With the release of The Theory of Everything, a biopic about his amazing life, Professor Stephen Hawking has reentered the public eye. Suffering from ALS, Professor Hawking is only able to communicate through a small sensor activated via a muscle in his cheek. This week, SwiftKey has revealed its role in providing Intel with the predictive technology that powers Hawking’s communication system.
In a post published on its corporate blog, SwiftKey describes the process of leveraging their predictive texting experience to Hawking’s particular needs, specifically the need to write and speak for long periods with greater ease. To achieve a predictive model attuned for the professor, SwiftKey built a personal language model based upon Hawking’s public writings and personal documents. The resulting model, which provides 10 possible predictions rather than the standard three in SwiftKey’s consumer app, has allowing Professor Hawking to double his speech rate.
The whole process is quite an interesting read, and can be found via the source link below.
[source]SwiftKey[/source]
