L is for Language
Natural or otherwise.
We communicate naturally through language. Over the course of history, languages have evolved grammatical rules, syntax, semantics and idioms.
But for every grammatical rule there’s an exception, idioms generally don’t make logical sense, the meaning of a word can change with context, metaphors can often mean the opposite of what they say – all of which makes it difficult for a computer to understand.
Computers are simple machines. Simple in the sense that they do one thing at a time and need to be told exactly what to do every time. There can’t be any ambiguity. Inside a computer ambiguity leads to errors – errors that can be fatal to the execution of a programme.
Anyone who has used speech to text software will tell you that it requires an amount of training and even then it’s far from perfect.
The day that we can issue commands verbally and expect the computer to interpret our intentions perfectly is a long way off yet.