Six Problems for Story Understanders

Peter Norvig

Abstract: Story understanding programs have been classified as script-based processors, goal-based processors or multi-level processors. Each program introduces a new knowledge structure and invents a mechanism to make inferences and manage memory for that knowledge structure. This can lead to a proliferation of incomplete, incompatible processing mechanisms. The alternative presented here is to concentrate on the processing mechanism. It is suggested that a single inferencing scheme can deal with all knowledge structures in a uniform manner. Six basic problems that such a processor must address are presented and discussed.