AI researchers overestimate the role of language in the development of human-like intelligence understood as a common sense heuristic physics that is built empirically through non-linguistic experiences (e.g. if I turn that glass, the wine spills and leaves dirty stain on the couch what has further consequences). The one that is most difficult to implement/reproduce/emulate by machine.
Language is only a communication protocol most efficient in an interactive context (dialog) that allows two agents with shared but not identical set of experiences achieve understanding in some ___domain and context with the caveat that understanding is unprovable and not absolute. Understanding that is only empirically tested and behavior probed (e.g. long after successful conversation Agent Alice discovers that Agent Bob "did not get it" as she expected).
By analyzing sole language without experiences, the machine, using something like word2vec, may discover semantic dependencies (e.g. man + cassock = pedophile) but not true semantics that has world consequences.
Even with unlimited language corpora the machine does not have the set of axioms that humans have (experiences and observed stories). These axioms are needed to build further more abstract knowledge.
Language is only a communication protocol most efficient in an interactive context (dialog) that allows two agents with shared but not identical set of experiences achieve understanding in some ___domain and context with the caveat that understanding is unprovable and not absolute. Understanding that is only empirically tested and behavior probed (e.g. long after successful conversation Agent Alice discovers that Agent Bob "did not get it" as she expected).
By analyzing sole language without experiences, the machine, using something like word2vec, may discover semantic dependencies (e.g. man + cassock = pedophile) but not true semantics that has world consequences.
Even with unlimited language corpora the machine does not have the set of axioms that humans have (experiences and observed stories). These axioms are needed to build further more abstract knowledge.