{"id":4620,"date":"2026-05-21T01:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=4620"},"modified":"2026-05-02T07:31:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T12:31:47","slug":"the-next-n-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2026\/05\/the-next-n-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The Next N Word(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>These chattering bots merely predict the next N word(s). Software has been doing this for many years\u2014nothing new here.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the 1990s (yes, 30 years ago, I am that old), word processors started guessing what word we were trying to type. Some called that &#8220;auto complete.&#8221; It was nice. Not perfect, but nice. Sometime between then and now, we saw IDEs (integrated development environments). If any term ever needed an acronym instead, that one did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regardless, these IDEs did auto complete. Start typing the name of a function or variable, the software would look through of list, and show guesses at what it was I was typing. Well, that was convenient. It wasn&#8217;t perfect, but it helped me remember things that I new but were a bit murky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nowadays (does anyone still use that word?), we have these new chattering bots. They write essays and entire computer programs. WOW! New stuff! Great stuff!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">New? Let&#8217;s see, in the 1990s, the word processors would predict the next one word. Today, the chattering bots predict the next one thousand words. What&#8217;s the difference? Just the difference between one and one thousand. It is N. N is bigger or smaller depending on various things that affect the outcome, but N is just N. Programming? We have gone from N is one to N is a larger number, but it is still N.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why all the fuss? Why are school teachers at all levels in an uproar over students not learning this or that? It is just N words where is goes from zero to some arbitrary larger number. Same stuff. Nothing new here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s move on to something of more substance to discuss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips These chattering bots merely predict the next N word(s). Software has been doing this for many years\u2014nothing new here. In the 1990s (yes, 30 years ago, I am that old), word processors started guessing what word we were trying to type. Some called that &#8220;auto complete.&#8221; It was nice. Not perfect, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,469,83,23,3,5],"tags":[240,470,200,145,126,128],"class_list":["post-4620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis","category-artificial-intelligence","category-computing","category-programming","category-technology","category-writing","tag-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-computing","tag-programming","tag-technology","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4621,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4620\/revisions\/4621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}