> A machine learning algorithm then decodes the brain patterns associated with each letter, and a computer displays the letters on a screen. The participant was able to communicate at about 90 characters, or 18 words, per minute.
> By comparison, able-bodied people close in age to the study participant can type on a smartphone at about 23 words per minute, the authors say. Adults can type on a full keyboard at an average of about 40 words per minute.
I had no idea average typing speed is this slow, though the extreme slowness of touchscreen typing is no surprise.
I'm curious about the WPM test methodology; for example if all those studies use a standardised method or not. Because at least the various WPM testing tools and websites are extremely inconsistent in different aspects.
My own typing speed ranges from ~40WPM to ~110WPM depending on what tool or test method I'm using. For example some tests just use any random word from the dictionary, which of course includes very long and complicated ones, others go as far as to limit themselves to the 100 most common English words. And even with those factors being identical I can still get different speeds depending on the UI; the cursor movement, presentation of the text and input latency all have a measurable impact on the end result.
My average typing speed is 80-110, but I can max out at 121. This is for standard english words, not the crazy blocks of letters and special characters used for competition, which IMO isn't practical for the average user.
I actually spend a few minutes every few weeks taking typing tests etc, as it's a valuable skill to me.
I figure if the average typing speed is somewhere between 50-80 WPM, if I can type 50% faster, in theory, I'm responding to emails and commenting in general 50% faster.
It's just a nicer experience using a computer if you can type fast. Sometimes it's easier to command-backspace and retype an entire line/word than it is to move the cursor and correct the error. It's also just plain nice to have only your thoughts to worry about when typing and not have the cognitive overhead of trying to keep track of where all the letters on the keyboard are.
All in all, I would recommend improving your typing speed if you spend any type of meaningful time on a computer.
A fun 1-minute test that is somewhat practical here: 10fastfingers.com
65 year olds now had the same 30+ years as everyone else to get up to speed on computers but most still lean on the “hey you know I’m X-years old so you know me and computers don’t get along especially with the texting heh heh”
As there are also plenty of competent typists and computer users at that age, It’s all about the influences, wonder how I can avoid that and brain plasticity excuses
I can do about 45-50 wpm on my phone with swype typing. It would probably be faster, but words like "our" and "off" are hard because it seems like it's luck whether the keyboard picks "or" or "our", of/off.
Swype is pretty great for writing with a phone. I kind of wish there was an improved Swype though.
I suspect much of the population either doesn't type much, or doesn't make much of an effort to type faster. My average is in the 140-160WPM range (to try to type at 40WPM consistently I would have to be deliberately slow, as even one-handed I'll easily go over 60), although I never learned touch-typing formally; I attribute it to spending extensive amounts of time in using IM, which basically forces you to type quickly you want to keep a reasonably natural pace of conversation and not lose your thoughts. Then again, I've interacted with much younger coworkers, many of whom were surprised at the speed at which I could return a reply (in full sentences with punctuation, without abbreviations and such) in a chat, so I'm not sure if the motivation is still there today --- especially with audio/video calls being more common.
Touchscreen typing on native keyboards always feels slow to me, but with apps like SwiftKey which remap the boundaries of the virtual keyboard to better match your intended keystrokes I can type significantly faster. Add swiping and completion to that and I'm pretty confident one can easily beat that 23wpm mark
For the record, it looks like the record for typing on standard keyboards is 212 WPM (on both QWERTY and DVORAK, amusingly), while the record on a stenography keyboard is 375 WPM.
Once this read the mind thing matures, so much of the software will have to be rewritten. Even now sometimes I have to joke around in office "PC is slower than me" because I gave certain commands in sequence and it is still performing them one by one while I wait for computer to catch up. Now imaging this, command directly from brain to the machine. In engineering world, It would increase the productivity by at et least 4x I guess.
Currently to draw a line in AutoCAD, I have to either move the mouse to a "line" button and click it. OR type a command "line" if my hands are on keyboard. Now If I had a direct interface with the machine, just the the thought of "Draw a line" and software is line-drawing mode. Add eye tracking to it, and I simply look at the point on the screen when line shall start and say in my head "here"...... opportuties are endless.
