The main problem
The problem is not so well defined: take {spoken/written/textual} language as input, and ...
Understanding language is “AI Complete”
- in order to do it you have to understand every other facet of intelligence as well --- planning, reasoning about physical systems, geometrical and spatial reasoning, diagnosis, etc. etc.
The history of natural language processing in AI is a process of discovering just how difficult and deep the problem is
Ways to make the problem easier
- work in limited domains (newspaper stories about earthquakes)
- work with simpler syntax (will respond to information requests or to simple commands but cannot understand arbitrary sentences about the domain). Example: electronic funds transfers; intelligent database front-ends; Truckworld scenarios