Popular Mechanics - USA (2020-09 & 2020-10)

(Antfer) #1

Tech


The iPad’s Handwriting


Recognition Tech


Shows How Apple


Does Machine Learning


T


HE MORE INTUITIVE A TASK IS FOR
humans, generally, the harder it is for arti-
ficial intelligence. Think of when Alexa
can’t hear your commands, or when your
spam filter traps an important email. A
computer’s ability to read handwriting,
then translate it into letters and numbers
it can understand, has been a challenge going back
decades. Think of the hit-or-miss capabilities of
the Windows Transcriber in the early 2000s, or
the PalmPilot in the late ’90s. Handwriting is so
nuanced that just analyzing a static letter’s shape
doesn’t work.
Apple, it seems, found a solution. In the newest
update to iPadOS, when you write with the Pen-
cil stylus, the iPad can understand your scrawl.
It works like most machine learning—examples
inform rules that help predict and interpret a
totally new request—but taps into a smarter data
set and greater computing power to do what had
stumped generations of previous machines. While
Alexa and Siri rely on a connection to faraway data
centers to handle their processing, the iPad needs
to be able to do all that work on the device itself to
keep up with handwriting (and drawing—machine
learning also helps the Notes app straighten out an

18 September/October 2020

4


CO

UR

TE

SY

AP

PL

E

// ALEXANDER GEORGE //


Sketch in Notes
app using the
Apple Pencil.


Handwritten
text can be
selected using
the same ges-
tures as typed
text.
Free download pdf