seim@tubopal.UUCP (Kai Seim) (08/22/90)
i have to say, that i'm bored by the discussion about Cyc. The first problem seems to be, that the most people don't exactly know, what the hell they are doing there. So it was good, that somebody (forgot the name) posted a reference to an article in CACM. The problem is, that the most informatic-engineers can't cite correct, i didn't found the article, but... i found a book: Building Large Knowledge-Based Systems - Representation and Inference in the Cyc Project. Douglas B. Lenat R.V. Guha Copyright 1990, Addison-Wesley I only took a short look, but i would say, that i will not read it. They talk, e.g. about "representation" without discussing the philosophical background. That's unacceptable, i think. Greetings, Kai ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kai Seim Technische Universitaet Berlin University of Technology Fachbereich Informatik Dept. of Computer Science Franklinstr. 28/29 D 1000 Berlin 10 Tel.: +49 30 314-73285 email seim@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de Fax.: +49 30 314-24891
erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Boleyn) (08/23/90)
In article <1713@drjur.tubopal.UUCP> seim@tubopal.UUCP (Kai Seim) writes: >i have to say, that i'm bored by the discussion about Cyc. The first ...[reference to the book that everyone keeps on mentioning deleted]... >talk, e.g. about "representation" without discussing the philosophical >background. That's unacceptable, i think. What do you mean by the philosophical background? Do you mean the Reasoning behind the decisions made about the representation language? The main reason that I'm asking is that I have serious doubts about the applicability of modern philosophy to AI. I don't think that the assumptions that most philosophy takes are very useful, or even very valid, outside of a VERY specialized domain. >Greetings, Kai (Well, Hello to you to... ;-) >Kai Seim Regards, Erich ___--Erich S. Boleyn--___ CSNET/INTERNET: erich@cs.pdx.edu {Portland State University} ARPANET: erich%cs.pdx.edu@relay.cs.net "A year spent in BITNET: a0eb@psuorvm.bitnet artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God"
reiter@forth.ed.ac.uk (Ehud Reiter) (08/23/90)
Here are a few references for those interested in Cyc, in no particular order: D. Lenat and R. Guha (1990), BUILDING LARGE KNOWLEDGE BASE SYSTEMS, Addison-Wesley R. Guha, "The Representation of Defaults in Cyc", PROCEEDINGS OF AAAI-1990, vol 2, pp 608-614 L. Terveen and D. Wroblewski, "A Collaborative Interface for Editing Large Knowledge Bases", PROCEEDINGS OF AAAI-1990, vol 1, pp 491-496 article in August 1990 CACM (COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) on the natural language system associated with Cyc (I've haven't seen this issue yet, so I'm not 100% of the name of the article) R. Guha and D. Lenat (1990), "Cyc: A Mid-Term Report", submitted to AI MAGAZINE and available now as a tech report D. Lenat, M. Prakesh, M. Shephard (1986) "Cyc: Using Common Sense Knowledge ..." AI MAGAZINE, vol 6, no 4, pp65-85 (1986) [ This article is a bit dated ] For tech reports, write to Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation Artificial Intelligence Lab 3500 West Balcones Center Drive Austin, Texas 78759 USA Ehud Reiter (e.reiter@edinburgh.ac.uk)
sire@PacBell.COM (Sheldon Rothenburg) (08/24/90)
In article <1713@drjur.tubopal.UUCP>, seim@tubopal.UUCP (Kai Seim) writes: > i have to say, that i'm bored by the discussion about Cyc. > i found a book: > Building Large Knowledge-Based Systems - > Representation and Inference in the Cyc Project. > Douglas B. Lenat > R.V. Guha > > I only took a short look, but i would say, that i will not read it. They > talk, e.g. about "representation" without discussing the philosophical > background. That's unacceptable, i think. > Sorry about your boredom. I don't feel the same way as you do about the unacceptability of discussion of representation without philosophy. At the risk of pre-empting Guha and Lenat, who may be reading this, Lenat has spoken about the literature of ontology and representation. Some great thinkers have made these topics their life's work and have not reached conclusive answers to the dilemmas of the discipline yet. Should AI wait for universal concurrence of the philosophical community to work on its issues? Engineers, by nature, build things to prove concepts, even where the domain's requirements are not yet certain or cast in stone. I find their ambition laudable and their books and reports fascinating. Shelley P.S. You can find philosophical discussion of these topics elsewhere with little difficulty.