In this case the PPG sensor is pretty peripheral to the value proposition, which is why we can reduce it to just heart rate and still satisfy the needs of our c

In this case the PPG sensor is pretty peripheral to the value proposition, which is why we can reduce it to just heart rate and still satisfy the needs of our customers (application developers). There are a number of other biometrics used which are more salient for what we're looking at, which is generally related to training people on new skills or relearning existing skills differently than they were originally learned. Most of the applications so far are non-defense and pretty non controversial. I'd genuinely be happy to talk about it with you offline but would rather not publically associate the product with that story because the product is pretty cool overall, and I'm a major technology skeptic in general so it takes me a lot to decide something is potentially valuable and not evil. Also the main misunderstanding there was the point: "No, our API does not expose that raw PPG sensor data so no application developer could make that inference". In terms of stepping back...I agree. I've done that on previous projects, left companies or forced gross changes in architecture to satisfy my conscience. It really helps this time that I'm working with a lot of people who aren't afraid to share stories like this one and talk about them candidly, as well as share links on public internal Teams groups about all kinds of privacy concerns over biometrics (theres no fear of creating a paper trail which shows "we knew or should have known"). As we are building the "platform" rather than the applications, everyone genuinely seems to feel it's important to limit the harm that third party developers can cause. And for now at least, the product is actually quite hobbled by erring towards safety. That said when you ask "what are the useful applications", that's a very difficult question for me to answer right now. Mainly I think the platform has a ton of potential, but each third party application development probably needs a lot more psychology doctoral level research to properly apply the platforms capabilities for each third party applications specific situation. And in lieu of that, developers have to either get lucky or have incredibly good intuition about the domains and people that they're creating applications for.