Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child’s? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain. - Alan Turing, 1950
This thought has been in my head ever since I got interested with Artificial Intelligence. The idea behind this is to build a simple ‘learning’ system and teach it so that it becomes ‘intelligent’. Guided by this, I started making some experiments of my own simply by talking to children. I was quite fascinated to see how children respond to certain questions.
A talk with my daughter
I asked Kei, my 6-year-old daughter, “How old are you?” and she replied. “Six.” Now, that’s simple. Nothing amazing. But my next question quickly answered one of the questions in my head. I asked Kei, “How you old are?” and still she replied, “Six.” I then asked her, “You where live do?” Without pausing for a moment, she replied, “Tungko.” Tungko is the place where we live.
So what do I make out of this?
Simple, we humans don’t process sentences structurally. When trying to understand sentences, we don’t really care about grammar nor are we concerned with the parts of speech. Apparently, we just look for certain keywords in a sentence and reply with the best correct answer.
So that’s my first lesson - we don’t process sentences structurally. Believe it or not, this saves me a lot of time since I will no longer have to parse a sentence for structure.
That’s all for now - maybe stupid for you. But knowledge for me in my journey through Artificial Intelligence
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