But if a computer is able to do the same thing as a human does (answer a simple question with pattern recognition and sentence parsing), then the internal mechanism of how a computer does it seems like mere trivia/jargon rather than anything fundamentally important to intelligence. A computer may have reading comprehension without having it in exactly the same way that a human does.
But it's true that we do have a underlying world model by which we understand passages. And that world model is pretty essential if we are to answer more complicated questions. So since it's pretty clear computers can handle the "informational retrieval" side of reading, we should now be focused on generating a "world model" based on text.
the internal mechanism of how a computer does it seems like
mere trivia/jargon rather than anything fundamentally
important to intelligence. A computer may have reading
comprehension without having it in exactly the same way that
a human does.
Yes, it is trivia what we decide to call it, and computers may someday have "intelligence" or "sentience" without having it in the same way that we do. However I think mechanically structuring data and building a querying tool over that cannot be considered "intelligence" or "comprehension" in the sense we seem to speak of here.
since it's pretty clear computers can handle the
"informational retrieval" side of reading, we should now be
focused on generating a "world model" based on text.
Yes, that's what Google's working on with Knowledge Graph. It's quite good, it's integrated with search already.
Comments
But if a computer is able to do the same thing as a human does (answer a simple question with pattern recognition and sentence parsing), then the internal mechanism of how a computer does it seems like mere trivia/jargon rather than anything fundamentally important to intelligence. A computer may have reading comprehension without having it in exactly the same way that a human does.
But it's true that we do have a underlying world model by which we understand passages. And that world model is pretty essential if we are to answer more complicated questions. So since it's pretty clear computers can handle the "informational retrieval" side of reading, we should now be focused on generating a "world model" based on text.