When “uh… so, yeah” means something: teaching AI the messy parts of human talk

Graphic depicts a group of teens talking at a skate park at sunset to illustrate disfluency, slang, idioms, and subtext annotation — showing how real human conversation includes tone, emotion, and informal language that AI must learn to interpret.

A quick primer: what’s what (and why it matters) Signals, not noise: disfluency carries meaning A sentence like, “I — I can probably help … later?” encodes hesitation, caution, and weak commitment. If ASR or cleanup filters strip stutters, filler, or rising intonation, downstream models may over-state confidence. Annotation pattern Example “That’s a whole — […]

Beyond words: 10 subtle layers of human context AI still struggles to understand

Graphic depicts a woman in a modern office wearing headphones and working at a computer to illustrate human language cues and the nuanced communication machines often miss

Irony and sarcasm What it is: Saying the opposite of what is meant, often with a tonal cue. Example: “Oh, fantastic job…” said with clear frustration. Why machines miss it: Literal interpretation of words leads to mislabeling intent. Pragmatic implicature What it is: Inferring meaning beyond explicit words, based on context. Example: “It’s cold in […]

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