Computer will have difficult time catching up with the amount of commands we are capable of issuing to it. BRING IT ON.
It was 2006, when I did Speec-To-Text data entry of 200+ mobile numbers using good old Windows XP. Progress seems to be have been too slow since than.
the ideal CAD operator has a series of personalized single key shortcuts on their left hand.
I challenge you to put your top ten commands on single key or double-same key (e.g. zz) shortcuts on the left side of the keyboard. Your CAD skills will speed up significantly once these become muscle memory.
But comparing speeds isn't really necessary or even relevant. For a person that literally has no other way to communicate nobody will be complaining the can type 20% slower than a person with a smartphone. The fact they can type at all is important.
Now, for the speeds, I type 80wpm/400cpm but what is more important I can also freely think while I do so. I don't even know consciously where the keys are on the keyboard, I need to focus on a character and then see where the finger goes as if I was bystander, a passenger of a mech body that observes it do something.
I can only assume that writing with brain-computer interface requires incredible focus and most likely engagement of visual cortex which would preclude from using it for anything else (so no ability to imagine any imagery while typing).
Why make a cynical assumption at all? Francis R. Willett, Donald T. Avansino, Leigh R. Hochberg, Jaimie M. Henderson, and Krishna V. Shenoy are real people. You could, you know, just ask them.
It's silly that it's hidden, because 18 WPM for a quadriplegic still seems extremely impressive to me, given that it's just working from brain electrodes and not some muscle the person can control. Yes, the headline is silly, because by hiding it it ended up causing the snark about 18 WPM being slow.
I'm surprised, though, that the most efficient way to do this is still to have the person imagine physically drawing the letters by hand. I know motor neurons are probably our most reliable output, but I would still think that, with all the advances in training from noisy data in the past decade, that training what the thought of "A", "B" etc look like in the head would be doable.
Or even what the thought of hearing or saying "A", "B" etc looks like. The auditory cortex is activated when we imagine sounds. Or, if they wanted to stick to motor neurons, could they have the person imagine saying the letters with their mouth?
I'm sure they've thought about this stuff and it's harder than it seems, of course. But I would just predict that brain-computer interfaces 20 years from now won't involve imagining using your hand to write letters.
Lots of discussion of WPM speed. Prof. Shenoy presented at our weekly seminar (shameless plug - https://twitter.com/RiceNeuro) a couple of weeks ago. I think he considers the goal to be reaching the rate of speech, which is about 150 WPM. Beyond that, I think that there's a strong argument that our brain is not completely generating/processing thought fast enough to substantially increase output rate.
> The participant was able to communicate at about 90 characters, or 18 words, per minute.
> By comparison, able-bodied people close in age to the study participant can type on a smartphone at about 23 words per minute, the authors say. Adults can type on a full keyboard at an average of about 40 words per minute.
Speaking of BCI, there are startups intent on implanting thousands of nanoscale sensors directly in the brain to gather copious amounts of data directly.
"You are seeing this advert because we detected that you thought about the Budwesier 'Wassup!' advert that aired 22 years ago and it increased dopamine uptake by 3.7%"
I wouldn't call it "copious amounts of data directly" you still gotta train yourself to use it, and the interface itself should train itself to recognize it.
It might be enough to make people walk again though.
That's surprising to me. I mean, if I could put on a headband or hat and "type," hands free and wirelessly, on any connected Bluetooth device, that would be pretty incredible even if it only went at a portion of my current speed/accuracy.
Obviously, that's still sci fi at this point, but that's what you seem to be rejecting here.
What's the better measure of typing speed: full words correct with no typos, or full words typos included?
A buddy of mine used some timing app for our typing speeds, you had to backspace repeatedly to retype a word if you misspelled it. I argued that is unrealistic, you can just use spell check or just catch the typos during your editing read through.
