The little virtual keyboards that pop up on an iPad are not the greatest. It is very easy to strike the wrong "key" and wind up sending a message that is half Czech and half English. Since I don't know what I am saying in Czech, it is safer and more polite to just use English.
But the Quicktype service on an iPad introduces a new sort of typing. I want to type "See you later" and as soon as I hit the 'S', Quicktype shows some choices, including "See". I tap that choice and the whole word is immediately placed in my message. So, in many cases, I am typing words instead of letters. It is a new and different experience. Normally, when I type, I need to think of the letters that will express a given word. If I accidentally strike the "k" after "wor" and get "work" instead of 'word', what I write will make less sense. In fact, such mis-constructions will alienate some people, make it less likely that my message will get to their minds.
I have been meaning to write about these word prediction systems for a while, ever since I first experienced them. But today, I read that the English professor Stephen Hawking, one of the most famous physicists in the world and a very brilliant man, commented recently that he fears the work being done on artificial intelligent a.k.a. machine learning, "AI", since he fears that advanced AI could eliminate the human race. Prof. Hawking is considered one of the smartest men on the planet and he has certainly shown himself to be, despite the fact that he has ALS, an extremely limiting disease. Ironically, Prof. Hawking uses advanced artificial intelligence to be able to speak.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
