I'd like to propose a combination of the two. A language model that parses natural language but checks back in with the user to see if it has understood. This can be done by converting high-ambiguity sentences to low-ambiguity ones when appropriate and storing the latter as source. When the interpretation program is confused, it can check back in with the user to ask what they meant.

This is something I've been thinking about lately. It's a huge problem that looking into how a given software project works or specifically what it does is normally beyond the reach of most people, or in the case of software that is very elaborate or wasn't written to be read, beyond the reach of almost everyone. It could help a lot to have some kind of tiered specification/documentation going from more concise to more detailed that can at least be independently confirmed in an automated way to have been derived from each other.