Natural Sciences 191CNS67 - Man vs Machine: a Comparison o

Language technologies like Siri, Alexa and the Google assistant are getting better every year, but they still mess up in some very funny ways that a person never would! Will they ever be as good as people in understanding us talk? In this class, we will learn about the ways humans process language and how this is similar and different to the ways we have programmed computers to do this. We will draw upon Linguistics, Psychology and Computer Science (which UMass has great departments for!). We will investigate what language problems are easy or hard for humans and computers, and in doing so develop an appreciation for the overlooked complexities of human languages.

Open to Natural Sciences Freshman with a declared major or on the Natural Sciences Exploratory Track. Freshmen Only