Brain implants are allowing the speechless to speak. Whether through illness or accident, some people lose the ability to speak. Modern tech allowed some to operate computers and drive speaking systems. Stephen Hawking managed to live an impressive career and life through small facial movements to allowed him to type, which a computer turned into speech. Now, brain implants are correlating brain patterns with a limited vocabulary. From a few words per minute, technology enabled speech has increased to 78 words per minute, about halfway to a typical 150 words per minute. Accuracy is low (~72%), but that is expected to improve. Brain machine interfaces are not new, but this is a significant level of progress. The trend is worth watching for those who need it now, but also for the greater range of applications that are possible for any brain. Currently, the technique is intrusive, but work is continuing on simpler systems.
Pretending Not To Panic 
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