Friday, October 05, 2012
The difficulty of decoding text meaning
a lovely example where word-proximity doesn't get you the right meaning for a word.
Here are two consecutive paragraphs. If a computer program were trying to work out which meaning to attach to the word "vets", the occurrence of "Vietnam" two words might lead it to the wrong conclusion:
... That meant a soldier in the battlefield could have surgery and be awake and alert soon afterwards, which accounted for its use by the US in Vietnam.
Later vets came to value it as an anaesthetic for equine surgery and it was also used as a pain medication for animals and humans. ...
# posted by John Geddes @ 12:24 pm 
