Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them. (Psychology Today, 3/22)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-algorithmic-mind/202603/adults-lose-skills-to-ai-children-never-build-them

-snip-

I spent a year treating cognitive offloading as a single phenomenon. I no longer think it is one. There are two fundamentally different events hiding behind the same behavior.

An adult choosing to offload a task they understand is making a tradeoff between decreasing effort and increasing efficiency. The capacity to do that task independently exists. The choice is deliberate. The atrophy is (probably) recoverable.

A child offloading a task they've never learned to perform is not making a choice. They are skipping a developmental step that was never developed. The capacity doesn't exist yet. The foreclosure may be permanent—and because they have no independent baseline, they cannot recognize what they're losing.

The downside of adult offloading is people get less sharp. The downside of adolescents growing up delegating to AI is a generation that was never sharp to begin with. Protecting the space our children need to develop the foundational skills of thinking is now a non-negotiable.

From his earlier article on AI use harming students:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-algorithmic-mind/202512/why-kids-find-cognitive-offloading-irresistible

-snip-

AI-dependent students lose the ability to explain their reasoning journey. They can produce proficient work but cannot articulate why they chose particular evidence, what confused them initially, or how they worked through competing interpretations. When questioned, they repeat conclusions but cannot reconstruct the thinking that led them there.

Encountering difficulty becomes anxiety. Students cannot spend 10 minutes wrestling with a challenging problem without external input or seeking assistance.

They lose capacity for extended reasoning chains. Multistep arguments that require Steps 1 through 4 to understand Step 5 become impossible. Complex problems requiring sustained reasoning produce the same collapse patterns that recent research identified in AI systems themselves.

And critically, students are unable to detect their own confusion or knowledge gaps. They'll submit work they cannot defend, express surprise if questioning reveals gaps in their logic, and often cannot remember what caused this confusion in the first place. Self-monitoring of the learning process begins to atrophy entirely.

-snip-

Students are becoming aware that AI use is bad for learning. Yesterday the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper published a very blunt editorial about that, which I posted here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221114177 . The most striking sentence in the editiorial: "AI cannot coexist with education — it can only degrade it."

And if anyone here thinks AI use is so inevitable that everyone has to use it (which is AI industry propaganda to sell hallucinating chatbots) and so it doesn't matter if kids don't learn anything besides how to use AI because that's what they need most, I have to point out that people who lack critical thinking skills are sitting ducks for those aiming propaganda and sales pitches at them. Especially those controlling the AI, like the AI bros now pandering to Trump.

And I have to add as well that it isn't only children who learn, or who need to learn. Adults need to as well, especially to keep their brains healthy as they get older.

AI will also interfere with those adults learning new information and skills, in addition to leading to cognitive atrophy, where they lose previously acquired knowledge and skills - cognitive atrophy that might be reversible, but might not be.

[SheltieLover]

1. Not happening here!

TY for sharing.

[highplainsdem]

4. Yvw, Sheltie! There is so much pressure and hype to use AI from the AI industry, and now from the Trump regime.

It's important to know the risks with AI, and there are so many of them.

[erronis]

16. And it's hard to escape. Most major search engines have it embedded.

Last edited Sun Mar 22, 2026, 03:29 PM - Edit history (1)

It's really hard to evade.

I use Kagi (kagi.com) which has tried to stay away from that type of information interference (my term), but it also allows the feature to be easily turned on. Fortunately they'll show their sources and have lots of ways to tailor the search and the presentation.

Another highly-customizable search engine is SearXNGwhich does require some technical setup.

[SheltieLover]

32. The risks, IMO, are a given and I will never embrace this dysfunctional garbage.

[Raastan]

2. K & R

[highplainsdem]

6. Thanks!

[Wild blueberry]

3. Important article

Thank you.

[highplainsdem]

46. You're welcome! After seeing that editorial from the U of Pennsylvania student paper yesterday, reading

this today hit especially hard.

[GiqueCee]

5. Another skill that too many younglings have lost...

... is the ability to write in cursive, or to even read it! Writing is an essential element in reinforcing retention of new information. Typing is not an acceptable substitute. Writing is also important in developing fine motor skills.
According to my wife, who's been a Special Ed teacher for 30+ years, there are also a disturbing number of kids who can't tell time on an analog clock!

