The Carriages

1. Why can't your AI count the letters in strawberry?
2. Because it never sees letters. It reads a word as a train of chunks, cut in odd places.
3. Ask how many R's, and it counts carriages, not passengers. Straw. Berry. It says two.
4. It doesn't know it's guessing. The chunks are all it has ever seen.
5. Spell the word out with spaces, and every letter gets its own carriage. Now it counts.
6. What has yours miscounted?

10). A model railway station at dusk. A word pulls in as a train: three carriages, STR · AW · BERRY, cut in odd places, their windows frosted. The stationmaster (the machine) counts carriages, never passengers, and chalks "R's: 2". Push into a frosted window: the letters are ghosts. Then the letter train arrives on the far track, one letter per carriage, and the chalk says 3.