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Would you trust the answers from a thing like that?
Millions, if not billions, of people all over the world have discussed which House of Hogwarts they would be chosen for by the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter.
Unfortunately, magic isn’t real, so the discussion will have to stay academic — unless you turn to science.
Because, believe it or not: a Russian biotech company has created a real-life “sorting hat” for students unsure about what career path to choose.
From cows to pigeons to teenagers
The company, Neiry, specialises in neuro- and biotechnology and has even created “biodrones” by putting brain implants into pigeons in order to control them.
Before that, Neiry used brain implants in cows to increase milk production.
The sorting hat, however, is designed for humans — specifically teenagers.
How it works
According to a press release from the company, released in October 2024, the users of the “Brainy” service, as it’s called, start out by wearing a brain–computer interface on the head.
The interface, which is a headband with electrodes, then reads the user’s brain in order to create an electroencephalogram (EEG) and photoplethysmogram (PPG).
According to Neiry, the team is then able to use the data to determine a student’s predisposition to a specific career path, as well as show the state of the teenager’s brain.
But why?
According to a survey from 2024, Russians are mostly guided by family opinions and personal preferences when choosing a career path.
The purpose of Brainy is to find out what a student is actually good at, and then recommend a career path suited to the student’s abilities.
“For example, with Brainy, we can see that a child is productive and engaged in creative fields, but IT is stressful, making it difficult for the teenager to maintain concentration. In such cases, parental pressure to pursue an IT program will be an additional stress factor and can negatively impact professional success and even family relationships,” explains Kristina Kudryavtseva, head of the Brainy service, in the press release.
But let’s remove the headband and put on our thinking caps instead — because given the current societal situation in Russia, this technology could easily be exploited for the cause of evil.
Do you know how to read an EEG?
When people in the West see a physician or a medical specialist, we trust what the person is telling us. We haven’t got the expertise that they do, and we trust that they want to do good.
But what happens when a regime doesn’t care about its citizens and instead has expansionist ambitions? You know, like Russia anno 2025?
Reports of Russians being pressured, forced, and blackmailed into joining the army, as well as several reports of foreigners being scammed into joining the Russian war machine, paint a grim picture — and who’s to say that the Kremlin won’t use this technology to nudge their teenagers to pursue military service?
Whether or not they actually want to, or are even suited.
We know that this is all speculation, but is the thought really that far-fetched?
