Hecky Thump

I am seventy two. I have been typing accurately for fifty three years. Pittman trained, if that still means anything to anyone.

Suddenly, I type "Board" and it becomes "Bard" without any notice to me that a substitution has been made. I type "repair" and it becomes "rear".

Am I obsessed with Shakespeare's bottom? No. It has never crossed my mind. I can only conclude that some aspects of Artificial Intelligence are not ready for prime time.

I am also a Cantabrigiensis major in studies of the so-called (or formerly called)  "modern depressives", which includes almost all of the works of George Orwell, and therefore, I am inclined to suppose that the hijacking of the written word is not an accident.

Some online news sites are plagued by word glitches, where commenters of a certain political bent appear to be routinely sabotaged (by A.I.). 

Delightfully, there is a meme: "Autocorrect is my worst enema."

Meanwhile, a political beggar wrote this to me: "I only trust you with this." Ponder word order. The quoted sentence seems to imply that he would not trust me with anything else. Alternatives would be, "I trust you only with this", which is worse but more honest, or "I trust only you with this", which is an obvious fib given that it was a mass blast email.

Isn't parsing fun?

Word order matters, as does punctuation and word choice. A.I. does not replace a good education, partly because AI is only as good as the education of the persons putting in the input.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry