Nataliya Kosmyna
Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab | Visiting Faculty at Google | Brain-Computer Interface Pioneer | Lead Author of Your Brain on ChatGPT | UNESCO Neurotech Ethics Expert
Nita Farahany
World's Leading Neuroethics Scholar | Duke Law Professor | Author, Cognitive Extinction & The Battle for Your Brain | UNESCO Neurotech Ethics Co-Chair
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Nita Farahany is the world's foremost authority on what happens when AI meets the human mind. A Duke Law professor, Obama-appointed bioethics commissioner, and author of The Battle for Your Brain and Cognitive Extinction, she helped shape the first global standard on neurotechnology ethics. On stage, she gives senior leaders clear frameworks for deciding which thinking to hand to AI and which to protect.
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Nita Farahany biography
AI speaker Nita Farahany is the world’s foremost authority on the ethical, legal, and societal implications of neurotechnology and artificial intelligence, the scholar who championed the concept of cognitive liberty and has spent two decades making the case that mental privacy is the defining rights frontier of our era. She is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law and Philosophy at Duke Law School and Faculty Chair of the Duke MA in Bioethics and Science Policy.
Farahany holds a bachelor’s in genetics from Dartmouth, a master’s in biology from Harvard, and both a JD and a PhD in philosophy from Duke, credentials that let her move fluently between the laboratory, the courtroom, and the policy chamber. She clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, taught at Vanderbilt Law, and was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Stanford Law. President Obama appointed her to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, where she served for seven years.
Her book The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology became an international reference, informing legal frameworks, congressional testimony, and a global conversation on mental privacy. In Cognitive Extinction: Saving Human Thought While We Still Can (St. Martin’s Press), she turns to an even broader threat: how constant digital life and AI-driven offloading are wearing away our ability to think deeply, connect, and stay present, and how individuals and institutions can rebuild those capacities.
Defining the Global Agenda on Cognitive Liberty
Farahany served as U.S. delegate and elected co-chair of the UNESCO expert group whose work produced the first global standard on the ethics of neurotechnology. She chairs the Uniform Law Commission study committee on mental privacy, has served on World Economic Forum Global Future Councils, and is a past president of the International Neuroethics Society. She founded the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, has been elected to the American Law Institute, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was named to the Vox Future Perfect 50.
As a speaker, Nita Farahany commands rooms that span C-suites, legislatures, and scientific institutions with a rare blend of technical depth, legal precision, and moral urgency. She has addressed TED, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the Aspen Ideas Festival. Audiences leave informed and ready to act, with a clear grasp of what AI and neurotechnology mean for their organizations, their people, and their own minds.
Nita Farahany Speaking Videos
Your Right to Mental Privacy in the Age of Brain-Sensing Tech | Nita Farahany | TED
When technology can read minds, how will we protect our privacy? | Nita Farahany
Nita Farahany Speaking Topics
As AI takes on more of our reading, writing, deciding, and remembering, something valuable is quietly at risk: our own ability to think deeply and independently. Drawing on her book Cognitive Extinction, Farahany examines how offloading cognition to machines can weaken attention, judgment, relationships, and even our awareness of our own bodies. She gives leaders a practical framework for deciding which thinking to hand to AI and which to protect, so their people stay sharp, creative, and fully human.
Brain-sensing technology has left the realm of science fiction. Wearable EEGs are already deployed in workplaces across Asia and Europe, AI systems can infer emotion, attention, and intent from physiological signals, and the generative tools reshaping knowledge work are beginning to touch our cognitive processes in ways we scarcely understand. Farahany lays out this terrain with precision: the genuine medical and productivity breakthroughs alongside the risks of mental surveillance, cognitive warfare, and the erosion of the last truly private space we possess. Audiences leave with a clear framework for what cognitive liberty means for their organizations and what protecting it will require.
From fatigue-detection headbands in mining operations to tools that read emotional states during video calls, neurotechnology is entering the enterprise faster than most HR and legal teams realize. Farahany examines the real tradeoffs: the legitimate safety and productivity gains set against the morale, creativity, and trust costs of monitoring mental states without consent. She offers a framework for adopting these tools in ways that motivate rather than police, building the employee trust that makes innovation possible in the first place.
