Do infinite monkeys typing on infinite keyboards eventually write out Hamlet? The answer is definitely yes, but the interesting part is that even one monkey can type out Hamlet, or a copy of The New York Times. That’s exactly what scientists at Stanford University achieved by scanning the monkey’s brain and teaching it to type out letters using telepathy science.
Stanford researchers achieved an impressive result recently, when brain-scanning technology, also called a brain-computer interface (BCI), allowed a monkey to control a cursor on a screen and type out a line from Hamlet. The technology could be used to allow paralyzed people to communicate even if they can’t move their body at all.
While devices, such as prosthetic limbs that use our muscles’ electrical signals, aren’t new, the Stanford approach is different, because it relies on the brain’s own signals. Using long-term implantable electrodes, the scientist were able to develop a robust algorithm that could translate electrical signals in the brain, essentially thoughts, into usable inputs for a cursor on a screen.
Patients - or rather, in this preliminary test case, monkeys - were able to then control a cursor and type out sentences using their thoughts alone, as you can see in the video above. The two monkeys that trialed the system, named L and J, were able to achieve typing speeds of around 10 and 7 words per minute. While that’s about as fast as your grandma trying to send a text message, the scientists are confident the system is robust and agile enough for a basic conversation.
Interestingly, the scientists also showed in their paper that there’s a direct correlation between the typing speed and the amount of information being captured by the electrodes. In other words, there’s now an upper bound on typing speeds, or communication speeds for that matter of fact, given specific brain-computer interfaces.
While you won’t find this technology everywhere in the near future, the scientists are trialing it out with real humans now and it may be another tool to help those affected by paralysis.