From: john.w.kennedy@gmail.com   
      
   On 2015-07-13 13:29:52 +0000, John F. Eldredge said:   
      
   > On Sun, 12 Jul 2015 14:15:59 -0400, John W Kennedy wrote:   
   >   
   >> Of course, SF has always gotten natural-language processing wrong.   
   >> Asimov, for example, assumed that robots would understand spoken English   
   >> decades before they could speak it, when, in fact, computer-speech   
   >> attachments were in IBM's regular catalog by the mid-60s, and voice   
   >> recognition is still either restricted in function (Siri) or dependent   
   >> on supercomputers (Watson).   
   >   
   > Converting text to speech is a relatively minor task, since the computer   
   > doesn't need to actually understand what is being said, only to follow a   
   > set of rules. Understanding speech is much more complex, if you want to   
   > do more than just recognize a few keywords.   
      
   Of course. I have no idea how Asimov came to make such an obvious   
   blunder, but he did. And George Lucas repeated it in the 70s, when a   
   quick glance at what was actually on the market would have revealed the   
   truth.   
      
   --   
   John W Kennedy   
   "But now is a new thing which is very old--   
   that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,   
   which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."   
     -- Charles Williams.  "Judgement at Chelmsford"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)