Scaling language understanding (NLU)

John Ball
10 min readApr 11, 2022
Meaning, the output of Natural Language Understanding (NLU), has many applications. For example, generating from stored meaning is an obvious way to share knowledge, removing the language barrier (translation by meaning!). One question: how does it scale? (Image: Adobe Stock)

People can “get by” in a new language with only a couple of thousand words. So why don’t today’s systems scale to understand language?

An obvious way to scale a system to use human language is to start with a machine that has some of the capabilities of a human brain and then learn as human children do, asking questions when needed.

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John Ball

I'm a cognitive scientist working on NLU (Natural Language Understanding) systems based on RRG (Role and Reference Grammar). A mouthful, I know!