BBC NEWS In Depth Artificial intelligence

The idea of a child android programmed to love, as in Steven Spielberg's film AI, may seem like pure science fiction. But this may become a reality sooner than we think, according to Jack Dunietz, a hi-tech entrepreneur and president of an Israeli-based company called Artificial Intelligence (Ai). His team of scientists have designed a computer program based on a set of behavioural algorithms that enable the computer to learn language the same way humans do, starting from scratch. Up until now, computer analysts have provided programs with built-in grammatical rules. This is the first time a program has been based on the developmental language learning of humans.