Words by Ibba Rasul Bernardo
Illustration by Claudine Quintela
There are two types of people in the world. Those brilliant people that used T9 a.k.a. predictive text and those that pounded away on their old Nokias like jejeNeanderthals. If you’re not old enough to remember, let me download some knowledge into your SSD’s.
T9 was revolutionary. It allowed me to easily type complete words and sentences using the numeric keypad of my 3210. Before then, you had to cycle through multiple button presses, to send “Where are you” this was what you had to type “9944337773027773099966688” with T9 it cut out almost half the steps “9437302730968”.
Don’t even get me started on punctuation and capitalization. It accomplished this by predicting what I was going to type with just a few letters encoded in the numpad. Later, it even had Tagalog which was brought to you by my partner Jake Estrada and his company qwerty works. Those who didn’t use T9 massacred the Filipino and English Language. These were the dark times when jeje was born.
Today the age of pocket computers, companies like SwiftKey use neural networks to anticipate and even provide words you would usually string together. If you allow it to, it can even scrub your emails, tweets and Facebook so that it eerily starts typing like you—Cambridge Analytica style. It’s constantly learning and making input more efficient. I’m actually writing this article now, in bed, on my Pixel 2 XL using SwiftKey. I would never have even thought of doing this a year ago.
As I was procrastinating, happily tapping, and thumbing my way through the algorithmic rabbit hole that is the internet. I stumbled on this website botnik.org and stopped in my tracks. I spent half a day there. Botnik has an Ai Powered Predictive Writer web app.
What is an AI-powered predictive writer? It’s basically predictive text plus syntax that suggests more than single words, it creates complete sentences. It has a library of personas that they have inputted using text files encoded into their system. You can use anyone or anything written ranging from Jeff Bezos quotes, Tennyson poems, Missy Elliot lyrics, to Erotic Romance Novels.
You can even program it with different personalities. Botnik allows you to customize it with anything ever written. Want to write like Jose Rizal, just pop in Noli Me Tangere. Want to write like an Ikea manual? Done! Just upload text from an Ikea manual into the site. Want to write like Rizal and an Ikea manual? Just input some Rizal and Ikea manual text together.
An aha-moment hit me. I’ll have the A.I. write the rest of my article for me. I mean, this is the epitome of disruption. Disrupt myself! The Washington Post’s robot has already published over 800 articles why can’t I just use a bot to publish one?
This being the gender issue, I thought it would be fitting if I “wrote” using the words of some brilliant women. Take that deadline!
Let’s start off with a poem using Adele lyrics;
Love trembling crumbles
We were falling gently fast
run when night comes in.
Steady fast love is
bittersweet ticking river
my hands behind wait.
How ‘bout Lady Gaga;
You don’t need permission shawty
my body my head your disco
oh yeah babe addicted to pray
be real loud with the night like mexico
i don’t need permission boy to walk away
Damn that’s pretty intense. Sniff.
Let’s take it up a notch. How ‘bout a Haiku using the epic Beowulf, the poet Maya Angelou and a forklift manual;
The dragon spits gray
spirit of men sadly ash
alloys = l.
This being adobo Magazine let’s try it with Ad copy Haikus.
Beauty Adku;
New true pixie be
skin without wings have a heart
that helps make luscious
Food Adku;
New york every day
with crystal light white body
just perfect back home
I’ll end by stealing words from ALL the Wiredproduct reviews from 2017.
The most frightening thing about this thing is that it is still working now. It’s easily noticeable. But when compared to your head it doesn’t very good. The best content is still not quite great.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
About the Author:
The CEO and co-founder of Sari Software Solutions, Ibba Rasul-Bernardo has been working with marginalized and underprivileged groups by giving them access to relevant technology.
This article was published in the adobo magazine Gender 2018 issue.
