September 16, 2016

Monkeys Are Finally Writing Shakespeare, Thanks To A New Brain-Computer Interface

You don’t need an infinite number of monkeys to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare.

What you need, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University, is one monkey equipped with a brain implant that allows it to interface with a computer.

In a new experiment described in the journal IEEE, researchers were able to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to enable thought-controlled typing at a rate of up to 12 words a minute — the highest brain-based typing rate ever achieved. In the experiment conducted on two rhesus macaques, the animals were able to transcribe passages from Hamlet and the New York Times.

You don’t need an infinite number of monkeys to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare.

What you need, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University, is one monkey equipped with a brain implant that allows it to interface with a computer.

In a new experiment described in the journal IEEE, researchers were able to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to enable thought-controlled typing at a rate of up to 12 words a minute — the highest brain-based typing rate ever achieved. In the experiment conducted on two rhesus macaques, the animals were able to transcribe passages from Hamlet and the New York Times.

You don’t need an infinite number of monkeys to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare.

What you need, according to a team of researchers from Stanford University, is one monkey equipped with a brain implant that allows it to interface with a computer.

In a new experiment described in the journal IEEE, researchers were able to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to enable thought-controlled typing at a rate of up to 12 words a minute — the highest brain-based typing rate ever achieved. In the experiment conducted on two rhesus macaques, the animals were able to transcribe passages from Hamlet and the New York Times.

When it comes to humans, this technology can be paired with an auto-completion technology used by smartphones or tablets in order to drastically improve typing speeds. On the flip side, however, the typing speeds of humans using the technology is likely to be slowed down by the fact that they need to actually think about what they want to communicate and how to spell words.

“What we cannot quantify is the cognitive load of figuring out what words you are trying to say,” Nuyujukian said.