When I woke this morning, I decided, for reasons unknown, to write a sentence where each word begins with consecutive letters A through Z.
I quickly got:
A boy called daily even from gardens he imagined . . .
But was stuck on J.
And even when I skipped J, K seemed challenging too.
So, as would any graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, I asked Artificial Intelligence for help.
Pioneers of AI at Carnegie Mellon University: Herb Simon and Allen Newell]
First, AI told me I was trying to write an “initial-letter pangram.”
“This form prioritizes the alphabetical sequence of first letters over using every letter in the alphabet within the text, which defines a standard pangram,” said AI.
I had never heard of pangrams before, so I thanked AI for its response.
Then I asked it to finish my sentence. And it instantly produced:
“A boy called daily even from gardens he imagined, joyfully keeping long messages, never offering pointless quarrels, returning secret thoughts, understanding various words, exchanging youthful zest.”
It cheated on X with exchanging, but quite acceptably.
I encouraged it to finish the sentence a different way, but it only replaced “long messages” with “lively melodies,” refusing to make any other changes.
After receiving multiple refusals, I finished the sentence myself, not as quickly as AI, but acceptably, and using AI’s response as a model:
A boy called daily even from gardens he imagined, jealously knowing lovely mysteries, never obviously, perhaps quietly, revealing signs that under various words exchanged yet zero.
Then I asked AI to generate its own initial-letter pangrams. And instantly, it generated:
Albert Benjamin Caldwell drank every filthy gallon he invented, joyfully kissing laboratory materials needed of potions, quixotically rushing solutions to uvula vacillations with xenobiotic, youthful zeal.
A brave cat danced elegantly, flipping, galloping, hopping, inventing joyful, kinetic leaps, mastering nimble, outstanding pirouettes, quietly racing, somersaulting, tumbling, under vaulting, wavy, xenial, youthful zealots.
A bold carp dives, ever foraging, greedily, hungrily, in jungled kelp-lined marine niches; omnipresent plankton—quivering, readily startled, terrified, usurping vainly watchful xanthic yellowfish—zag.
Very nice, I told it. It remained impassive.
So, I asked why I had been stuck on J. And it responded:
“The letter S begins the most English words, followed by C, P, B, and M. Conversely, X starts the fewest words, with Q, Z, and J also among the least common initial letters.”
I asked for a ranking of all letters by their frequency at the beginning of words.
And it provided:
S, A, C, P, R, M, T, B, F, G, H, D, L, O, N, E, I, J, K, U, W, V, Y, Q, X, Z.
This contradicted its prior response (it had said that C was the second most common, not A). But AI had an adequate explanation for the discrepancy.
“Based on the search results, S is the most common initial letter, followed by P, C, and A. The discrepancy arises because different sources use varying datasets. For example, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary analysis ranks S first, followed by P, C, D, M, and A. Therefore, C being second or A being second depends on the specific corpus analyzed, but S consistently ranks first.”
O brave new world . . .
Photo Credit for image of Allen Newell:
By https://stanfordmag.org/contents/if-you-love-what-computers-can-do-thank-these-folks, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63421113
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who loves yet another woman he never knew. Find your copy at Amazon. Hardcover, paperback, and e-book editions available.
https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Two-Words-Orlando-Bartro-ebook/dp/B072MNB4F9