What does it mean to think freely when AI can augment, replicate, and increasingly anticipate our cognition? Farahany reframes the generative AI debate, moving past automation anxiety to show how human relational intelligence, mental agility, and self-awareness become the premium skills of an AI-augmented world. Drawing on neuroscience and law, she shows audiences how to treat AI as a genuine cognitive partner while protecting the qualities of human thought no algorithm can reproduce.
Privacy law was built for a world in which thoughts stayed safely inside the skull. That world is ending. Farahany sets out why cognitive liberty, the right to mental self-determination, is fast becoming the most consequential human rights question of the coming decade, and what governments, corporations, and individuals must do to establish guardrails before the technology outpaces any meaningful response. Built for policy, legal, and senior executive audiences who need not just the risks but the architecture of a solution.
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FAQs on Booking Nita Farahany
Booking Nita Farahany means bringing the world's most credible voice on neurotechnology, AI ethics, and cognitive liberty to your stage. As the author of The Battle for Your Brain and Cognitive Extinction who co-chaired the UNESCO expert group behind the first global standard on neurotechnology ethics, she speaks with an authority no commentator or futurist can replicate. What makes her exceptional on stage is the rare blend of technical fluency and accessibility: she makes the most complex intersections of AI, neuroscience, and law tangible, urgent, and actionable for audiences across industries. Whether your event centers on AI strategy, the future of work, corporate culture, or responsible technology adoption, Farahany shifts how senior audiences think and act. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to check availability and discuss your event.
Cognitive liberty is the right to mental self-determination, the freedom to control your own brain, thoughts, and mental experiences without unauthorized external interference. Nita Farahany developed and championed this concept as the foundational framework for the age of neurotechnology, and her advocacy helped inform the first global standard on the ethics of neurotechnology. As brain-sensing wearables, AI systems capable of interpreting emotional and cognitive states, and consumer EEG devices reach workplaces, classrooms, and homes, cognitive liberty is fast becoming the most contested human rights issue of the coming decade.
In The Battle for Your Brain, Farahany offers a rigorous yet accessible exploration of how advances in neurotechnology and artificial intelligence create unprecedented new abilities to monitor, decode, and potentially manipulate human thought and emotion. She argues that society sits at an inflection point: the same technologies that can diagnose neurological disorders early, boost productivity, and enhance cognition also enable new forms of mental surveillance by employers, governments, and corporations. The book lays out a framework for protecting cognitive liberty while embracing the genuine opportunities these technologies offer, and it has been adopted in policy, legal, and academic settings worldwide.
Nita Farahany speaks on neurotechnology and mental privacy, cognitive liberty and human rights in the AI age, the ethics of generative AI and brain-computer interfaces, neurotech in the workplace, and how organizations can adopt emerging technologies responsibly without sacrificing employee trust or dignity. Her talks are built for senior leadership audiences facing the real-world implications of AI, with decisions that need to be made today. To book Nita Farahany for your next event, contact Aurum Speakers Bureau.
Cognitive Extinction: Saving Human Thought While We Still Can, published by St. Martin’s Press, argues that constant digital life and the growing habit of offloading thinking to AI are eroding our capacity to think freely, connect with others, and stay present. Farahany shows how these lost capacities can be rebuilt, starting with individuals who choose to protect their minds, and what organizations and societies can do to help.
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Nita Farahany speaking fees are determined by several factors, including the event's date, whether it's a virtual or in-person event, the duration, format, preparation required for their speech, and more. The same applies to the cost to hire any other top expert speakers and celebrities. The Speaker Fee Range listed on our website is simply a guideline and is subject to change without notice. If you would like to hire Nita Farahany to deliver a keynote speech for your event, please fill out the contact form or email us at info@aurumbureau.com with as much detail as possible. One of our experienced agents will get in touch with you and let you know exactly how much it will cost to book Nita Farahany.
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