The author outlines the construction of a somewhat different machine than that envisioned by Turing (with which it would be possible to converse, presumably by telephone or telegraph, and which would be capable of masquerading as a human being). The machine envisaged by the author would be capable of doing comprehension exercises. Such a machine that is to understand what people say must be capable of analyzing the grammatical structures of the utterances it receives, presenting the information that they contain in some kind of canonical form, of storing expressions in the canonical form in such a way that they can easily be retrieved, of locating those expressions that are relevant to a given question, and of constructing answers that accord with the rules of English grammar. If it is in fact possible to make the machine find the deep structures that correspond to the surface strings it receives, then the efficiency of all subsequent operations will be immeasurably increased, perhaps enough to make practically feasible a project that otherwise would have been totally unthinkable. (AMM)