World-Changing Technologies

I admire leaders like Yuqing Gao in "Universal Translation" and Daphne Koller in "Bayesian Machine Learning" for their thinking ("10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change Your World," TR February 2004). I am pleased to see computer scientists contributing to major advances in linguistics and genetics. Perhaps Gao's team at IBM could benefit from Daphne Koller's insights and techniques. Could Gao use Koller's Bayesian tools to systematically analyze the myriads of existing translated texts, in several languages at once, to enrich the context and semantic rules as well as translation patterns in her language database? I am looking forward to a time when I can talk to my computer, in any language.

M. I. Motyl-Szary
Westborough, MA