Lecture 21- Human versus bot language

Question 1

A computers good at translation?

Answer 1

• Generally they are pretty good and are improving all the time.
• Pretty good at Syntax, Morphology and Phonology
• With lesser known + studied languages they are not so great.
• There is also some problem with words that have double meanings as can’t necessarily read context (this is where they fall down with regards to semantics

Question 2

What are some ways that chatbots fall down in communication?

Answer 2

-Sentences are being treated separately; no coherent whole
-Conversational Repair is missed
-Unable to track people across multiple turns, particularly when we used different terms for the
same thing
-Common knowledge from earlier in the chat is not
used.
- Random conversation changes got no comment whereas a normal person would think this was slightly odd
-No knowledge of cause and effect
-No “common sense
-Limited ability to deal with hypotheticals
-Difficulty with imagining world knowledge from
language
-Struggles with metaphorical uses of words
-Difficulty thinking consistently about time

Question 3

What is the chatbot (Kuki) good at?

Answer 3

• Vocabulary knowledge
• Coping with harassment (often sexual)
• Formulaic language
• Intros and Exits to conversations
• Morphology and Syntax??

Question 4

What overarching idea explains why Kuki is bad at the things it doesn’t do well?

Answer 4

Lack of a situation model