[GenThePerservering]

7. I can't write in cursive, either.

I'm no youngun. IMHO, cursive is far outweighed by the rot AI is creating.

[GiqueCee]

13. Over the 70-odd years...

... since I learned to write, I've developed my own style of cursive, but at least I was taught the basics. Schools now aren't even bothering to teach the skill, and while I agree that AI is fast becoming a disaster with training wheels made of other people's intellectual property, and NO guardrails for its implementation, the failure to teach children something basic as how to write will have serious consequences as well.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

18. For what it's worth, I can't tell time on a sundial. Or use Stonehenge to schedule a harvest.

Quick - when you make a phone call, do you turn the dial clockwise, or counter-clockwise?

[erronis]

22. Neither. I click on the receiver cradle multiple times.

If anyone remembers this.

Say I wanted to dial 4-1-1:
- 4 quick clicks in succession, pause
- 1 click, pause
- 1 click, pause.

And then there were the phone tone generators (blue boxes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box

Subculture

The widespread ability to blue box, once limited to just a few isolated individuals exploring the telephone network, developed into a subculture.[10][11] Famous phone phreaks such as "Captain Crunch", Mark Bernay, and Al Bernay used blue boxes to explore the various "hidden codes" that could not be dialled by a standard telephone.[citation needed]

Some of the more famous pranksters were Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, founders of Apple Computer.[13] On one occasion, Wozniak dialed Vatican City and identified himself as Henry Kissinger (imitating Kissinger's German accent) and asked to speak to the Pope (who was sleeping at the time).[14][13] Wozniak said in 1986:[15]

I called only to explore the phone company as a system, to learn the codes and tricks. I'd talk to the London operator, and convince her I was a New York operator. When I called my parents and my friends, I paid. After six months I quit--I'd done everything that I could.

I was so pure. Now I realize others were not as pure, they were just trying to make money. But then I thought we were all pure.

Jobs later told his biographer that if it had not been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple."[16]

[GiqueCee]

29. Whoa!

You actually have a rotary dial phone squirreled away somewhere?!!?
Clockwise, by the way. When we first moved up to Berkshire County I was 10 (I'll turn 79 in a few months!), and we had a party line, and no direct dial. Western Mass was one of the last places in New England to get direct dial. Prior to that, we had phone numbers like 1205W. And Ma Bell dictated whether or not you could have an extended cord on your phone. There were no color options; it was black or nuthin'.
Damn! All of a sudden I feel OLD!

[Mossfern]

41. easy

clockwise
didn't have to think for a second

wait! .....

[progree]

24. The reason I was told in elementary school for learning cursive is because it is FASTER

Last edited Sun Mar 22, 2026, 06:13 PM - Edit history (1)

at least twice as fast as writing print. No lifting the pen after each letter.

It's not as important as before, but I still take notes at home, watching something like Frontline, with a combination of typing on the computer, and writing cursive (sometimes combined with print). Hand-writing for short things, typing for a long sentence.

I don't always have a computer with me when I need to make notes (and no way am I as fast on a phone as in cursive).

Several states have started requiring cursive instruction again in school.

ETA - I agree with your comment too about analog clocks. I have a friend whose teen daughter never learned to read an analog clock and refused to learn. But there are still many around, including at the grocery store where I do my shopping -- it's quicker to glance up at it rather than my wrist watch, which is often not oriented right, is covered by my shirt sleeve or jacket sleeve etc., so it's a bit extra effort to read (my wristwatch is digital BTW, so I'm not a fanatic about analog clocks)

And it's easy to learn -- just look at where the little hand is pointing, and one is pretty close to getting it right The really, really hard part is what the big hand is pointing to, for example if it's pointing to the "4" that means :20. Outrageous, one has to multiply by 5, that's a lot of work (I suppose an adult learning an analog clock would start out multiplying the big hand number by 5. Back when I learned to read a clock, that was before learning multiplication, so one just learned that "4" is 20-after somehow).

[Sequoia]

44. Personally. I like Roman Numeral clocks.

I am so glad I never had to use AI to write anything. I still have my powder blue princess rotary phone, and a clacky electric portable typewriter that uses ribbons. Neither of which are in use these days.

