excerpt:

> What makes language so hard for computers, Ferrucci explained, is
> that it’s full of “intended meaning.” When people decode what someone
> else is saying, we can easily unpack the many nuanced allusions and
> connotations in every sentence. He gave me an example in the form of
> a “Jeopardy!” clue: “The name of this hat is elementary, my dear
> contestant.” People readily detect the wordplay here — the echo of
> “elementary, my dear Watson,” the famous phrase associated with
> Sherlock Holmes — and immediately recall that the Hollywood version
> of Holmes sports a deerstalker hat. But for a computer, there is no
> simple way to identify “elementary, my dear contestant” as wordplay.
>
> “Humans are just — boom! — they’re just plowing through this in just
> seconds,” Ferrucci said excitedly. “They’re getting the questions,
> they’re breaking them down, they’re interpreting them, they’re
> getting the right interpretation, they’re looking this up in their
> memory, they’re scoring, they’re doing all this just instantly.”

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