Although it is still very difficult nowadays, experts do have in mind the idea of communicating with a computer as if they were talking to a person, using natural language.
Even though it is not impossible to be real in a future, English language has too many ambiguities that can perfectly make this communication really difficult to be developed.
That is why experts are doing experiments in order to compare natural language interfaces to other kinds of interfaces, which not so convincing nor positive results.
And that is exactly one of the main goals for human beings, the fact of communicating absolutely normally. Since people already have extensive communication skills through their own native or natural language, many believe that Natural Language Interfaces (NLI) can provide the most useful efficient way of people to interact with computers.
Among others, natural language is an interface that can be used in a dialog between a human being and a computer, even though it is really difficult for us to have a natural conversation with a machine.
References:
- Natural Language Interface, Retrieved 17:47, May 16th 2009 fromhttp://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/case_studies/interface/index.html
- Natural Language as an Interface Style, Retrieved 17:51, May 16th 2009 fromhttp://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/byron/papers/nli.html
