Xref: utzoo alt.hypertext:824 comp.cog-eng:1929 comp.graphics:17082 comp.multimedia:291 comp.software-eng:5275 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!beb From: beb@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Brian E. Bradley) Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.cog-eng,comp.graphics,comp.multimedia,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Images vs. Text Message-ID: <5616@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Date: 6 Apr 91 07:23:46 GMT References: <1991Apr2.180348.19733@smsc.sony.com> <1991Apr02.235121.17834@convex.com> <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca> Reply-To: beb@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Brian E. Bradley) Distribution: na Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA Lines: 23 A recent poster noted that the CYC project, which is a fascinating attempt to create "common sense" in a computer, may be very useful in user interface applications. It certainly would be handy, but CYC also demonstrates that general common sense (rather than a small number of rules embedded in a product) is an enormous and expensive resource, requiring huge databases and considerable computing power. It is much too big to implement on a chip set for example, and the situation is unliklely to change for several years. And, the databases required would fill more than one CD-ROM in a full implementation: this approach to common sense is much larger than most implementations it would be installed to support! CYC deserves cheers for its ambitious attempt to tackle a problem which may not actually be solvable. Their particular approach to the problem may be widely available and widely used in a few years: more likely, some future applications will take the enormous set of data representations developed for CYC and cannibalize parts of it or massage their data into a more compressed form and arrangement using clever algorithms. So don't hold your breath waiting for it for your Mac II multimedia applications. But you've gotta love the CYC team for trying!