[progree]

45. I have the clacky electric portable typewriter with ribbon too. Sadly, no rotary dial phone,

I think the first phone I owned was push-button, in 1975. It cost extra I think.

But I remember when phone numbers were like FE7-2345, which one still sees occasionally on the walls of commercial buildings when a neighboring building has just been torn down, exposing the ancient wall.

And I remember my mother making long distance calls from grandma's farm... in a slow loud clear voice, " I would like to make a station-to-station direct call..." I forget the rest of it, like she was trying to reach someone on the moon. (1960's)

[Ilikepurple]

25. Your first two sentences reveal the tenuous ground the cursive argument stands on.

Almost every argument I read starts with the claims that cursive being lost is a developmental negative yet supports the view on studies that compare typing to handwriting. It is not clear from studies that cursive has cognitive benefits over manuscript. The focus on cursive seems to be more of a political rather than scientific point. I’ve not settled on my opinion where I stand on this matter because like virtually all of society, I am woefully underinformed. I do believe it’s fairly uncontroversial that handwriting has cognitive benefits, but it seems that the focus on cursive is more keyed on “kids these days” kinds of emotions rather than actual science. Like learning any social skill, there are going to be benefits to the teaching of cursive, but I’m still waiting for proof that maintaining the average baseline of cognitive function is one of them.

[GiqueCee]

38. My wife has a Masters Degree in Special Ed...

... and 30+ years of experience in the field. Her observations are anecdotal in some respects, but supported by her long experience and numerous studies, particularly regarding fine motor skill development, and retention. I'll go with her knowledge, and my own experience as a parent, though our sons are both in their 40's now.

[Ilikepurple]

47. I think it would be interesting to hear your wives anecdotes, but you only mentioned analog clocks in your prior post.

I do applaud your wife for choice of field and obvious dedication to the betterment of others. Only you can decide the form of justification you use to base your beliefs, but in a public forum when you share your belief as if it was knowledge, you may be asked what that justification is. Do you really think many of us are not reasonably educated older parents with real world experience related to the generational cognitive development? I’m not saying you’re not justified based on your personal anecdotal evidence, but you shouldn’t expect wholesale agreement on that basis.

Every time lamenting about the demise of cursive comes up here and in the media, it starts with talking about cursive and ends with comparing studies where writing is compared to typing or simply degenerates into a discussion of all the skills we learned that the current generation is missing.
The argument, as generally presented out of order, seems to be as follows:
1. Studies show that Writing has beneficial effects on motor skills and information retention
2. Cursive is a writing
3. Therefore, learning cursive in addition to manuscript has beneficial effects on motor skills and information retention
This argument is invalid as it’s missing a premise. The missing premise is that “manuscript writing is not a writing.” This is false , so the argument fails as it is unsound. This does not mean the conclusion is false, but that the argument provided fails.

It always gives me pause when I’m presented with a fallacious argument, especially in conclusions about studies. Sometimes it’s just the writer’s failure to state their argument clearly, but often the reason a stronger argument is not given is because the studies don’t actually support the desired conclusion. This seems to be the case the many times I’ve seen this argument. Often, our advocacy for a position our experience and intuition gives rise to takes precedence over the search for the truth.

It was not clear that your statement was based on your wife’s anecdotal knowledge but rather it implied that the cognitive impact of the use of cursive over manuscript was established by science. If it was, it would be easy to find studies that unambiguously say so. The studies I’ve seen actually show that it is writing, cursive or manuscript, that has beneficial cognitive effects over typing. That doesn’t mean your wife isn’t more of an expert on the issue than I, but expertise alone often doesn’t settle the truth of claims. People like your wife are wellsprings of information on these kinds of matters, so I’m as wary of discounting her anecdotal experiences as I am taking those experiences as definitive. You and your wife might be right, but I’m suspending judgment for now as I think the issues highlighted by Ancianita in #17 are more pressing. This isn’t the last we’ll hear of the issue and I think that is good as I don’t think it has been settled.

[hunter]

52. Cursive was torture for me.

My mom made me take typing in seventh grade and that skill made writing fun again.

In fifth, sixth, and seventh grade teachers demanded cursive. In eighth grade I had only one teacher who required cursive and I hated that class. I couldn't write fast enough to finish exams, which seemed unfair.

In high school and college none of my teachers cared.

