The attempts at creating artificial intelligence, in other words, computers that can defeat the intelligence of human mind, have been going for quite some time now. But so far nothing of a better model has come forth till the recent development that two psychologists at Stanford University have shown which might take artificial intelligence to the next step. Their research can help computers understand fully well what human language is instructing them.

For a virtual assistant like Siri, every move has in a way been pre-set to follow certain commands. This is why many customers get disappointed when they give instructions which it has not been programmed to fulfill. The attempt at creating artificial intelligence is actually to create a computer that can understand human language as humans do when they speak to one another without being pre-set.

There are many chatbots, which are also available online, with which you can interact in written form and have a conversation, but even then the replies that you would get from the other side would not be completely natural, but would reflect a certain degree of pre-programming. There is an on-going competition of Loebner Prize since 1991 that will award US$100,000 for any person creating the programme which would let a computer interact with humans in a completely natural way. So far, that has not happened.

The researchers at Stanford University are currently trying models to understand hyperbole, sarcasm, metaphors and other complex human language aspects which only a human mind can understand so far. Another interesting thing would be then to create variety in terms of languages that such an artificial intelligence computer could understand and not just English, the language to which the attempts so far are limited.