How Long Before Telepathy Tech Is a Reality?

For decades the arena of artificial intelligence has undergone incredible advancements and innovations. Now, the phenomenon has been taken one step further, with scientists claiming that telepathy technology could soon become a reality.

Facebook gets fancy

The buzz was initially created by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. During one of his regular Q&A sessions the social media guru revealed that his company is currently researching the field of thought transmission. It’s a somewhat terrifying concept, with Zuckerberg explaining “One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology. You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you’d like.”

All of Facebook’s three New York, Menlo Park and Paris based AI labs are currently working on developing cutting edge social technology capable of selecting what we see and predicting what we want to know. Zuckerberg’s prophecy of an all-encompassing sensory experience designed to foster “richer relationships with people we love and care about” is part of his plan to offer Facebook users a social experience unlike any other.

While Zuckerberg’s claim received a plethora of publicity, he isn’t the first to mention the concept of telepathy technology. In the past both the University of Washington and Harvard Medical School have both referred to the idea, however they received nowhere near as much attention.

But is it really possible?

While Zuckerberg’s vision may seem farfetched scientists have successfully managed to facilitate brain-to-brain communication between rats. Two years ago researchers at the University of Washington took the concept to the next level. They used an individual’s brain signal to magnetically stimulate the motor cortex of another human and prompt them to push a ‘fire’ button on a video game. In 2014 another experiment saw a French based computer interpret the brain activity of a person thinking the word ‘hola.’ The information was then sent to India, converted into a light sequence and interpreted in another person’s brain as the same word.  

These are electrifying developments yet they are also incredibly complex. Zuckerberg’s telepathy technology vision would involve the manipulation of 100 billion brain neurons, as well as an eye-wateringly sophisticated computer system. Whether or not the next generation concept actually comes to life is yet to be seen.

What we do know is the fact that the computer has come a long way since U.S. patent 3,120,606 for ENIAC was granted back in 1964. ‘Celebrating 50 Years of Computing at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’ looks back on the history of the world’s first general-purpose computer that supported UK scientists and researchers for over a decade.