I'm obviously no linguistics professor, but here's my view, anyway:
It doesn't necessarily have to understand real world concepts... Just
accurately matching words with pre-written programs and objects is more
than enough. For example, NLP already works quite well for Internet
searches, because it's able to tell the difference between a proposed law,
an invoice and a visor of a cap. That is, a bill, a bill and a bill. It
may not genuinely know or understand what these are, but it can still do a
pretty good job associating the words with prewritten HTML documents.
Getting the gist of what I'm trying to do, performing context-sensitive
searching and loading up pre-designed programs is still a big step forward
from the GUI, even if it falls way way short of AI.
>The great thing
>about AI is I can tell my computer to do something no programmer ever dreamed
>of, that will be the true computer revolution!
There's no doubt about that! Nonetheless, just understanding "Send this
year's sales report to my boss," loading up the database, compiling the
report, and mailing it off to my boss's e-mail address would be a
significant breakthrough compared to Office 97, IMHO.
-WHEN YOUR ONLY TOOL IS A HAMMER-
-EVERY PROBLEM STARTS TO LOOK LIKE A NAIL-