Have you ever read "A Canticle for Leibowitz"? A peripheral bit in the story has a monk develop a mathematical system to determine what word would come next in

Have you ever read "A Canticle for Leibowitz"? A peripheral bit in the story has a monk develop a mathematical system to determine what word would come next in a manuscript whose edge has been lost. Walter M. Miller, writing that story in 1959, does not portray such a system as having or being perceived to have "actual intelligence", because he can easily imagine that a complex system could appear to work in that way without intelligence. The goalpost was never in that spot.