Terry Winograd

"If we assume that the person asking the question is serious, there is an underlying background of purposes and understanding into which the question fits. If a questioner were to ask "Can pigs have wi…"

"What surprised me, which Google was part of, is that superficial search techniques over large bodies of stuff could get you what you wanted. I grew up in the AI tradition, where you have a complete co…"

"The techniques of artificial intelligence are to the mind what bureaucracy is to human social interaction."

"A reason to have computers understand natural language is that it’s an extremely effective way of communicating. What I came to realize is that the success of the communication depends on the real int…"

"The main activity of programming is not the origination of new independent programs, but in the integration, modification, and explanation of existing ones."

"Seekers after the glitter of intelligence are misguided in trying to cast it in the base metal of computing. There is an amusing epilogue to this analogy: in fact, the alchemists were right. Lead can …"

"There is a tendency to throw computers at third world problems, which I think is often a distraction. Putting computers in the schools is great, but it may be more important to put teachers in the sch…"