Unexpected problems with language machines

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The history of the laws of physics

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Unexpected problems with language machines

Marvin Minsky Scientist

		Views	Duration
71. Freeman Dyson proves what I couldn't		4525	03:17
72. Solving Emil Post's problem		3486	03:00
73. Solving Post's unsolvable problem leads to the 'Minsky Machines'	1	3313	03:49
74. Andrew Gleason's eight year plan of attack		3130	03:40
75. 'You can pull something with a string, but not push it'		2975	02:02
76. Will machines ever understand Aesop's fables?		2918	00:51
77. Analogy is the difference between human and computer thinking	2	3059	05:07
78. Developing ideas of intelligence in the 1960s		2570	02:01
79. Unexpected problems with language machines		2564	00:50
80. The history of the laws of physics		2766	02:44

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But we ran into some strange unexpected problems. For example, in the... in that wonderful period starting in the 1960s we had a couple of programs that were really, seemed... that... we had a couple of programs that seemed quite promising as steps towards understanding language and making machines that could communicate with people about ordinary things. Of course it was easy to get computers to communicate about highly technical things, because in a sense, things that are highly technical and advanced are usually much simpler than the things that you encounter as an ordinary person in the ordinary world.

Marvin Minsky (1927-2016) was one of the pioneers of the field of Artificial Intelligence, founding the MIT AI lab in 1970. He also made many contributions to the fields of mathematics, cognitive psychology, robotics, optics and computational linguistics. Since the 1950s, he had been attempting to define and explain human cognition, the ideas of which can be found in his two books, The Emotion Machine and The Society of Mind. His many inventions include the first confocal scanning microscope, the first neural network simulator (SNARC) and the first LOGO 'turtle'.

Title: Unexpected problems with language machines

Listeners: Christopher Sykes

Christopher Sykes is a London-based television producer and director who has made a number of documentary films for BBC TV, Channel 4 and PBS.

Tags: 1960s

Duration: 51 seconds

Date story recorded: 29-31 Jan 2011

Date story went live: 12 May 2011