another elephant (Score 1)

my feeling is that what's often missed in the various AI language research programs is the problem of speech and reference. Any linguist working in the field will tell you that speech recognition is an incredible pain in the arse and then to layer semantic recognition on top of that is doubly painful. Though my real concern is about things like irony and sarcasm. I'm glad somebody stepped up to point out that different languages break concepts and the world up in different ways. But how exactly can you get AI to gather enough circumstantial data to understand something like sarcasm, where the connoted meaning is often different or the exact opposite of the denoted.

And what about signs that are coded to mean multiple things to multiple people simultaneously? For example, you're talking with your friend about this absolutely grotesque hat someone is wearing. You say to this person nice hat; he thanks you and your friend snickers. Same sign, two simultaneous meanings.