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Artificial Inteligence Common Sense Database
warren69 writes "Atari researcher/Stanford Prof. develops AI called Cyc, pronouced psych, based on "1.4 million truths and generalities". Allready this, umm application (linux fyi), has powered lycos search narrowing.
There is encouraging results, like Cyc asking if it is human."
Why is Cyc asking if it is Human any more significant than Cyc asking if it is Lettuce, or asking if a football is a gourd?
Its artificial self-awareness may be prejudiced by the programmers to imitate self-awareness, or in this case merely be a surprising juxtaposition of semantics amid otherwise ordinary pairings, rather than implementing self-awareness.
In other words, it may now know that Cyc is not human, but it likely has no idea that it is Cyc.
--Blair
In the same way that a child is biased by their parents and/or interactions with their educators, Cyc will have the same bias. The point here is that they have opened it to the public to reduce/limit the biasness.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
A lot of the comments I've read so far are missing something. Yes, it is just a giant fact-base in an expert system. And yes, that will exhibit human-esque "reasoning". And yes, a good argument can be made that this isn't "true" intelligence, and it won't develop true sentience
Imagine the military and educational benefits of such a system. The US military is getting their money's worth, and they know it. Imagine Cyc, with its full fact-base, on a device carried by every soldier. "Cyc, how do I fix this problem on an Apache helicopter?" "Cyc, where is the fuel tank on this specific enemy vehicle?" Can you imagine being an inquisitive child and having one of these things at your disposal? "Cyc, how does this work?" "Cyc what is fourier analysis?"
This sort of system is a really good system for organizing and relating statements and presenting them in such a way extraneous unrelated results can be easily eliminated, and related results can be located quickly. It it can be made to derive statements for its fact-base by reading anything available, then it would become almost like an Oracle of Knowledge. Eventually, with some years of refinement, it may be possible to ask the engine difficult theoretical questions, ("How can we improve on the strength of carbon nanotubes?") to which it would respond with an experimental procedure (as the answer is not immediately clear) to discover more facts toward the solution to the problem...
When you consider this, it doesn't really matter if it has "true" intelligence or not. We don't have to argue the finer points on reasoning, intelligence, etc. No matter what, it will be a system the human intelligence can use to extend its own reasoning, and with that, I think, we will be able to make great bounds forth in education and scientific discoveries because we will be able to relate such broad and deep pools of knowledge.
Wendell
I don't remember the precise expression, but in its language, it was much closer to:
Datum: Members of the class of humans are intelligent.
Datum: Individual entity Cyc is intelligent.
Query: Individual entity Cyc is member of the class of humans?
It's not a direct logical conclusion, but it's a question worth asking, which is what the programmers were shooting for.
Don't get me wrong, I think Cyc was a good academic exercise, a worthy experiment, and it will pay off for the field in the long term. I don't think the project is generating a practical system, though. Some investors are getting royally screwed, and it's being taken to an insane stage of development.
MULE . o O (The carrot's only a yard in front of me, so that means it's only two or three steps away!)