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Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

businessinsider.com

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Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#21

Post by seanmcdirmid »

chatmasta wrote: post #19

> "It's not done by any means, but it's useful." Is it? How do we know? You've been working on a product "in stealth" for 30 years, shown practically nobody outside your company, and provided us with nothing more than a vaporous description of its capabilities (in Businessinsider, no less). I'm left wondering not only how seriously I should be taking this claim, but also exactly what the claim even is. Artificial int…

> The fact is, AI is not going to impress anyone until it can handle an equivalently general class of inputs to what a human can handle.

I don't know, I would be happy with just a dog brain or even a spider brain as a starting point. Or even a billion ant brains (simple individually, complex collectively).

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#22

Post by waterlesscloud »

brianstorms wrote: post #14

Ha, near secrecy. Sheesh, Lenat is a well-known figure in the AI world and Cyc is a very well-known project that has been written about for years. I don't care if the BusinessInsider author is what, 28 years old, he should do some decent reporting and not use such a stupid headline.

As soon as I saw the title, I knew who and what it would be about. :-)

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#23

Post by tbenst »

I tested OpenCYC three years ago while working for a startup that did semantic tagging & recommendation of text-based content.

Essentially, we would take something like:

Gov. Rick Perry has said he will no longer wear cowboy boots, which some believe is part of an attempt to soften his gunslinging image as he considers another run for president.

And map it to something more machine-readable:

  "Gov." -> http://dbpedia.org/page/State_(polity) (10% confidence)[1]
  "Rick Perry" -> http://dbpedia.org/page/Rick_Perry (95% confidence)
  "Rick Perry" -> http://sw.opencyc.org/concept/Mx4rM7N6iOeUSpGar4HaqXF3zg (95% confidence)
  "Cowboy boots" -> http://dbpedia.org/page/Cowboy_boot (75% confidence)[2]
  "President" ->http://dbpedia.org/page/President (90% confidence)[3]
Let's dive into what you get from OpenCyc vs DBpedia (ontology sourced from Wikipedia).

DBpedia: Tons of machine-readable information like Party, Alma Mater, birthday, spouse, etc. Extensive categorical links (dcterms:subject) like category:United_States_presidential_candidates,_2012.

OpenCyc: Knows he's a politician affiliated with "Republican Party," "Democratic Party," "The Republican Party," and "The Democratic Party"

I highlight only one example, but this is all over the place. Opencyc has duplicate terms where dbpedia/wikipedia does not. Opencyc has far less information. Opencyc has more incorrect information.

This is inevitable when you consider the two approaches. Wikipedia has tens of thousands of people making connections and updating the resource, where opencyc relies more on scripts. Opencyc, and quite possibly Cyc, is already antiquated by Wikipedia.

[1] Note that the confidence was estimated from heuristics I wrote based on how the ontologies were put together

[2] OpenCyc typically does not have mappings for plurals, while wikipedia has a very convenient redirect system for string mappings

[3] OpenCyc matches President with 60 concepts. Too much noise to do anything with

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#24

Post by Houshalter »

chatmasta wrote: post #19

> "It's not done by any means, but it's useful." Is it? How do we know? You've been working on a product "in stealth" for 30 years, shown practically nobody outside your company, and provided us with nothing more than a vaporous description of its capabilities (in Businessinsider, no less). I'm left wondering not only how seriously I should be taking this claim, but also exactly what the claim even is. Artificial int…

There is so much hostility in AGI research. Everyone always arguing that everyone else is doing it wrong and that their approach is the One True Path. Progress is slow. When it happens it's debated if it's actually progress, or another step towards a dead end.

The only real feedback is failure. One camp goes a long time without producing an AGI. That's considered "proof" their approach will never work and that the New Idea will.

I'm just going to make a fictional analogy. It doesn't prove anything, but I hope it illustrates my frustration:

"Look at these idiots trying to build artificial flight by putting together large piles of feathers. Can't they see feathers are just pieces of a much more complicated puzzle?

And over there another group is dropping objects off buildings. Trying to find things that can stay in the air the longest. Even if they find something, it will never actually fly, just fall slightly slower.

