Ever since the invention of computers, people have dreamed of communicating with them the same way we communicate with other humans. Business people often complain about how hard it is to learn to use computers. Imagine how easy it would be if you could just type in a couple sentences in English (or some other natural language) and get the results you want. Advances have been made to develop natural language interfaces. However, there are some problems. As the following interaction between a human and a computer demonstrates, some problems may result.
| Bowman: | Who are our best clients? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | I do not understand the word clients. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | I mean customers. | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | I cannot compute the mean of customers. To calculate averages, you must specify a numeric attribute. For example, average income of customers. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | No, no. I do not want the average. | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Please restate the question as a positive statement. You want... | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | Who are our best customers? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Searching... There are no customers named Best. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | No, I want the top customers. | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Searching... The following customers match your request:
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| Bowman: | Wait a minute. | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Entering sleep mode for one minute. Further input ignored until 13:42. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | No! | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | 13:42. Please enter your request. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | Why are all of the customers named Top? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Searching... Unable to answer question. There is an incorrect premise. There are currently 7354 customers. Only three of them are named Top. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | I get it. Okay. Which customers have the most sales? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Searching... There are no customers with sales. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | What? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Rephrasing result: There is no salesperson named customers, so customers has no sales. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | No. Which customers have bought the most? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Searching... There are no products called most. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | Arghh! Which customers have spent the largest amount of money? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Searching... Unable to access customers’ computers. Please supply the proper passwords. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | What? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Retrying access... Incorrect passwords. Notification has been received from four customers that security violation has been logged. Network security command has shut off our access to the EDI network. Details have been forwarded to the computer security supervisor. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | No! Cancel the request. | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Query canceled. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | Why did you try to access the customers’ computers? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | The request required calculation of total corporate spending by each of the customers. That data is stored on the customers’ computers. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | Okay, try this:
Which customers have bought the most products from us? |
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| HAL: | Searching... This company sells no products called most. | ||||||||||||||||
| Bowman: | Nuts. Which customers have spent the largest amount of money on all of our products? | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | Searching... The following customer matches your request:
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| Bowman: | It’s about time. Thank you. I quit. | ||||||||||||||||
| HAL: | The time is 14:37. Closing the session. Logging off. |
One of the first lessons you have to learn in dealing with computers is the importance of being precise. The second lesson is that computer software is created by humans--analysts who make many decisions about the expected user interaction. Software designers generally attempt to build systems that match the jobs and needs of the users. However, the software is usually less flexible than humans, so people will typically have to adjust their own processes to adapt to the computer.
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