Bill Woods, a scientist in the field of artificial intelligence, focuses on trying to get computers to understand human language. He began trying to create programs that would understand simple things, like children’s stories. The aim was to work his way up to a computer that understood concepts like astronomy and physics. To his surprise, Woods said, “It turned out that understanding physics and astronomy is extremely simple compared to the problem of understanding children’s stories.”
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“Wittgenstein’s Ghost” by Paul Trachtman, SMITHSONIAN, Apr. 2002, p. 125.