If you want to measure this, you're interested in the combination of reading speed and muscle memory while typing. If you're making typos, your muscle memory is not good. Using a spell checker to automatically fix those words... Well, the number is not comparable, then.
My typing class in high school only accepted perfect speed tests. No errors at all. Given how many typos I see in even business correspondence, I wonder if 'editing read through' has gone the way of the manual typewriter :-P
Apologies to those who've heard it before, but whenever BCI comes up I feel obliged to point out that, when you connect a computer to a brain, the brain is the more sophisticated information processor.
Use hypnosis.
You can have effective fast communication to the machine without any fancy technology (and certainly without surgery!) The subjective experience is "think to type". I expect that these days you can use a camera and ML to "read thoughts" directly from facial muscles, no need for GVR or IMUs on the fingers.
Interesting that the method for this interface was imagining writing the word, I guess too many random thoughts would enter your writing if it was just based on mental-verbalizing (saying it in your head).
It would be really cool to have a BCI that runs off mental-verbalizing and have a chopper style rapper use it (eg. Busta Rhymes). Imagine people doing transcription learning chopping as skill to get an edge on their job!
This is the "next" technology I'm excited about. A cap/something that lets me provide another input device to my machine where I can treat it like a keyboard. Imagine being able to think about a chord and have that input sent to stdin.
What could be extra cool is just imagining a loop construct in your head and it just appears in your text editor.
A neat thing is this uses a language model reduce the error rate a lot. Autocorrect, conceptually, though theirs is offline rather than as-you-input. In a way the clever software involved is maybe the thing that most makes it relevant to this site.
Other tricks we use for noisy touchscreen input could apply here too. For one thing, we've got different models for to collect input. You could try offering autocompletions/predictions to make typing long words faster (long a thing in e.g. single-switch input tools), if watching a screen doesn't slow the person down much. You could try a swipe-like flow where you collect a chunk of data imprecisely but fast (mentally type or scribble a whole word, say), then offer choices.
(Thinking about other extremes, I wonder if there's a way at faster input using a T9-like reduced alphabet (3x3 grid, pick row and column?) or something like that. Or if it could someday work to for people to try to speak or visualize words instead of handwrite.)
You might be able to glue the letter decoding and language model together more closely--feed the letter-decoding NN's uncertainty and less-probable guesses (25% chance this 'e' was really an 'l') to the lang model.
You could learn a person-specific language model, seeding it with a person's writings/speech before the injury or disease (if available), whatever else you think they might need (family/friend names, care requests, etc.), and training the language model as they use the interface (paper already does that with the character-recognizing model).
You could do explicit "mutual training"--while the machine samples how you write letters, it can show you its certainty scores (based on the model it has so far) or maybe something graphical to help you write the letters how it expects (exaggerate certain differences etc.). They already have an "optimized alphabet" that maximizes the machine-visible differences between letters.
From their paper, the existing language model already did very well at producing clean results in this test, but the more you can refine the cleanup, the more you can potentially sacrifice cleanliness of input for greater speed, and maybe get closer to speaking rate.
It’s been clear to me for several years that the future of computing is BCI coupled with augmented reality.
However, considering how much the now-normalized ill effects of the digital privacy dystopia we’re already living in would be multiplied by that development, I really fear for the future.
The great thing about this is that with the proper use of snippets and auto completion 90 characters per minute can quickly translates to more than 18 wpm.
[+] [-] formerly_proven|4 years ago|reply
> By comparison, able-bodied people close in age to the study participant can type on a smartphone at about 23 words per minute, the authors say. Adults can type on a full keyboard at an average of about 40 words per minute.
I had no idea average typing speed is this slow, though the extreme slowness of touchscreen typing is no surprise.
[+] [-] alpaca128|4 years ago|reply
My own typing speed ranges from ~40WPM to ~110WPM depending on what tool or test method I'm using. For example some tests just use any random word from the dictionary, which of course includes very long and complicated ones, others go as far as to limit themselves to the 100 most common English words. And even with those factors being identical I can still get different speeds depending on the UI; the cursor movement, presentation of the text and input latency all have a measurable impact on the end result.