I entered kindergarten reading at a fourth or fifth grade level. That probably cemented the shapes of words in my mind. I never did "phonics." I was given independent reading throughout elementary school. As a weird autistic spectrum kid that only made me weirder from the perspective of my classmates.

I can type as fast as I think. My second grade scrawl is almost as fast. Four years of misery got me nowhere with cursive.

Today good typing skills are more important than cursive. When I took typing there was only one other boy in our class of thirty. Boy's didn't type. Fortunately that wasn't my dad's position. He wasn't much good at shooting so the Army taught him to type. It was a skill he respected. My mom was an excellent typist.

Promoting cursive seems a perverse political issue to me. I'm much more concerned about innumeracy and scientific illiteracy. Critical thinking skills and the various arts are also more important than any mandatory teaching of cursive.

[SheltieLover]

33. I couldn't agree more.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. IDIOCRACY becomes reality and defines a new class of fuedal peasantry.

Who will service the ultraclass tech bros and religious elites. Legal rights won't exist under the new regime as it will all be determined by pay to play rules.
Them as has the gold, or crypto, will make and enforce the rules.

[Stargazer99]

23. YOU GOT IT !!!!!

They don't want you to learn critical thinking or cursive writing because you might reason and mess up their plans

[BidenRocks]

9. Unlike many,

I grew up with libraries. The card files with the Dewey Decimal System and the different areas to explore.
I could find anything! If not, there was always the librarian.
Now it's Google and to a tiny extent, AI searches.
It made the search quicker but the result was the same. Information found.

It helps to understand a library to understand how to slow down and take time to comprehend.

It's the atmosphere. Quite different from a server room.

[twodogsbarking]

10. A.I. stands for Artificial Insemination. Same thing for AI except no long glove is used.

[nuxvomica]

11. Just the other day I was bemoaning lost skill sets even without AI

It seemed to me that with cars nowadays most people don't grow up learning how they work because the engines are so computerized. It used to be kids grew up having to understand at least the basics of auto mechanics. That creates a loss in problem-solving generally. Then I was thinking that when cars became common people probably bemoaned the lack of skill in dealing with horses, a skill that has a lot of side effects, like learning when to be gentle with other beings. With AI, however, these skill losses can be wide-ranging and nearly complete. The good news is there's a trend among Gen-Z'ers to revisit old activities, like needlepoint, as a substitute for continuous screen time. Learning practical skills, even if only to kill time, will come in handy when some apocalyptic event brings down the grid and we're all looking for blacksmiths and weavers.

[BattleRow]

21. Or gardening...With summer coming and prices skyrocketing,well

Vegetable gardening is more attractive on many levels..especially container plantings.

[mwmisses4289]

28. We've given up on gardening; very expensive wildlife food, lol!

[BattleRow]

37. Yes,that's understandable.

Years ago,I got very optimistic and tried growing tomatoes
Well,the wildlife I had to contend with were caterpillars.
Then the mold started and that's when I finished my agrarian efforts.
BUT,hope springs eternal..I'm going to try once more...with feeling.

[mwmisses4289]

39. Lol. For us it wasn't just the various caterpillars, stink bugs and other creepy crawlers,

it was also the birds, possums and raccoons.

[BattleRow]

43. Food insecurity is on the rise on All fronts!

[Mossfern]

42. My experience as well

Deer fencing is against code in my town.
And then there's the rabbits and groundhogs who can decimate a garden overnight.

[SheltieLover]

35. Cripes, people can't even drive cars with manual transmissions anymore.

[nuxvomica]

36. Or dial a rotary phone

I saw some horror movie recently where young folks were trying to escape a killer and they found a rotary phone but it was of no use to them. I half-expected the murderer to demand they write him a check to save their lives and, once again, they would be out of luck.

[SheltieLover]

40. LOL Yup, check writing has gone the way of cursive, apparently.

[FakeNoose]

12. Today's parents don't get it because they weren't taught the basics in school

I know it's too late for the parents in their 20s and 30s, However they need to be told the truth ... they were taught to pass tests (mostly multiple choice tests) and that's how they got through school. They were cheated by a faulty system that operated on a discredited theory.

It was a horrible shortcut that never should have happened ... and it's too late to fix those mistakes. But those parents need to understand that their own children don't deserve to be short-changed. It's not too late to fix this, if we all have an honest re-evaluation of the entire educational process.

