You've probably seen them in your Facebook feed: the amusing sentences your friends got their smartphones to "write" simply by selecting the middle of three suggested words in their phone's autocomplete function over and over. The results rarely make much sense.
But that didn't stop an academic paper written entirely via iPhone autocomplete from being accepted by a scientific conference just three hours after submission. A New Zealand professor named Christoph Bartneck received an invitation to submit a paper to a nuclear physics gathering, but he's not a physicist. So instead he wrote an entire "study" using text predictions on his iPhone. He'd begin a sentence with a word like "atomic" or "nuclear" and let iOS take it from there.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Today's political cartoons - March 29, 2025Cartoons Saturday's cartoons - my way or Norway, running orders, and more
-
5 tactically sound cartoons about the leaked Signal chatCartoons Artists take on the clown signal, baby steps, and more
-
Roast lamb shoulder with ginger and fresh turmeric recipeThe Week Recommends Succulent and tender and falls off the bone with ease
-
'Like a sound from hell': Serbia and sonic weaponsThe Explainer Half a million people sign petition alleging Serbian police used an illegal 'sound cannon' to disrupt anti-government protests
-
Israel detains director after West Bank settler clashspeed read The director of Oscar-winning documentary 'No Other Land' was arrested and beaten
-
Turkey arrests Istanbul mayor, a top Erdogan rivalSpeed Read Protests erupted in Turkey after authorities detained Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu
-
Israel strikes Gaza, breaking ceasefireSpeed Read 326 Palestinians were killed in the first major attack since Netanyahu's government signed a ceasefire agreement with Hamas
-
The arrest of the Philippines' former president leaves the country's drug war in disarrayIn the Spotlight Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the ICC earlier this month
-
Houthis vow retaliation amid US airstrikesSpeed Read Trump promises the US will use 'overwhelming lethal force' against the Houthis until they stop attacking Red Sea ships
-
Pakistan train hostage standoff ends in bloodshedSpeed Read Pakistan's military stormed a train hijacked by separatist militants, killing 33 attackers and rescuing hundreds of hostages
-
Ukrainian election: who could replace Zelenskyy?The Explainer Donald Trump's 'dictator' jibe raises pressure on Ukraine to the polls while the country is under martial law
