Re: unnatural languages

On Mar 15, 3:42 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick thought we'd be able to converse
with computers by 2001. Obviously, smart people as recently ago as the
1960s didn't have the slightest idea of how complicated human language
is. Too bad they never bothered to ask the people who actually knew,
but just bulled on ahead without the benefit of insight from
linguists.

(They also thought computers would fill entire rooms.)

Are you familiar with what goes on in the internet group rec.arts.int-
fiction and thereabouts? You can find more by googling "interactive
fiction" and there is even an article in our beloved Wikipedia.

This is not what the AI enthusiasts of the 1960's wanted. I was
peripherally involved with one of those projects (the one called
Deacon). I told them they needed to learn more about language. They
went off and read Chomsky. Eventually the government lost patience
with them and stopped funding them.

Interactive fiction is all that seems to survive from those days. It
is worth a glance if you have any interest in what computers can
actually do with language (as opposed to what people hope they might
do).

PS: Only a handful of real computers were ever as big as a room
(unless one has in mind a closet). But an entire system needed a lot
of floorspace because there were so many large peripherals.


.

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