Scribe
Legend
I rolled my eyes for a long time at Gmail's attempts to guess what I was writing. And then, about a year ago, it got really good at it and began just tapping tab to let it complete sentences periodically. I still write the majority of my emails -- and I'm a very strong written communicator in English -- but if I'm finding value in these tools, I think it's likely that they're more widely used than anyone outside Google could imagine.
So...I agree, they likely are widely used, and likely a lot of people are finding value in them.
I think that is a net negative. They are not learning. They may (if just tabbing away and not understanding what it is doing) not even be picking up what they COULD be writing instead.
Its like penmanship. My wife writes well (as most women seem to do?) and older people write well, but my penmanship has always sucked, and my son's chicken scratch is an absolute travesty to try and read.
This is not a good thing. We are regressing as a society. This is not advancement, its just offloading the burden to a computer (or millions of them) and we as individuals, are less than we could be for it.
Its not like we are gaining any benefit with this offload of cognitive processing. I am not better off for forgetting cursive. My son is not better off for not even learning it.
Its Idiocracy, we are getting worse as a society.