Several factors have led to the increase in interest in this field, which is heavily influenced by techniques from speech processing. One major factor is the recent availability of large online text collections. Another is a disillusionment with traditional AIbased approaches to parsing and natural language processing (NLP). Charniak is recognized as a distinguished contributor to what he calls traditional AI NLP, which is why it is all the more significant that in the Preface, when speaking of his recent transition to the statistical approach, he writes … few, if any, consider the traditional study of language from an artificial-intelligence point of view a "hot" area of research. A great deal of work is still done on specific NLP problems, from grammatical issues to stylistic considerations, but for me at least it is increasingly hard to believe that it will shed light on broader problems, since it has steadfastly refused to do so in the past.

A linguistics company is using AI to shorten the time it takes to learn a new language. It takes about 200 hours, using traditional methods, to gain basic proficiency in a new language. This AI-powered platform claims it can teach from beginner to fluency in just a few months – through once-daily 20 minute lessons. Learning a new language is hard. Some people seem to pick up new dialects with ease, but for the rest of us it's a trudge through rote memorization.

A linguistics company is using AI to shorten the time it takes to learn a new language. It takes about 200 hours, using traditional methods, to gain basic proficiency in a new language. This AI-powered platform claims it can teach from beginner to fluency in just a few months – through once-daily 20 minute lessons. Learning a new language is hard. Some people seem to pick up new dialects with ease, but for the rest of us it's a trudge through rote memorization.

It's been 15 years since a degenerative eye disease forced Erich Manser to stop driving. Today, he commutes to his job as an accessibility consultant via commuter trains and city buses, but he has trouble locating empty seats sometimes and must ask strangers for guidance. A step toward solving Manser's predicament could arrive as soon as next year. Manser's employer, IBM, and an independent carmaker called Local Motors are developing a self-driving, electric shuttle bus that combines artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and smartphone apps to serve people with vision, hearing, physical, and cognitive disabilities. The buses, dubbed "Olli," are designed to transport people around neighborhoods at speeds below 35 miles per hour and will be sold to cities, counties, airports, companies, and universities.