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.
-
June 22 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include a SpaceX flight, Bibi pulling Donald Trump toward war, and an ICE agent looking like a bank robber
-
5 bunker-busting cartoons about the Israel-Iran warCartoons Political cartoonists take on Iran waiting for Pete Hegseth to leak war plans and Donald Trump's wish for a Nobel prize
-
Malaysia's delicious food and glorious beachesThe Week Recommends From 'colourful' George Town to the 'jungled interior' of Langkawi, Malaysia is incredibly diverse
-
Israel strikes Iran, killing military and nuclear chiefsSpeed Read Israeli officials said the attack was a 'preemptive' strike on Iran's nuclear program
-
Israel deports Thunberg after seizing Gaza aid boatspeed read The Swedish activist was delivering food and medical aid to Palestine, highlighting the growing humanitarian crisis there
-
Colombian senator shot on streets of Bogotáspeed read Miguel Uribe Turbay, who has announced his candidacy for next year's presidential election, was shot at a rally
-
Trump says Putin vowed retaliation for Kyiv strikespeed read The Russian president intends to respond to Ukraine's weekend drone strikes on Moscow's warplanes
-
Dutch government falls over immigration policyspeed read The government collapsed after anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders quit the right-wing coalition
-
South Korea elects liberal Lee as presidentspeed read Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party, was elected president following months of political instability in the wake of Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment
-
Nationalist wins tight Polish presidential electionspeed read Karol Nawrocki beat Rafal Trzaskowski in Poland's presidential runoff election
-
Ukraine hits Russia's bomber fleet in stealth drone attackspeed read The operation, which destroyed dozens of warplanes, is the 'biggest blow of the war against Moscow's long-range bomber fleet'
