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The Promise and the Crash

  1. 01The Promise and the Crash
  2. 02Ten years, they thought
  3. 03What made them so sure
  4. 04The wall: search explodes
  5. 05The wall: knowledge
  6. 06What they predicted
  7. 07The Lighthill Report
  8. 08Reinforce your understanding
  9. 09Question: combinatorial
  10. 10Question: Language
  11. 11Question: Knowledge
  12. 12Quiz: answer
  13. 13The winter begins
  14. 14Want to go deeper?
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The wall: knowledge

The second wall was harder to see coming.

Language requires the whole world as context. “I saw the man with the telescope.” Which one had the telescope, you or the man? The words alone do not settle it. You need to know what is plausible, what is common, and what the conversation has been about.

That knowledge is ordinary. You use it automatically, without effort or instruction. A computer does not have it unless it is somehow supplied.

And most of it is hard to supply, not just because there is so much of it, but because it does not come neatly packaged as rules. It is built into experience.

Citations(2)↓
  1. 1. plato.stanford.edu
  2. 2. plato.stanford.edu