A cure for Siri

Consider the phrase, “Man on first.” It doesn’t make much sense unless you know baseball. Or imagine a sign outside a store that reads, “Baby sale - One week only!” You easily infer that the store isn’t selling babies. Computers can’t do that. They haven’t mastered the pragmatic component of language yet .. information that is only available by knowing what social context prevails. However, Stanford psychologists have created a mathematical model that helps predict pragmatic reasoning [ link ]. This could allow computers to recognize when to apply commonly held social rules. Who knows, they may have just discovered a cure for the speech impediment suffered by Siri – a natural language interface for the Apple iPhone [ link ].