The Machine Allows People To Use Telepathy To Play Tetris-Like Game

A new neural-control interface (NCI) or brain-computer interface (BCI) can link 3 people’s brains, which allows these people to play a video game like Tetris with each other using telepathy.

Several companies such as Facebook and Neuralink of Elon Musk are on track with the development of devices for reading thoughts, which are designed to link machines with human brains. Although there isn’t much information about those projects, this upgraded interface of the University of Washington proves that this tech could be possible in the coming time.

In the above-mentioned game, 3 players have to work together to solve basic puzzles like Tetris where they move blocks in order to create a full row. In a released video with the participation of Elise Hu from NPR, 2 players are told about the puzzle and then asked if they should rotate a piece before it falls to the screen bottom or not.

The device tracks the brain activity of the players to decide if they want to rotate the piece or not. Then, their decisions are transmitted to the third player’s brain. This player is not allowed to see the puzzle before and then has to decide to rotate the piece or not. As per the video, Hu with her team members managed to give recommendations on whether they should rotate the block or not.

At the moment, the system is not smart enough to solve a full Tetris match, instead, it turned the puzzles into Yes/No questions that took some seconds each, which means that we still need to use our hands to control current games until this technology has the next improvement step.

The technology like telepathy is still on early days, most initiatives to upgrade human brains and bodies are still being researched. However, scientists hope that they could see a revolution in human-related things in the upcoming years.