Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!lantz
From: lantz@Apple.COM (Bob Lantz)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Doug Lenat's "cyc" project
Keywords: fundamentals, first steps
Message-ID: <43669@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 6 Aug 90 01:52:52 GMT
References: <1990Jul31.034417.19350@nixtdc.uucp> <2696@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <43632@apple.Apple.COM> <12171@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 44

pluto@zaius.ucsd.edu (Mark Plutowski) writes:

>Not to take away anything from the Cyc project, which may be an 
>important step for AI, I must agree with Mr. Malcolm here, and
>in particular, take exception to your immediately preceding remark, 
>regarding the uninteresting thought processes of cats and dogs.

My point is that due to its representation of human knowledge, Cyc
is particularly interesting (to me, obviously) and a good idea; it has
produced useful and interesting  results and is something that is sorely
needed for work with natural language.

>But we would probably learn more about the fundamental principles underlying 
>intelligence PER SE if we could model a beetle.

Might be useful for certain applications, e.g. entomology, ecology,
biosystem dynamics.  A major problem with AI systems to date has been
their highly specialized nature, the worst example being "expert systems"
which solve specialized problems quite well, but are really shallow and
brittle: the information encoded in them is highly specialized and lacks
connections to more generalized information.  As a result, they perform
poorly outside their specific domain, and do not interact synergistically
with other, similar, specialized systems. Cyc provides a framework of general
knowledge and common-sense reasoning, which more specialized systems 
could be built on top of and into.  Such systems would be able to
handle problems in a variety of domains, at multiple levels, and translate
between them.

> Having done that, we
>can then move on to a Beatle, say Ringo.  

Cyc probably has the advantage, because it already has information
on the domain of human general knowledge.  The Beetle-system would
have information on the insect world (e.g. insect foods, predators,
smells, self-defense, mound construction, etc.) which would not be
terribly useful to Ringo (even if he has been reduced to doing Sun
Country wine-cooler ads...)

It's possible that some of the thought processes (e.g. eat when you're
hungry, fight or flee) might be useful to him, but more sophisticated
reasoning (e.g. sue people who violate your copyright :-)) would
have to be incorporated to make the Beatle system useful.

Bob