If someone said to you, “I saw the man on the hill with a telescope,” how would you interpret the sentence?
- I saw the man. The man was on the hill. The man had a telescope.
- I saw the man. The man was on the hill. The hill had a telescope.
- I saw the man. The man was on the hill. I saw him using a telescope.
- I saw the man. I was on the hill. The hill had a telescope.
- I saw the man. I was on the hill. I saw him using a telescope.
The possibilites are endless, because natural language is ambiguous without proper context. To understand the sentence’s intended meaning, you need to take its background information into account, or context. Who is the person that said this sentence? Where is their location? Do they have a telescope? All of this information is needed to make the sentence’s multiple interpretations comprehensible, and most importantly, relevant.
We are fascinated by context because our technology platform, the Anticipatory Computing Engine, is designed to analyze the context of conversations to proactively find related information. Read more about what we’re building.
