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From: punch@pleiades.cps.msu.edu (Bill Punch)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Doug Lenat's "cyc" project
Message-ID: <1990Aug17.205849.2698@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 17 Aug 90 20:58:49 GMT
References: <53965@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <1712@drjur.tubopal.UUCP>
Sender: news@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu
Reply-To: punch@pleiades.cps.msu.edu (Bill Punch)
Organization: Computer Science, Michigan State University, E. Lansing
Lines: 23

Look, I must admit to being mostly a critic of cyc, it smacked too much
of the Starwars "lets throw enough money at it, that will probably solve
it" approach. 

But the other side is that Lenat has a "vision", not just a goal. That
is, there is this mismash in AI because all the real problems are too
hard, so folks get caught up playing with small, simpler problems. He
has taken the bull by the horns and said something like "Look, let's see
if a large amount of KNOWLEDGE appropriately managed will get us to
those hard problems". It is a premise of sorts, but really a vision of
how to get out of the morass of little systems solving little problems. 

I think he WILL learn something about knowledge management, which is
what he set out to do. I also hope that cyc will be enabling for other
groups to go beyond small AI. One can argue with the techniques used,
methods produced etc., but Lenat has at least taken a bold step
(presumably) forward. 

Finally, it seems to me that it is the people with vision that have
guided and will continue to guide the path of AI, people shooting for
broad horizions not just the next hill.

			>>>bill<<<