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From: stuck@agnes (Elizabeth Stuck)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What Has Traditional AI Accomplished?
Keywords: Cyc
Message-ID: <1990Oct11.143838.26568@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 11 Oct 90 14:38:38 GMT
References: <69367@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <55690002@hpclmp.HP.COM>
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In article <55690002@hpclmp.HP.COM> mohammad@hpclmp.HP.COM (Mohammad
Pourheidari) writes: 
>
>>The big future, in my view, will come when common sense data bases
>>(none of which yet exist, expect perhaps for CYC as a prototype) help
>>the field move from "expert" applications to "commonsense"
>
>Could you provide more information on CYC?
>
>thanks, M.

There is an informative article by Lenat et al. on Cyc in a recent
issue of _Communications of the ACM_ (v. 33, #8, August 1990).  It is
entitled "Cyc: Toward Programs with Common Sense".  Here's the
abstract:

	"Cyc is a bold attempt to assemble a massive knowledge base
	(on the order of 10**8 axioms) spanning human consensus
	knowledge.  This article examines the need for such an
	undertaking and reviews the authors' efforts over the past
	five years to begin its construction.  The methodology and
	history of the project are briefly discussed, followed by a
	more developed treatment of the current state of the
	representation language used (epistemological level),
	techniques for efficient inferencing and default reasoning
	(heuristic level), and the content and organization of the
	knowledge base."


Liz Stuck
Computer Science Department, University of Minnesota
stuck@umn-ai.cs.umn.edu