The most effective existing approaches to natural language understanding are purely statistics based. This is where practicality and idealism ought to diverge.

The most effective existing approaches to natural language understanding are purely statistics based. This is where practicality and idealism ought to diverge. Sure, with enough data, we might be able to find spelling mistakes or figure out what pictures someone is looking for. But the techniques we are looking for don't address understanding, (granted they never set out to). Most interesting would be to define meaning and understanding, using strict mathematical models. As McCarty said, language is just the froth on those waves.