[+] [-] gxs|4 years ago|reply
I actually spend a few minutes every few weeks taking typing tests etc, as it's a valuable skill to me.
I figure if the average typing speed is somewhere between 50-80 WPM, if I can type 50% faster, in theory, I'm responding to emails and commenting in general 50% faster.
It's just a nicer experience using a computer if you can type fast. Sometimes it's easier to command-backspace and retype an entire line/word than it is to move the cursor and correct the error. It's also just plain nice to have only your thoughts to worry about when typing and not have the cognitive overhead of trying to keep track of where all the letters on the keyboard are.
All in all, I would recommend improving your typing speed if you spend any type of meaningful time on a computer.
A fun 1-minute test that is somewhat practical here: 10fastfingers.com
[+] [-] vgeek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|4 years ago|reply
As there are also plenty of competent typists and computer users at that age, It’s all about the influences, wonder how I can avoid that and brain plasticity excuses
[+] [-] Aerroon|4 years ago|reply
Swype is pretty great for writing with a phone. I kind of wish there was an improved Swype though.
[+] [-] userbinator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airstrike|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hansel_der|4 years ago|reply
same same.
we had to type at least 60 wpm in middle school in order to pass the "typist class" (around 2000) thou i did not maintain that level.
edit: clarification downthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27423762
[+] [-] bigdubs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fouric|4 years ago|reply
Ah, so it's previous record for BCI typing speed, not "typing speed" in general. Original headline (on IEEE side) is misleading.
[+] [-] kibwen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anandoza|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramshanker|4 years ago|reply
Currently to draw a line in AutoCAD, I have to either move the mouse to a "line" button and click it. OR type a command "line" if my hands are on keyboard. Now If I had a direct interface with the machine, just the the thought of "Draw a line" and software is line-drawing mode. Add eye tracking to it, and I simply look at the point on the screen when line shall start and say in my head "here"...... opportuties are endless.
Computer will have difficult time catching up with the amount of commands we are capable of issuing to it. BRING IT ON.
It was 2006, when I did Speec-To-Text data entry of 200+ mobile numbers using good old Windows XP. Progress seems to be have been too slow since than.
[+] [-] whereis|4 years ago|reply
I challenge you to put your top ten commands on single key or double-same key (e.g. zz) shortcuts on the left side of the keyboard. Your CAD skills will speed up significantly once these become muscle memory.
[+] [-] daveFNbuck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmilcin|4 years ago|reply
But comparing speeds isn't really necessary or even relevant. For a person that literally has no other way to communicate nobody will be complaining the can type 20% slower than a person with a smartphone. The fact they can type at all is important.
Now, for the speeds, I type 80wpm/400cpm but what is more important I can also freely think while I do so. I don't even know consciously where the keys are on the keyboard, I need to focus on a character and then see where the finger goes as if I was bystander, a passenger of a mech body that observes it do something.
I can only assume that writing with brain-computer interface requires incredible focus and most likely engagement of visual cortex which would preclude from using it for anything else (so no ability to imagine any imagery while typing).
[+] [-] EMM_386|4 years ago|reply
This isn't a comparison between this and typing on a keyboard.
It's a comparison to the prior state of the art in this technology.
[+] [-] amelius|4 years ago|reply
EDIT: I mean, on the screen (and perhaps some on their keyboards).
[+] [-] aaron-santos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lhousa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamBam|4 years ago|reply
I'm surprised, though, that the most efficient way to do this is still to have the person imagine physically drawing the letters by hand. I know motor neurons are probably our most reliable output, but I would still think that, with all the advances in training from noisy data in the past decade, that training what the thought of "A", "B" etc look like in the head would be doable.
Or even what the thought of hearing or saying "A", "B" etc looks like. The auditory cortex is activated when we imagine sounds. Or, if they wanted to stick to motor neurons, could they have the person imagine saying the letters with their mouth?
I'm sure they've thought about this stuff and it's harder than it seems, of course. But I would just predict that brain-computer interfaces 20 years from now won't involve imagining using your hand to write letters.
