Please State the Nature of the Medical Emergency: How Computers Understand Conversation
Dr. Werner Ceusters, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and Director, Ontology Research Group, NYS Center of Excellence in Bio-informatics & Life Sciences
June 17, 2009
Star Trek: Voyager featured The Doctor, a computerized medical professional who would ask patients: “Please state the nature of the medical emergency.” Man and machine would then converse fluently. Computers that can talk, listen, understand what physicians and patients say, and posses all knowledge required for accurate diagnosis and treatment: it is a dream that in a far future might come true. Surprisingly, although computer science and linguistics play important roles in this endeavor, it is a modern version of Aristotle's theory about how entities exist in reality and how they relate to one another that allows us to understand how and why computers are able to understand and interpret natural language.
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