Right, Cyc's deductive inference engine does not support probabilistic reasoning. But there is no obstacle to extending Cyc's probabilistic vocabulary for the particular representation you want and then using an inference engine of your own design.
For my AGI project I use the OpenCyc vocabulary and content, but with my own object store (a relational database) and simple inference (look-up and subsumption within contexts). The java dialog application that I am building does not require any more sophisticated deduction, so I postponing any complex inference until I can teach those algorithms to the system using English. -Steve http://sf.net/projects/texai ----- Original Message ---- From: Bob Mottram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 1:13:14 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Project proposal: MindPixel 2 I'm no expert on automated reasoning, but wasn't the original Mindpixel based fundamentally upon probabilistic representations (coherence values) whereas Cyc, from what I understand, doesn't represent facts or rules probabilistically. - Bob On 23/01/07, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Given my experience while employed at Cycorp, I would say that there are two ways to work with them. The first way is to collaborate with Cycorp on a sponsored project. Collaborators are mainly universities (e.g. CMU & Stanford) and established research companies ( e.g. SRI & SAIC) who have a track record of receiving government grants, and whose technologies are complementary to Cyc. I would not suggest this approach for MindPixel 2 yet. The second approach involves no exchange of money. Cycorp wants to promote its ontology - its commonsense vocabulary, and has released its definitions with a very permisive license as OpenCyc. One can also obtain nearly the entire Cyc knowledge base with a Research Cyc license for research purposes without fee, but with the RCyc license you are not allowed to extract facts and rules for MindPixel 2. You could contact the Cyc Foundation, which is an independent organization run by a friend of mine and former Cycorp employee. They are seeking to add knowledge to Cyc by using volunteers and I believe that they would be very receptive to MindPixel 2 provided it uses a form of the OpenCyc vocabulary for knowledge representation. I suggest obtaining an RCyc license to see how the Cyc inference engine handles large rule and fact sets, and to see if the Cyc vocabulary fits your idea of a commonsense representation language. ----- Original Message ---- From: Benjamin Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 5:35:51 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Project proposal: MindPixel 2 Hi, > Do you think Cyc has a rule/fact like "wet things can usually conduct > electricity" (or "if X is wet then X may conduct electricity")? Yes, it does... > I'll also contact some Cyc folks to see if they're interested in > collaborating... IMO, to have any chance of interesting them, you will need to be able to explain to them VERY CLEARLY why your current proposed approach is superior to theirs -- given that it seems so philosophically similar to theirs, and given that they have already encoded millions of knowledge items and built an inference engine and language-processing front end! -- Ben G ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get your own web address. Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303 This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
