[vanadium1st]

Autocomplete in Gmail has been getting more and more robust. At first it only suggested grammatical correction in words. Later it started giving advice on better sentence structure and then it just started suggesting whole sentences. Each of those steps I loved. More often then not it just says what I wanted to say, with less button pushes, and without all of the mistakes that I make as a non-native english speaker. I sound smarter in gmail and I like it.

If I didn't have this experience, then giving the machine any input on what I write would seem crazy to me. I would think that language is too personal, too contextual, that I need control over every word and every letter.

But now I love writing with the help of the machine. It still feels like me speaking, the machine doesn't add any extra context that I don't approve of. It really feels like the messages are still mine, and the autocomplete just helps me extract my thoughts from my head in a better and more effective way.

[bugfix-66]

Imagine how your brain is atrophying.

  1. (of body tissue or an organ) waste away, especially as a result of the degeneration of cells, or become vestigial during evolution.

  "without exercise, the muscles will atrophy"

[nicbou]

I don't think it's atrophying. We said the same thing about spell checkers, and my spelling seemingly hasn't suffered.

I'm not a native speaker. It's nice to have training wheels sometimes, even for a language I'm familiar with.

[potatoman22]

These tools will only become more pervasive, so why does it matter if that part of the brain "atrophies"? I'm sure people had the same worries about mental math during the rise of the calculator

[fragmede]

Just imagine how flaccid the math part of most of our brains must be. Quick! What's 67 * 42?