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The communications made by the machines are very basic and simple. Human communication is complex.
There are multiple characteristics of the human language that might be easy for a human to understand but extremely difficult for a computer to understand.
For machines, it is difficult to understand our language. Let us take a look at some of them here:
Arrangement of the words and meaning - There are rules in human language. There are nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.
A word can be a noun at one time and an adjective some other time. This can create difficulty while processing by computers.
An analogy with programming language- Different syntax, same semantics: 2+3 = 3+2 Here the way these statements are written is different, but their meanings are the same that is 5.
Different semantics, same syntax: 2/3 (Python 2.7) ≠ 2/3 (Python 3) Here the statements written have the same syntax but their meanings are different.
In Python 2.7, this statement would result in 1 while in Python 3, it would give an output of 1.5.
Multiple Meanings of a word - In natural language, it is important to understand that a word can have multiple meanings and the meanings fit into the statement according to its context of it.
Perfect Syntax, no Meaning - Sometimes, a statement can have a perfectly correct syntax but it does not mean anything.
In Human language, a perfect balance of syntax and semantics is important for better understanding.
These are some of the challenges we might have to face if we try to teach computers how to understand and interact with human language.
Study more about Natural Language Processing at Natural Language Processing Class 10