[+] [-] slver|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ckemere|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsbinator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lunixbochs|4 years ago|reply
> By comparison, able-bodied people close in age to the study participant can type on a smartphone at about 23 words per minute, the authors say. Adults can type on a full keyboard at an average of about 40 words per minute.
[+] [-] mxmilkiib|4 years ago|reply
Also, Macross Plus, spoiler, for the subconscious throwing up images in a high stress environment; https://youtube.com/watch?t=2077&v=Fgg6p9gSeR0
[+] [-] superkuh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rareform|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doggodaddo78|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slver|4 years ago|reply
It might be enough to make people walk again though.
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] D13Fd|4 years ago|reply
Obviously, that's still sci fi at this point, but that's what you seem to be rejecting here.
To each their own, I guess.
[+] [-] Jeff_Brown|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|4 years ago|reply
A buddy of mine used some timing app for our typing speeds, you had to backspace repeatedly to retype a word if you misspelled it. I argued that is unrealistic, you can just use spell check or just catch the typos during your editing read through.
[+] [-] martin_a|4 years ago|reply
Full words correct with no typos.
If you want to measure this, you're interested in the combination of reading speed and muscle memory while typing. If you're making typos, your muscle memory is not good. Using a spell checker to automatically fix those words... Well, the number is not comparable, then.
[+] [-] mech422|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|4 years ago|reply
Use hypnosis.
You can have effective fast communication to the machine without any fancy technology (and certainly without surgery!) The subjective experience is "think to type". I expect that these days you can use a camera and ML to "read thoughts" directly from facial muscles, no need for GVR or IMUs on the fingers.
[+] [-] spollo|4 years ago|reply
It would be really cool to have a BCI that runs off mental-verbalizing and have a chopper style rapper use it (eg. Busta Rhymes). Imagine people doing transcription learning chopping as skill to get an edge on their job!
[+] [-] castis|4 years ago|reply
What could be extra cool is just imagining a loop construct in your head and it just appears in your text editor.
Is there already a scene for this? Sign me up.
[+] [-] Jeff_Brown|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twotwotwo|4 years ago|reply
Other tricks we use for noisy touchscreen input could apply here too. For one thing, we've got different models for to collect input. You could try offering autocompletions/predictions to make typing long words faster (long a thing in e.g. single-switch input tools), if watching a screen doesn't slow the person down much. You could try a swipe-like flow where you collect a chunk of data imprecisely but fast (mentally type or scribble a whole word, say), then offer choices.
(Thinking about other extremes, I wonder if there's a way at faster input using a T9-like reduced alphabet (3x3 grid, pick row and column?) or something like that. Or if it could someday work to for people to try to speak or visualize words instead of handwrite.)
You might be able to glue the letter decoding and language model together more closely--feed the letter-decoding NN's uncertainty and less-probable guesses (25% chance this 'e' was really an 'l') to the lang model.
You could learn a person-specific language model, seeding it with a person's writings/speech before the injury or disease (if available), whatever else you think they might need (family/friend names, care requests, etc.), and training the language model as they use the interface (paper already does that with the character-recognizing model).
You could do explicit "mutual training"--while the machine samples how you write letters, it can show you its certainty scores (based on the model it has so far) or maybe something graphical to help you write the letters how it expects (exaggerate certain differences etc.). They already have an "optimized alphabet" that maximizes the machine-visible differences between letters.
From their paper, the existing language model already did very well at producing clean results in this test, but the more you can refine the cleanup, the more you can potentially sacrifice cleanliness of input for greater speed, and maybe get closer to speaking rate.
FWIW some Googling found http://web.stanford.edu/~shenoy/GroupPublications/WillettEtA...
[+] [-] user3939382|4 years ago|reply
However, considering how much the now-normalized ill effects of the digital privacy dystopia we’re already living in would be multiplied by that development, I really fear for the future.
[+] [-] nsonha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoppyhoppy2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drbojingle|4 years ago|reply