The Defense Research Advanced Research Projects Agency has kicked off a program to research and develop methods to advance the communication interface between people and machines.

DARPA said Friday it aims to build a technology to allow computers to understand ideas, context and expressions like human beings do and to enable cooperative human-machine interaction through the Communicating with Computers project.

“Today we view computers as tools to be activated by a few clicks or keywords, in large part because we are separated by a language barrier,” said Paul Cohen, a DARPA program manager.

“The goal of CwC is to bridge that barrier, and in the process encourage the development of new problem-solving technologies,” Cohen added.

DARPA says the project will involve a storytelling task to demonstrate a person and a machine taking turns exchanging sentences to form a short story.

The agency also seeks to develop a computer model of complex molecular processes that have been linked to cancer cell growth.