How many believe this will ever happen, show of hands ....

[littlemissmartypants]

15. Agism is an unsavory business.

[mwmisses4289]

30. Actually, quite a number of the 20 and 30 somethings I know realized they were shortchanged.

They look for free and low cost activities for their kids to do, and a lot of them travel, even if just to other areas of the states.

[littlemissmartypants]

14. Thanks for sharing this highplainsdem. ...

The author would have done well to explain by definition and examples the meaning of cognitive offloading in the very first sentence.

AI is a tool. Just like a hammer isn't recommended for brain surgery, artificial intelligence (emphasizing artificial) is simply a tool.

Thank gawd, the brain is plastic, and by that, I don't mean made of hydrocarbons. However, with the amount of microplastic that we've unleashed into the environment, it may soon be.

That's another exacerbating concern for cognitive health and development. There is never one single thing to use as a scapegoat in any dilemma. The big picture, the gestalt view, is the best.

I'm happy to see this thoughtful reflection on our digital new world order. As with everything, there will be winners and losers. However, as usual, children often fall in the latter category.

Thanks again for sharing this, highplainsdem.

❤️

[ancianita]

17. Big K & R. ALL parents must read this Psychology Today report if they want thinking children to control their futures.

Silicon Valley corporate owners, venture capitalist investors, and engineers don't let their children in front of screens any earlier in life than age 17 or 18. They know these things:

Addiction and Brain Chemistry:
Tech leaders view addictive technologies as "digital heroin," designed to trigger the brain's pleasure centers similarly to drugs, making them hazardous for developing minds.

Mental Health and Anxiety:
Excessive screen use is associated with a growing mental health crisis, leading to increased anxiety, depression, and decreased self-esteem among children.

Reduced Attention Spans:
Digital devices and, in particular, short-form content are linked to shorter attention spans and weakened cognitive abilities.

Lack of Creativity and Interaction:
Many tech elite prefer Waldorf schools, which ban screens, believing they inhibit creativity, interpersonal skills, and physical activity.

Engineering Behind the Scenes:
As creators of this tech, executives know that features like infinite scroll, notification badges, and autoplay are specifically designed to maximize user engagement—essentially keeping kids hooked at the expense of their development.


Thank you, highplainsdem!

[debsy]

19. There is evidence to support this all over social media

Even in DU, numerous links point to posts made by people who use AI to understand what is happening in the world. There is no critical thinking, reading, or research associated with these posts and the result is garbage out. People repost and share this garbage and we are left with a stinking pile of crap that nobody can make sense of.

[lonely bird]

20. Just an opinion...

AI and prediction markets (read: bets on anything) have two things in common. They are both examples of “just because you can do something that doesn’t mean you should” and libertarianism.

[Buddyzbuddy]

26. IMHO AI should be highly regulated, by gov't policies, parents and ourselves.

Like any new technology, we can find ourselves relying on it too easily.

For example: how many of us have found ourselves getting a little lazy to spell correctly because we rely on spell check or not remembering a phone number that we call regularly because we dial it up from a name on our phone or a single digit. Don't get me started on calculators.

How many people under 40 can use a map or know what a Thomas guide is because they're 100% reliant on a GPS. I love to look at a map when planning road trips.

My mom swore she wouldn't use a microwave or a clothes dryer until I bought them for her.

My point is, technology can be useful but like with anything we use we have to sometimes force ourselves to be a little uncomfortable. Instead of a dryer, we might hang an item to drip dry if we don't want it to fade. When reheating food that we want a crispy dry top layer on we might use an oven instead of a microwave, unless it's a convection/microwave .

When I taught my daughter to drive, I taught her to drive in reverse before driving forward, for several hours over separate days and it bothered her but now she really appreciates that skill. Sure, it caused her discomfort, at first. Anybody can drive forward and for those that can't or shouldn't we now have self driving cars which I wouldn't be caught dead in.

Technology in moderation can be good but AI should never be relied upon 100%, again IMHO.

[Initech]

27. Jensen Huang is one seriously evil fuck.

And so are all the AI bros.

[Ms. Toad]

31. I noticed all of these in my daughter 25 years ago - long before AI.

The consequences show up in four observable ways.

AI-dependent students lose the ability to explain their reasoning journey. They can produce proficient work but cannot articulate why they chose particular evidence, what confused them initially, or how they worked through competing interpretations. When questioned, they repeat conclusions but cannot reconstruct the thinking that led them there.

Encountering difficulty becomes anxiety. Students cannot spend 10 minutes wrestling with a challenging problem without external input or seeking assistance.

They lose capacity for extended reasoning chains. Multistep arguments that require Steps 1 through 4 to understand Step 5 become impossible. Complex problems requiring sustained reasoning produce the same collapse patterns that recent research identified in AI systems themselves.

And critically, students are unable to detect their own confusion or knowledge gaps. They'll submit work they cannot defend, express surprise if questioning reveals gaps in their logic, and often cannot remember what caused this confusion in the first place. Self-monitoring of the learning process begins to atrophy entirely.

And in the other students I've taught over the years. The path to diminished ability to perform complex tasks was well on its way before AI came along.

[LisaM]

34. I see this with software all the time. I am not a computer scientist

I am an English major, but when I was in college (mid 80s) we were supposed to take some classes that were in a different discipline from our major so I took computer programming classes. I took BASIC, Fortran, and COBOL.

There was a pre-requisite for the first class, which was Logic 101 and which was offered through the Philosophy department.

I cannot stress enough how this has helped me. First, the class in Logic, which I would never have taken otherwise. It was a solid foundation and I learned Boolean logic.

Next, the programming classes (I really loved Fortran) which have been immeasurably useful over the years with the various software programs I have used at work. I was always able to understand the underlying principles of filtering data, incrementing variant, etc., no matter what software program management capriciously chose for us to use and often ended up training the other users at my jobs.

I work in trademark law, and searching and reporting are huge tools that we use. I don't know that I am naturally good at this, but my programming background helped a lot.

I've been at this for a while and increasingly, I see new users who simply do not grasp the back end of what they are doing. They all want to push a button for quick results. There are programs that do this now, but they often miss things. I remember when one company introduced a product that did design searching using OCR. The baby lawyers loved this product, but I was able to quickly prove it had missed results through the shortcuts. I kept that example around for years (and sent it to the search company so that they could improve their product). It gets worse with each batch of new employees.

I am not saying this to toot my own horn or to dismiss younger employees as lazy or stupid. This is how they have learned things. The underlying principles hold no value for them because they don't even know they are there. I am really glad it wasn't that way for me.

[WarGamer]

48. Adults also lost the ability to hand print and hand embellish books...

Before the evil printing press demons arrived.

[highplainsdem]

49. The article is about cognitive atrophy in adults and cognitive foreclosure in children, because of AI

use. There have been multiple studies already showing AI dumbs down users.

[Emrys]

50. In my line of work (copy-editing for publishers), AI's been in use for some years.

After it started to be brought in, not all the publishers I worked for and books I worked on used it. One, more traditional (and great, also lefty) publisher I work with has as yet nothing to do with it beyond maybe traditional spellchecking (and they seem to be surviving, if not thriving).

In the versions I've seen, AI in copy-editing has taken two forms: pre-processing of files in an attempt to do some of the tedious donkey work, and checking the files after they've been worked on, to pick up on issues that may have been missed by a human copy-editor.

I'm currently working for a project management firm (they take on preparatory work for publishers, turning authors' typescripts into the final typeset versions). A year or so ago, they went over to using a custom-designed online publishing system rather than using Microsoft Word, which is the industry standard. Its pre-processing's always been a bit hit or miss. It can certainly help do away with some aspects of RSI and mindbending tedium. But it can also screw up, sometimes spectacularly (and occasionally hilariously). As you'd expect, it can be very very literal-minded, and that doesn't always fit with work on something as frequently nuanced as language, and especially a language as cranky as English.

One quite mechanical task pre-processing can be of some help with is cross-checking references. A non-fiction author may write a book with numerous citations of publications in text, associated with a references section or bibliography. The scope for errors (and general author sloppiness) is obvious, and dealing with and resolving them can form the bulk of our work, so any assistance is usually welcome.

I'd say the online system I'm working on with my current project is maybe 85% functional, maybe a little more, which may sound pretty good, but the 15% or so error rate is more of a bane than you might think.

