Modern AI cannot recognize the kind of A that Hofstadter wrote about in that essay. Hofstadter identifies novelty typefaces where A has none of the characteris

Modern AI cannot recognize the kind of A that Hofstadter wrote about in that essay. Hofstadter identifies novelty typefaces where A has none of the characteristics that you might associate with the letter. Often A is not a triangle, sure, but sometimes it has no upper bar, no left stroke, no right stroke. Sometimes the bars are defined by a transition from negative to positive space. Sometimes A is made of 20 strokes, or a pattern of dots, or an open eye where the half-circular upper lid defines the triangle and the pupil is the bar. A neural network trained on conventional As would not conclude that any of these are an A. These shapes wouldn't necessarily read as A in isolation. Sometimes they only read correctly when you're looking at text using a whole typeface defined on the same principles. Modern AI still cannot recognize that kind of A even though a human easily can. There are ways to make an A that require a human to understand an idea of "letterness" that's different than anything they've seen before. I'd recommend reading the original essay. The illustrations make this clear in a way my description can't.