There are people inflating balloons with gasses. Have you ever seen a bird made of balloons? It's absurd. Maybe eventually they will get something that hovers off the ground. But it will never fly gracefully like an eagle. It will never fool pigeons into thinking it's another pigeon.

One group has managed to make really strong artificial wings. They have gotten them stronger and faster than even real birds. But they need an entire steam engine to power them. And they don't even use feathers.

My group is going to build an artificial bird from the ground up, based on real biology. Teams of mechanics are working on designing tiny joints and artificial muscles. We have a prototype that can flutter across a room. At this rate we may only be decades away from true artificial flight."

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#25

Post by mtdewcmu »

brianstorms wrote: post #14

Ha, near secrecy. Sheesh, Lenat is a well-known figure in the AI world and Cyc is a very well-known project that has been written about for years. I don't care if the BusinessInsider author is what, 28 years old, he should do some decent reporting and not use such a stupid headline.

The sensational headline seems to have worked. I'm not sure if I've heard of this specific project, but to me it didn't sound all that novel. It reminds me of the semantic web.

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#26

Post by mtdewcmu »

Houshalter wrote: post #24
chatmasta wrote: post #19

> "It's not done by any means, but it's useful." Is it? How do we know? You've been working on a product "in stealth" for 30 years, shown practically nobody outside your company, and provided us with nothing more than a vaporous description of its capabilities (in Businessinsider, no less). I'm left wondering not only how seriously I should be taking this claim, but also exactly what the claim even is. Artificial int…

There is so much hostility in AGI research. Everyone always arguing that everyone else is doing it wrong and that their approach is the One True Path. Progress is slow. When it happens it's debated if it's actually progress, or another step towards a dead end. The only real feedback is failure. One camp goes a long time without producing an AGI. That's considered "proof" their approach will never work and that the Ne…

That's probably where flight research would currently be if a few of those approaches hadn't achieved stunning success. Those successes would have silenced any groups that were holding out for artificial birds.

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#27

Post by spyder »

chatmasta wrote: post #19

> "It's not done by any means, but it's useful." Is it? How do we know? You've been working on a product "in stealth" for 30 years, shown practically nobody outside your company, and provided us with nothing more than a vaporous description of its capabilities (in Businessinsider, no less). I'm left wondering not only how seriously I should be taking this claim, but also exactly what the claim even is. Artificial int…

> Enough of this closed source, proprietary, snail's pace AI development.

Eh?

http://www.cyc.com/platform/opencyc

Also: "Cycorp also offers a complete version of Cyc, including many more assertions and additional NL capabilities, under a ResearchCyc license at no cost for research purposes."

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#29

Post by richardw »

kolev wrote: post #7
SilasX wrote: post #5

Doug Lenat is, to me, the most confusing case of someone in AI. He programmed a general problem solver (Eurisko) to use (meta^n)-heuristics that solved a major strategy game, coming up wih a creative plan no human thought of, and yielding insights on the field of heuristics and the "Representation Language Language". ... and then "went dark", "officially" working on this tedious, brittle attempt to compile common sen…

Since when people call him "Doug"? :) Eurisko had some amazing accomplishments, but some questioned their authenticity saying Douglas and students help it a bit. Anyway, Douglas Lenat is my all-times idol and I hope this prolonged "stealth mode" was the intermission of something great. Isn't Freebase.com his project as well?

Since when people call him "Doug"

He doesn't seem to mind:

http://www.cyc.com/about/team/doug-lenat

Re: Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years

#30

Post by richardw »

chatmasta wrote: post #19

> "It's not done by any means, but it's useful." Is it? How do we know? You've been working on a product "in stealth" for 30 years, shown practically nobody outside your company, and provided us with nothing more than a vaporous description of its capabilities (in Businessinsider, no less). I'm left wondering not only how seriously I should be taking this claim, but also exactly what the claim even is. Artificial int…

This thing doesn't model the brain, despite what the article claims. It's not about a brain model, it's about the data and its model. They're painstakingly adding lots of data about the world, which could serve as a resource for a brain-like model.

It's also neither closed source nor secret. The article is a bit crap so don't base your criticism of the project just from what you read there.

It's been popping up for ages, for example Businessweek, 1997:

http://www.businessweek.com/1997/25/b353210.htm

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