 I grew up in a household with two official languages. We spoke French and English interchangeably, and often in the same sentence, without ever missing a beat. But even with two languages in your back pocket, some things just don't translate. It needs interpretation. It's about humans or machines turning one word or idea, or something only one of us understands into something we can both appreciate. UNI is a tablet that can capture and interpret American Sign Language and translate it into spoken English. Ryan Haight Campbell is the CEO of MotionSafi, the company that's developing UNI. Where did the idea for UNI come from? The overall idea, you know, sign language, changing the voice, I mean, that's pretty common desire from deaf people. But you know, it's also feels almost impossible, really. It's a complexity of sign language actually being captured by camera and translating into voice. It's tough. It's an ambitious project, but we have the support of RIT, we have the support of LEAP, we have the support of deaf community, and with all that support, we're making this happen. You know, you saw LEAP Motion and you thought, hey, this is something that we can use. The beautiful thing about LEAP is actually that it has two cameras inside it, which allows for a deaf perception. You can put your hands together, you can overlap, but that's the cool thing about LEAP, because it's just a breakthrough in deaf recognition technology. You have something called a sign builder. You're allowed to record a specific sign and apply a label to it. So, for example, my sign is for pizza, pizza. Another person's sign for pizza, pizza. So, with sign builder, I open it up, click record, sign, pizza, apply the label to it, then the next time I sign, it'll come out the voice, pizza, which is very cool. Sign builder will be an integral part of uni when the tablet's widely available, but the offline demo Ryan has now is still pretty impressive. So, as you see, we have two buttons on the screen. We have a sign button and we have a listen button. I'm going to go ahead and press this sign right now. Hello, my name is Ryan. What's your name? Then we have a listen button. I can demonstrate that. Hello, my name is Alex. Nice to meet you. This will be a game changer, really. And not just jobs, but also talking to family, making new friends. I mean, most deaf people I know stay within the deaf community. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it's also a result of a lack of communication options. And that's something I'm hoping to fix with this product. Seeing uni in action was amazing. And you can really see how it might one day make getting around in a world that largely doesn't speak sign language a little bit smoother. But what about people who have lost all mobility? Jonathan Volpaugh is a brain injury researcher at Wadsworth Center in Albany, New York. He's responsible for developing a computer brain interface system that allows people to control computers and type text with their minds. So I'm just going to measure the circumference of your head and then the length of it. It's a brain computer interface system, a very simple one, that's intended to be used by people who are severely disabled, people who may be totally paralyzed and really lose all means of communication. So its immediate purpose is to restore simple communication and control to people who have lost it. So you can see your eye blinks right there. If you blink your eyes, you can see your eye blinks. Oh, interesting. There are a matrix of stimuli that are presented. They can be, you can have a matrix of letters and numbers or function calls, various kinds of things the person might want to select. And that's a flash. You see that? So every time it flashes, you just count. When the person wants to select a particular item, the flash of that item produces a response in the brain that's different from all the other items. That's called the aha response or the oddball response. And that's when I'm focusing on a letter specifically? Yeah, you're paying attention. You want the eye, so you're paying attention to the eye, and you notice how many times the eye flashes and you're really ignoring everything else. So after a series of flashes, after a series of repetitions, the system can tell with considerable accuracy, often very high accuracy, what you want to select and can make that selection. Okay, so if you could make it simple, you think of a three-letter word? Typically, how long does it take for somebody to get used to the system and really feel comfortable? The system that you're using, really, it's something that's a matter of a few hours. But it does require the setup, it does require the cap and the gel at this point. Right, and the person helping them. Yeah, but someone who's paralyzed that thoroughly is going to need help in any case. Theater. You mentioned this will help people who have limited mobility and who aren't able to communicate. What exactly, what conditions are we talking about? Well, the one that seems to most attention and most of the people we work with are people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's disease. So, and there are a variety of other potential people with high-level brain stem strokes, people with high-level spinal cord injuries. There are a variety of kinds of disorders that might make a person a candidate for this. And people are using it right now in their homes to write emails? Yes, there are a few people who are using it right now in their homes. What's the future of the system? What are you trying to improve? Is it always going to use gel? Well, no, hopefully not. There are a number of companies now who are developing dry electrodes. Hopefully we'll get something that eventually that people can put on just like a hat, it'll look good, etc. And the electrodes will be there, they'll make contact with the skin and they'll work. We're not quite there yet, but we're moving in that direction. Do you think that the whole area of brain-computer interfaces, is that area getting more attention? It clearly draws a lot of attention, both scientific and popular attention. I think that will continue to be sustained as long as things are actually delivered. When you do it in the laboratory, you're about 2% halfway there. And you're actually having people use it at home right now. Yes, that's why. The kinds of BCIs that we can look at in the lab are a lot fancier and ultimately perhaps a lot more capable than what you were using here. But the thing about that is, it's reliable. And it could be used in real life without us hanging over you. Clearly, technology is getting us a lot closer to the kinds of systems that allow our favorite aliens, superheroes and sci-fi villains to talk to each other in fictional worlds. But when it comes to communication, there are certain nuances that machines might never fully grasp or convey. And that's where human interpreters come in. Sarah Wilson is one of the best. She works as an interpreter at the United Nations, where properly conveying meaning is of the utmost importance. How does one become a UN interpreter? I think first and foremost, one has to have a real natural curiosity about what's going on in the world. And also being a bit of a natural performer. What's the performance aspect? It's a stressful job. If you feel nervous, you can't let that be reflected in your voice, because otherwise you would be doing a disservice to the speaker. And it would also call attention to yourself as an interpreter. And the idea is for us to convey the intended message of the speaker as accurately as possible. Señor, say amen. Our sincere gratitude to all of those who supported our candidate. Thank you very much, Mr. President. What exactly is the difference between translation and interpretation? Translation deals with the written word, and interpretation is the spoken word. There are different modes of interpretation. Here at the United Nations, we do simultaneous interpretation. And when you say simultaneous interpretation, you mean... At the same time, we don't work on the basis of each word. We work in units of meaning, so once you have a unit of meaning, then you will render that into, in my case, into English. But while you're doing that, you're also listening for the new information that's coming in. Right, and that's something we call split attention. You have to be able to divide your attention between taking in the information and processing it, and also monitor your output enough to make sure that you're making sense. What happens if the speaker is speaking in an angry voice? We try to convey that somehow. It may be through the emphasis that they place on a given word. So that's something that we have to be very attuned to. How do you think that the current technology to translate what people are saying, how does that compare to an interpreter? I think that the new technologies definitely have their applications that can be very useful. I do think in the context of conference interpreting that a machine would never be able to replace a human being, because our understanding of the nuances of meaning as human beings, and the capacity to detect emotions and emphases that I don't believe a machine can do. So we've seen the machines that are working towards doing the very things that make UN interpreters great. But at the end of the day, the human brain is still the ultimate interpreter. It's the processor that other machines are trying to catch up to. Body language, sign language, eye movements, speech, and breathing rates. We take it all in without even thinking about it. And maybe one day machines will be able to do that too.