“I’m sorry, Dave, � I’m afraid I can’t do that”:� Can computers really understand what we say? Lillian Lee Professor, Computer Science http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/llee Cornell summer evening lecture, July 2012 the dream Why is this man smiling? ml t h a. 0 4 4 2 8 4 ull/ 6/f 8 3 7 n 2/ 8 4 v al/ n r u o e/j r u t a n m/ o c e. r u t a n w. w w p:// t t h The Turing test:� Intelligence è human-level language use ml ht ng-test. o.jpg onverse-turi _runner_fond c-c ade mi bl o 3/ c 0 1/ 1/ 0 1 010/ m/20 com/2 ess.co spot. ordpr blog es.w e. fil weetsag ostradio. s h p://bitter ]http://g htt Turing predicted we’d be close in about 50 years. Do authors dream of electric speech? NG.jpg kitt.jpg aT er_ Dat _rid 9/ ht pedia/en/0/0 e/cached_knig wiki mag org/ edia/i a. m di m/ me co wiki ones. upload. ww.navt http:// http://w pg c.j ma vis 4/jar 0 0/ 1 0 2 dia/ e m m/ o “Jarvis”, the A.I. c w. ua w.t w m/w system in Iron Man o c n. d c og bl w. w w p:// htt Why is this man not smiling? pg dyssey.j o Z6Ih5J4fI/s200/2001-a-space- Open the pod bay doors, Hal. B o U/ R A A A A A A A A A mehgI/ 4/S8Iq3e Cekv5Jj m9 Q _ m/ o ot.c ogsp http://4.bp.bl I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. &bracketid=497 =11131 d mi php? matchup. m/ o wl.c netbra w. w w http:// from sci-fi to science and engineering Natural-language processing (NLP) Goal: create systems that use human language as input/output •  speech-based interfaces •  information retrieval / question answering •  automatic summarization of news, emails, postings, etc. •  automatic translation … and much more! Interdisciplinary: computer science; linguistics, psychology, communication; probability & statistics, information theory… Recently deployed (in beta): Siri http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html State of the art: Watson c. n I s n o cti u d o r P y d r a p o e J / o ot h P P A : dit e r C The Watson system beat human Jeopardy! champions (and didn’t have internet access; it learned by “reading” before the match)