From Althea Pearson
I enjoyed reading about research to use offbeat autocorrect text suggestions to inspire AI humour (13 October, p 23). The notion of injecting a touch of whimsy into a reminder system makes psychological sense as we quickly habituate to regularity and consistency, whereas our attention systems are hard-wired to respond to novelty.
As the author says, many of us will have experienced text prediction errors. My first cellphone was a reconditioned one and I can only assume its previous owner had some rather firmly held beliefs. The first time I tried to send a text I began to type “hello” but the word that appeared on the screen was “homophobic”. It may stretch credibility to breaking point but, when I next began to type “please”, what appeared instead was “pig”!
Somerton, Somerset, UK
