Toward Broad and Deep Language Processing for Intelligent Systems

The early vision of AI included the goal of endowing intelligent systems with human-like language processing capabilities. This proved harder than expected, leading the vast majority of natural language processing practitioners to pursue less ambitious, shorter-term goals. Whereas the utility of human-like language processing is unquestionable, its feasibility is quite justifiably questioned. In this talk, I will not only argue  that some approximation of human-like language processing is possible, I will present a program of R&D that is working on making it a reality. This vision, as well as progress to date, is described in the book “Linguistics for the Age of AI” (MIT Press, 2021), whose digital version will soon be available open access through the MIT Press website.