Mea Culpa: Why, robot?

Susanna Richards rages against the machine responsible for some of last week’s errors in The Independent

Take me to your editorial: an automaton surveys with satisfaction a landscape free of grammatical beauty (Getty)

A comment piece about the effect of the Taylor Swift tour on the British economy contained what I believe was probably an AI-induced mistake, whereby we inserted a hyphen where no hyphen should be, thus changing the meaning completely.

“I’ve been sticking to September as the date I expect for the first rate cut,” wrote our author – a sentence that referred to the Bank of England lowering interest rates. The software we use to find obvious errors interpreted this as incorrect, however, and blithely suggested we amend it to say “I’ve been sticking to September as the date I expect for the first-rate cut.” Which was not, shall we say, a helpful piece of advice.

All Greek to me: On the other hand – and there is always one of those – the automated assistant might have been of service to one of our other writers, who filed an excellent report on the political arguments over Cyprus. Excellent apart from the spelling, that is, which featured words such as “ome”, “communties”, and perhaps most impressively, “Greeek”, which reads as though it should be spoken in a sort of crescendo and followed by an exclamation mark. We endeavoured to repair the inaccuracies once we realised that the piece was written not entirely in English – at least, not in recognisable English – but apologies to those of you who saw it before we did. Once fixed, it was really very interesting.

Rural pursuits: There was a lovely headline on our homepage last week that read: “Man, 72, kills grizzly bear that attacked him while picking berries”. I love the idea of a hungry bear gathering fruit in a little basket, but I think we were meant to infer that the man was the one doing the foraging. Either way, I feel sorry for the bear.

Location, location: We committed a form of tautology in a report about the fashion industry, in which we wrote that “law firm Preiskel & Co has written to the Financial Conduct Authority on behalf of a European-based clothing supplier”. It isn’t possible for a business to be based in an adjective, so that ought to have said “Europe-based”, or actually just “European”, depending on the circumstances of the company in question. We often do this, writing about “Chinese-based manufacturers” or “an Iranian-based organisation”. I suppose it is a common enough construction that it doesn’t cause confusion, but it still feels ungainly.

Probably the best example last week was a recommendation to “Give the Parisienne-based, Argentinian tango-inspired group Gotan Project a listen”, which I think was just the author getting carried away – although I did wonder for a moment if there was another definition of “Parisienne” that I had missed. The only one I could find, however, referred to “potatoes moulded into balls with a melon scoop and fried or roasted”, so that is probably not what we meant, though you never know. [Surely that’s just roots music? – Ed]

As long as some of our readers take pleasure in fancy language, there is nothing wrong with it as such, but we did correct the description of the band to say “Paris-based” because it sounded a bit silly. While we were at it, we also changed a “complimentary” to “complementary” and gave poor old “Vaughn Williams” back his missing “a”. However lighthearted an article might be, the basics should not be neglected.

Automation bias: Let us turn to an aspect of English that is both fascinating and a little enigmatic: the subjunctive. For those who don’t know, this is a form of writing that is used for discussing hypothetical things, such as wishes, suggestions, or actions that must be taken. Immediately recognisable in phrases such as “If I were you” or “Be it ever so humble”, this curious construction, with its old-fashioned quality and insistence on particular verb forms, is to my mind one of the most graceful as well as authoritative elements of our language, which is why it can frequently be found doing its thing in our leading article.

We used it the other day in a piece about a singer who had caused offence, where we talked about the risks of voicing political opinions. “One need only consider the remonstration of Gary Lineker,” we wrote. Once more, the software intervened, deciding that we ought to have written “needs” instead. Clearly it does not have the intelligence to recognise elegant phrasing when it sees it. Perhaps it thought we had meant to write “One needs only to consider ... ”, but that would have required an extra word, and anyway, it was perfectly all right as it was. (As an aside, it occurred to me later that our use of “remonstration” may not have been quite correct, but naturally, the AI didn’t bat a digital eyelid at that.)

Spelling is one thing, but the sooner we learn to ignore the grammatical exhortations of this obtuse apparatus, the better. I object to it not (just) out of indignation, but because, aside from its capacity to lead us wildly astray, its presence can foster a false sense of security. And for a writer, or especially an editor, that is never a good thing.

On that note, I shall see you again in a month – and I hope to find on my return that we are back to using real intelligence instead of the other sort. Would that it were ever thus.