The world’s top research labs are rapidly improving a machine’s ability to understand and respond to natural language. Machines are getting better at analyzing documents, finding information, answering questions and even generating language of their own.

Aristo was built solely for multiple-choice tests. It took standard exams written for students in New York, though the Allen Institute removed all questions that included pictures and diagrams. Answering questions like that would have required additional skills that combine language understanding and logic with so-called computer vision.

Some test questions, like this one from the eighth-grade exam, required little more than information retrieval: