I have read the paper, the news make it seem like something that is not. It’s a tough experiment and mostly a joke. From the paper closing remarks:

Given plausible estimates of the lifespan of the universe and the amount of possible monkey typists available, this still leaves huge orders of magnitude differences between the resources available and those required for non-trivial text generation. As such, we have to conclude that Shakespeare himself inadvertently provided the answer as to whether monkey labour could meaningfully be a replacement for human endeavour as a source of scholarship or creativity. To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: “No”.

As someone in the process of choosing between phd in pure maths and academia or a career in finance / consulting the pay gap is so real…