There are many reasons why an individual may not feel confident with writing whether the purpose is to write an essay at school or, or writing emails and reports within the workplace. When an individual who is neurodiverse faces the task of writing lengthy amounts of text for differing purposes, often anxiety about poor spelling and grammar can lead to a lack of confidence that can result in behaviours that reduce productivity such as procrastination. Equally, in the act of procrastination there is likely to be a range of emotions taking place for the individual that erodes one's sense of achievement and motivation that ultimately feeding into a vicious cycle of reduced productivity.

In this age of technology, one doesn’t have to go far to find a spelling and grammar checker that can help with improving the quality of writing on a laptop but sometimes there can be challenges in getting the right predictions displayed. For some, it could be time-consuming doing a spelling and grammar check at the end of writing an essay when one is tired and ready to stop staring at text. Equally, predictions are often based on algorithms that predict based upon logical English language rules and perhaps less on the ‘style’ of the writer and the reality is that depending upon the purpose of writing, a spelling and grammar checker should probably provide both.

This is where artificial intelligence comes in.

Israeli tech company, Lightkey, has found a way to improve the speed of producing text whilst also providing contextual suggestions during the writing process using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Artificial Intelligence

The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

Lightkey claims to learn a user’s typing patterns and gradually predict up to 18 words including punctuation marks, allowing the user to compose content faster and with confidence.

The team at Aventido have been using Lightkey and have found that it can measure how much one types without assistance and gives an estimation of how much typing time is saved in using Lightkey.

Personally, I have found that Lightkey’s AI has started to make predictions not only for words but also for longer sentences that then requires only a keystroke to accept the prediction on the go, saving time writing sentences that one often repeats in emails, reports, and blog posts. So it seems to accurately predict words, it improves my use of grammar all within the real-time of typing words and then in later pieces of text then predicts longer sentences where appropriate.

In my own readbacks within Lightkey, I have seen that Lightkey is saving me approximately 40% on my usual typing time for this month and that whilst I am more accurate with spelling and grammar, I am also effectively typing at 60 words a minute.

On an emotional level, I am finding that I am worrying less about accuracy and focusing more on creativity because the accuracy is taken care of and so this ultimately improves my productivity.