or using Cognify where they will go through rehabilitation for just a few minutes. Upon choosing the latter, they will undergo high-resolution brain scanning to create a detailed map of their brains.

This will help the Cognify device determine which brain regions to target, which will be worn around the head of the patient. It will have an emotion regulation system that can modulate neurotransmitters and hormones which will induce specific emotional states.

The prisoners will be tracked through the entire process using feedback mechanisms, allowing the device to track the neural responses as the artificial memories are being implanted and adapt when needed.

To make sure that the therapy is effective, some of the implanted memories could even be fully integrated into the prisoner's mind like it was their own memory. The subjects will then be released back into society.

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Potential Issues

There are a lot of ethical problems that can be raised with this proposition. For one, There's no way of knowing if the rehabilitation process worked at all, which means that they will be releasing a potentially dangerous criminal back into the world.

Others raised the concern that the justice system does not always apprehend the guilty party and persecutes the innocent instead. Even if criminals choose this option, they won't fully know what they will experience until they are already under the simulation.

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