Artificial Intelligence has been at the center of any geek's dream for years. One of the projects that's closer to true AI is Cyc. The open source version of the commercial Cyc product is called OpenCyc and it reached v1.0 status last year. Their mission is to grow both the Cyc & OpenCyc ontology and knowledge base -- even if they are not directly affiliated with Cycorp (the original creators of the Cyc technology). The answers to our mini-interview are provided by project members Mark Baltzegarm, John De Oliveira and Brad Bouldin.
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Member since:
2006-12-28
I had no idea that Cyc had an open source version. Pretty cool.
Wat was really interesting was that Cyc has been approached by people in the hope of making a natural language OS by layering Cyc on top of Linux. Sounds like a nice project but it seems that in all these situations what was laking was resources.
Shame really, I'd love to see a natural language Linux distro. IMO that would be the Linux desktop killer app allot of us have been waiting for.
Keep up the good work guys!
Member since:
2006-03-22
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Member since:2006-01-08
Member since:2005-07-17
Member since:
2005-07-06
User: [Clicks the Save icon]
'Puter: Ain't no saving your sorry butt. This reports is so weak it makes my front-side bus cry.
User: Shut up and save!
'Puter: Don't we have a 'tude. Well, BOOM, there goes your report, I'm going to sleep mode now.
[computer screen goes dark]
User: No, No! It's due tomorrow. I take it back. Your processor is awesome. I am blown away by you expansion slots...
[Monitor comes back on]
'Puter: Oh, take it easy, suck up. Your flimsy spreadsheet is safe. Just like to see you squirm, remind you who's boss here.
User: Sigh.
(edit: spelling errors, naturally)
Edited 2007-02-21 22:41
Member since:2006-10-08
Attention: The following post is for entertainment only. :-)
User: I want to create a new user account for my credit card.
'Puter: Uhm... well, let's see if we have enough time... yes, we have. Your next meeting is in 30 minutes. So, what name should we take?
User: John Smith.
'Puter: Is this your name?
User: Yes.
'Puter: Are you sure?
User: Yes!
'Puter: Tell the name again.
User: John Smith.
'Puter: The name is... John Smith. Is this correct?
User: Yes.
'Puter: In a whole sentence, please.
User: Yes, it is.
'Puter: What is it?
User: The name!
'Puter: Which name?
User: John Smith.
'Puter: This is your name.
User: Yes, of course!
'Puter: Now, enter your PIN.
User (enters silently via keyboard): ####
'Puter: Your PIN is (shouts) 1055.
User: Damn! Be silent! My wife is listening!
'Puter (louder): His PIN is 1 0 5 5!!!
User pulls plug and takes wallet with coins.
Would be nice to have a natural language OS to teach people using their native language correctly. Or evem a foreign language. Ever hears a german 50+ man reading english error messages? Quite funny, guessing what he's talking about... largooney, fittoores, permeeson, spaatse, lookartey, peeparleena, boorst, rott, bott carmb, brooser, carfine, gongver, kb3, tooster... :-)
Edited 2007-02-21 23:27
Member since:
2006-03-20
The semantic web won't happen.
In simple terms, ontologies don't work unless agreed upon between creators of content. And this very constraint is a show-stopper. The task is too laborious.
Its too laborious in the same way it was too laborious to maintain correct directories and indices for web content.
There is a lot of hype around the semantic web but in the many years the w3c has been sponsoring work on it how much has actually convinced people?
The best you can hope for is better analysis of language using grammar background knowledge. And that can yield better search results ... but the killer-apps promoted for the Semantic Web require a perfectly correct onologies agreed between multiple sites - and that will not happen. And even if people say they have agreed - how much does human error and ambiguiy creep in.
There is nothing wrong with AI, informatin retrieval or data mining methods ... there is much work still to be done in these areas... but have a look at any serious research department and you'll find plenty of work in these areas and not much on the semantic web. there was a time when the words "semantic web" were used to get funding....
in summary: there is a place and a need for better analysis of freely formed text, but let's not get drawn to false prophets in a field which certainly raises peoples hopes and emotions!
Member since:
2007-02-23
Eugenia posted the link to the Cyc and Opencyc website, but there's an excellent video at Google Video with an overview of the project, accomplishments to date, approach, etc. This presentation was done by Doug Lenat the founder of the project.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7704388615049492068
Taking an incremental approach, instead of taking on writing an OS based on a natural language interface, I think the "common sense" logic in OpenCyc could really help a project like the on-again/off-again object based filesystems like WinFS (formerly the Cairo file system) or Gnome Storage.
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/
This might be a good place to start as it probably could be used to facilitate indexing and searching.