For instance, one problem I've encountered is with in-text citations using "et al." Et al. is short for et alia, which is Latin for "and others". It can be used with the main author's name as an alternative to listing all the author names for a publication (and there can be very many in research works).

The system I'm using parses anything in text that "looks like" it may be a citation: what it assumes to be a name plus a year of publication (usually after the name, in brackets). That can occasionally screw up in itself (say if someone's just mentioning a year in passing), generating nonsense author queries that we have to weed out before we risk annoying the authors with them.

This same system's currently having a mental block with "et al." If it finds an author surname in text followed by a year in brackets and associates that with a references entry that has multiple authors, it'll raise a query complaining bitterly if it can't find "et al." in the accompanying phrase in text. Occasionally, it's correct, the author just made a mistake, and it's easily remedied. But the way it's currently programmed, it doesn't detect the strings "et al.," or "et al.'s", so these queries are just nonsense and we need to delete them or the author may think we're halfwits.

So the pre-processing may well be doing away with some donkey work, but it's creating other donkey work instead.

In terms of checking files after I've worked on them, my client very much wants us to run a "grammar/spelling checker" after finishing our main run-through, and this can lead to quite a lot of fun and games. These checkers - more or less primitive examples of AI - have been around in various word processors for many years, so you'd think they'd be quite mature by now. Alas.

The checker gives us the option of checking in either US English or UK English. The book I'm working on needs to be in UK English, but with -ize endings, not -ise ones (in words like recognize/recognise). Whoever did the programming didn't allow for this, and assumed anyone working in UK English would just need to use -ise endings, whereas -ize endings in UK English is a common standard in publishing nowadays (it's what Oxford University Press specifies, for instance).

So after working though the chapter and running the checker, I have to go through and reverse every time it's changed an -ize ending into an -ise one. More tedious donkey work, and often a lot of it.

It also makes some other bloopers. It prefers the "Oxford comma" in serial lists (Tom, Dick, and Harry), whereas the client publisher (and I) much prefer to include such commas only if they help clarify the sense of a phrase. That's also much more a UK standard usage.

It's also got a nasty habit, just to keep us on our toes when checking in UK English, of changing any instances it finds of "US" or "United States" to "UK" or "United Kingdom". How that came about beats me.

So I find myself arguing with the checker as I go along, on this as well as a number of other of its foibles: "Look, buddy, I've been doing this work for nigh on forty years, man and boy. You're just a cobbled-together jumped-up pocket calculator with delusions of adequacy trained on god knows what source material and programmed by people who don't really understand many basic principles of English, let alone copy-editing, so butt out."

This system is considered near state of the art, and I read not long ago that a major publisher had licensed it for a considerable sum for use by its in-house editing team.

The problems I've described could be quite trivial to reprogram, but the problems are economics and business politics. I've reported the problems I've found to my line manager, but the response is often, "Yeah, we've told the developers about that, but it doesn't look like it's going to get fixed any time soon" - the implication being "if ever".

No doubt some serious resources were expended to develop this system to its current state, and I guess bean counters have said it's good enough for jazz, regarding our feedback as nitpicky gripes.

Which may well be what they sound like to any of you who've reached this far in what's a much, much longer screed than I intended when I started typing. If I sound cranky on DU sometimes, maybe you now understand why.

In an attempt to at least do the OP the respect of relating to it more obviously: when I started out as a copy-editor, I was working with paper typescripts, pens, vats of Tipp-Ex, reams of Post-Its, and far too much coffee and tobacco.

I know how to do all these processes manually and mentally, and that often helps when the software screws up. In fact, without that grounding, it might be difficult to detect and identify some of the software bloopers I've mentioned, along with others, let alone overcome them.

I doubt many publishing training courses nowadays put students through the sort of apprenticeship I was lucky enough to have way back - funnily enough, with that same lefty publisher I mentioned up top, and they and I are both still going strong.

[DonCoquixote]

51. A big, not a feature

The upper classes would love nothing better than to have masses that could not do things that even a mediocre education of ages past can do, it makes them easy to control, and it also makes your "ivy league college" degrees actually look like a sign of intelligence (as opposed to somethign mommy and daddy bought them.) Note the utter idiots in the GOP who all went to Yale, most of whom you would not trust to bag your groceries.