In Brief
- Programming a robot with the rules of English is difficult because we still do not know what all the rules are.
- To help robots sort out ambiguity, scientists build language machines by feeding them billions of words tagged for meaning and parts of speech.
- Researchers are using crowdsourcing on the Web to give robots a better sense of how human beings interpret and use language.
Sulla, the world’s first talking robot, was so adept at conversation—in four languages, no less—that a human visitor to the laboratory in which she was created refused to believe she was not a real person.
Alas, Sulla was not a real robot, either, but a character in Karel Capek’s 1921 play R.U.R., which introduced the word “robot” to the lexicon. Ever since that debut, talking robots have seemed to be peeking around every corner, and not just in science fiction.
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Add Comment"Researchers are using crowdsourcing on the Web to give robots a better sense of how human beings interpret and use language"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do you define "sense"? Are you telling me robots sense — who's doing the sensing? I don't think so.
Well said, cbung. I believe we will will have synthetic cognition some day, but our persistent habit of personifying current machines stunts progress.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobot invention is scientifically good. But they are just controlling of what they the robot want to do it's just a surrogate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<a href="http://www.designsuccessu.com/about/">interior design university</a>
That must have been quite a talking robot for someone to believe it was real. Kinda scary yet intriguing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScary how robots can improve their <a href="http://memoryincreaser.com">mind and memory</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobots can talk now. They can be programmed to give audio reponses instead of visual text. This has been around for over 20 years. If you mean robots can be programmed to have an intelligent conversation, well, first we need to figure out how to get most humans to do that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe they meant "provide reference" when they said "give robots a better sense", something the robots can consult and rely on when "talking" to human beings.
What I would question about this article are two parts: first, the part they talk about Google Scribe. They say it is not able to make meaningful sentences when you enter word by word and accept all the suggestions, but I do not believe this is the aim of it. I think it is designed to be dealt by humans, not to write by itself. But I do get the point, they mean they are not able to rely on the words coming before the last one to predict the next one, just on the very last, I just think it is not so clear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe second thing is about the pronouns. In a sentence like "Mary went to the store with Jane. She bought an ice cream", I would not be able to know for sure who this "she" refers to. And I do not see a problem - actually I think it is very "humanish" - to ASK in a situation like this, and that is what I would do: "Who bought it, Mary or Jane?".