Talented though they may be, monkeys will never type out the complete works of William Shakespeare, or even a short book, a new study suggests.
The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a famous thought experiment that states that a monkey pressing random keys on a typewriter would eventually reproduce the works of the Bard if given an infinite amount of time and/or if there were an infinite number of monkeys.
However, in the study published in the peer-reviewed journal , two mathematicians from Australia鈥檚 University of Technology Sydney have rejected this theorem as 鈥渕isleading鈥 within the confines of our finite universe.
They challenged it by looking at the Finite Monkeys Theorem, in which there is a finite amount of time and a finite number of monkeys.
They took the assumption that the current population of around 200,000 chimpanzees would remain the same over the lifespan of the universe of one googol years (that鈥檚 1 followed by 100 zeros). They also assumed that each chimpanzee would type one key per second for every second of the day, with each monkey having a working lifespan of just over 30 years.
Using these assumptions, the researchers calculated that among these randomly-typing monkeys, there is just a 5% chance that a word as simple as 鈥渂ananas鈥 would occur in the lifespan of one chimpanzee.
They found that a short sentence such as 鈥淚 chimp, therefore I am鈥 will 鈥渁lmost certainly never be produced by any currently living chimp,鈥 study co-author and mathematician Stephen Woodcock, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney, told CNN on Friday.
鈥淏y the time you鈥檙e at the scale of a full book, you鈥檙e billions of billions of times less likely,鈥 he continued.
Woodcock and co-author Jay Falletta, a senior research consultant at the university, concluded in the study that, even with more chimpanzees or quicker typing, it is 鈥渘ot plausible鈥 that monkey labor will ever be a viable tool for 鈥渄eveloping written works of anything beyond the trivial.鈥
鈥淓ven if every atom in our known universe were its own universe on the scale of ours, we would still have pretty much no chance of ever seeing something as long as even a short book,鈥 such as 鈥淐urious George,鈥 which is around 1,800 words, 鈥渂efore the end of the universe,鈥 Woodcock told CNN.
鈥淧ersonally, I think it鈥檚 fascinating how misleading the well-established result for the infinite resource case is,鈥 he added. 鈥淵es, it is true that given infinite resources, any text of any length would inevitably be produced eventually. While true, this also has no relevance to our own universe, as 鈥榬eaching infinity鈥 in resources is not something which can ever happen.鈥
Interdisciplinary clinician-scientist Chris Banerji, theme lead for Clinical AI at the Alan Turing Institute in London, agrees that monkeys randomly typing Shakespeare鈥檚 works is unlikely since the Finite Monkeys Theorem is 鈥渃orrect,鈥 but he told CNN on Friday that the Infinite Monkey Theorem 鈥渟till holds.鈥
鈥淲hile the situation seems dire, there may be hope for the monkeys yet,鈥 said Banerji, who was not involved in the study. 鈥淭he universe is very large, and there is room for many more chimps than live here on Earth, under some cosmological theories there may even be infinite space or infinitely many universes.鈥
He said that 鈥渋f we accept the possibility of these infinite worlds鈥 then 鈥渢he monkeys鈥 successful replication of Shakespeare is an 鈥榚ventual certainty,鈥欌 as the Infinite Monkey Theorem states. 鈥淚n the words of the Bard 鈥楿ntil I know this sure uncertainty, I鈥檒l entertain the offered fallacy.鈥欌
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