There are a fair number of news articles around at the moment about the 'rise of the Machines'. With the new Terminator Movie due in May it's not really that surprising is it? A standard literary theme (man vs machine) which has been around a long time.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10556240
However if the machines are ever really going to have a chance they first have to figure out how to talk with us. English as a conversational language is tough. Even many native speakers aren't that good at it - just switch on day time tv for examples.
At Virsona we are working on a world class Dialog Engine. I see everyday the complexity that we have to deal with in terms of trying to understand not just what is being said but how to respond to it. There are some increadible advances in Natural Language Processing but we still have a long way to go. Integrating situational awareness, conversation context and domain knowledge are all complex problems that we (as humans) handle without thinking about it.
Perhaps at the end of the day all the machines really need to be able to say is 'I'm afraid I can't do that Dave'.
How difficult can that be?
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