Review of "Coputational Semantics: An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Comprhension by Eugue Charniak and Yorick Wilks, Eds." North-Holland, Amer. Elsevier.

Abstract

Minotaur 1 personified all the standard cliches of the "evil" robot having human-like intelligence, incredible sensory capacity, and laser-rays of destruction. It trundled around saying things like "That does not corr~pute," in an irritatingly high-pitched voice, 2 got completely out of control when it detected an "intruder", and finally had its speech grind down to a halt in the now classic "HAL mode of failure" after it was subdued by our hero. In retrospect, the robot designer has to ask, "why in the universe would anyone ever intentionally design a robot to be so slow, given the capability to make it so superlative along almost every other dimension?" Indeed, the Minotaur's only defect as a weapon seemed to be its speed of locomotion, a comparatively trivial problem. Oh well, it's going to be difficu]t for anybody to build a credible robot (one that gains acceptance) that doesn't also satisfy the public's preconceptions (as dictated by artistic license) about what an "authentic" robot is supposed to be able to do and not do.