Re: SUO: RE: Re: Missing Ingredients
Richard Cooper wrote:
[...]
> I've been impressed with Lenat's published work on AM and Eurisko,
> but there hasn't been anything detailed published on Cyc in the
> open literature that addresses the issue of completeness and human
> realism. Most of the Cyc work, according to legend, has been
> in military and intelligence fields, which can support such
> projects at a loss for many years. I don't have that kind of
> funding.
Yes, the system I saw in 1979 was a prototype for the US Navy, and
Cycorp's funding (to my knowledge) has come in large part from
government grants and projects. I think this is probably why there's
not been a lot published. It's both trade secrets, military secrets,
national security, market niche, etc. I think Doug is still pretty
generous in giving away the ontology, regardless of who paid for it.
> So yes, in general, Cyc is a good example of such an application,
> but the public details are lacking. Certainly the ontology
> without software to get up and running quickly is a serious
> drawback.
Well, it's only a drawback if one considers it didn't exist at all.
I think more about the fact that even if other components exist,
*one* of the more interesting parts is being given away. It'd be
great if the NL stuff was too, but beggars can't be choosers.
> Secondly, Cyc software is in Lisp, which is commercially as dead
> a language as Latin. Customers have Windows computers by the
> zillions, and Macs and Linux 386 boxes in large numbers, but
> very few commercial systems run on Symbolics computers anymore.
I'd say Esperanto rather than Latin, but yes. They still use
LISP and variants around here at KMi, but I don't consider that
anything more than legacy, both in terms of systems, invested
software and training. And the local expertise is in LISP. Few
if any of the recent KR systems I've seen have used LISP. Some
in Scheme... but most of the systems lately seem to be even
simpler than the stuff done a decade ago in LISP, so I must
say that there must be *something* in LISP that still holds
sway. I can't say I'm proficient in it, but if I had to learn
one now, it'd probably be scheme or prolog. (OTOH, Cyc isn't
really written in LISP but its own CycL language, which may have
as strong a relationship to LISP as does prolog or scheme. I
don't know, never looked into it much.)
> Do you feel that Cyc would be good in a commercial application?
> My impression is just the opposite, but I haven't seen Cyc in
> action. My interests and funding come from commercial sources,
> so my focus is in that direction.
No. I wish Cycorp all the best, but I don't see projects like this
as commercially viable. In order to get to the point where it's even
*conceivably* viable, it's taken a huge amount of investment,
in terms of money, human time and energy. Now, using just the ontology
as a framework ontology for a different system, I dunno. I'm sure
somebody will try. It's too rich a vein to not *try* to tap. I
have seen it in action, and it is pretty cool. You can ask questions
in English about movies, and it queries the online movie database
to answer the question. Cycorp may somehow take this into the
commercial arena and make money, but they might be the only ones to
do it.
Murray
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
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