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From: lantz@Apple.COM (Bob Lantz)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Doug Lenat's "cyc" project
Message-ID: <43632@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 4 Aug 90 03:00:36 GMT
References: <1990Jul31.034417.19350@nixtdc.uucp> <2696@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 36

cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>In article <1990Jul31.034417.19350@nixtdc.uucp> doug@nixtdc.UUCP (Doug Moen) writes:

>>My feeling is that someone is going to build an artificial
>>mind sooner or later, and cyc is a plausible first step.

>I presume you agree that apes, cats, and dogs have minds? Perhaps even
>that beetles have minds? If so, how on earth is a program which can
>mimic one thing which _only_ humans can do a plausible first step??

Nit-picking.  While it is certainly *possible* to represent the
knowledge and common-sense reasoning of cats, dogs, etc.., it's
pretty uninteresting.  The Cyc folks have solved many difficult
problems of knowledge representation and common-sense reasoning,
and their knowledge-base is easily translated into a straightforward
declarative form, with reasonable semantics, which could easily
interoperate with another system which required a large base of
common-sense knowledge.  Additionally, they have created a flexible,
generalized framework which is designed to support not only common-
sense knowledge and reasoning, but to integrate more specialized
systems.

One of the most compelling reasons for representing human knowledge
and reasoning is that it is needed for any system which expects to
work in natural (human) language.  In order for language to be
translated into a reasonable semantic domain, you need to have that
domain.  Cyc (or systems like it) are intended to represent the semantic
objects of natural language.

>-- 
>Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna   031 667 1011 x2550
>Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
>5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK

Bob Lantz