[acyou]

Yes, the ALS/disability angle is noble. Viewed another way, the entire human race is afflicted by the disability of not having access to eye-tracking (and other) technologies. Paul Graham and co. are also invested in companies that are going to be highly enabled and boosted by the growth of eye-tracking and related technologies. I don't view his statement of motivation related to ALS as insincere, I just also notice that it's accessible, easily understandable, and also in line with other aspects of Paul's motivation (and that's a good thing).

I would also recommend Jean-Dominique Bauby's Le Scaphandre et le Papillon to anyone interested in this topic. Typing using eye movements was used in that book in a slow, inefficient manner. In the book's case, the question one should ask is, was his UI paced at the exact correct speed? I was and still am deeply emotionally moved by what the author was able to accomplish and convey. I am unsure if a faster keyboard would have made a meaningful and positive difference in that particular case, to the author's quality of life. I'll need to give that book another read with that question in mind.

Happily, I expect eye tracking to find fascinating, novel and unexpected applications. As others have stated, UI/UX design is an interesting part of this puzzle. For example, if you ask an LLM to output short branches of text and have a writer look at the words that he wants to convey. It's definitely blurring the line between reading and writing. Myself, finding writing to be a tactile exercise, I think that emotional state comes into play. That's what I'm interested in. Yes, can you literally read someone's eyes and tell what they are thinking?