{"id":77,"date":"2019-11-18T00:31:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T07:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/?p=77"},"modified":"2019-11-18T00:31:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T07:31:38","slug":"task-11-algorithms-of-predictive-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/2019\/11\/18\/task-11-algorithms-of-predictive-text\/","title":{"rendered":"Task 11: Algorithms of Predictive Text"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In what textual products have you read statements like the one you generated? In blogs? Academic articles? Magazines? Novels?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I read similar statements only in titles of news or on Instagram, so I used my Instagram as my microblog channel for this task.<\/span><\/p>\n

How are these generated statements different from how you would normally express yourself and\/or your opinions on the matter you wrote about? Did the statement you generated speak in your “voice”\u2014did it sound like you? Why or why not?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, I tried all of the prompts to write sentences, and all of them appear to be similar to each other: limited options of words, grammar mistakes, most of them didn’t make any sense to me. Then I tried typing in Chinese. The predictive texts bar offered me a more extensive range of wording. Below are a pair of comparison:<\/span><\/p>\n

Every time I think about our future we are going to have a great time with our family.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u6bcf\u4e00\u6b21\u6211\u60f3\u5230\u6211\u4eec\u7684\u672a\u6765\u53d1\u5c55\u6f5c\u529b\u65e0\u9650\u5927\u6211\u7684\u5fc3\u662f\u771f\u7684\u5f88\u559c\u6b22\u3002(Every time I think about our future will have great potential my heart become cheerful.)<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess since I seldom typed in English on my cellphone, the machine learning functions adapted by my iPhone doesn’t have many chances to build its custom dictionaries.<\/span>The moment I added the hashtag of “predictivetext” on Instagram, the app instantly recommended a few similar options and showed the numbers of posts that include each hashtag. With that convenient function, I saw other posts with slang and informal words such as “tell ya.” which are shreds of evidence of other users’ normal tones.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, among 10 attempts of automatic generation, there wasn’t even a single one sounded like me, no matter which language I tried. The one I posted on Instagram is especially hilarious. It is a photo of me practising a yoga pose during vacation, and then the predictive texts offered me “this is not of the idea of a good time of my life” to depict that relaxing moment. I believe that the reason behind the wrong interpretation is the technology can not read our minds, yet. It offers options to speed up the time of input, but among tons of wording arrangements to express ourselves, it can’t provide us with the exact word we are looking for.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reflect further on the use of algorithms in public writing spaces and the implications this might have in various arenas (politics, academia, business, education, etc.).<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall I have a negative attitude towards these microblogs. Compared to 10 years ago, when blogging was popular, the trend of microblogging brings current young generations with many new issues such as low self-esteem and insufficient practise of literacy. However, these microblogs do have a competitive advantage in promoting products and services by leveraging the channels of celebrities and opinion leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In what textual products have you read statements like the one you generated? In blogs? Academic articles? Magazines? Novels?\u00a0 I read similar statements only in titles of news or on Instagram, so I used my Instagram as my microblog channel for this task. How are these generated statements different from how you would normally express …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67448,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/yilu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}