Preview
George Burns: “My aunt is in the
hospital. I went to see her today,
and took her flowers.”
Gracie Allen: “George, that’s terrible!
You should have brought her
flowers!”
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
CYC:
Toward Programs with
Common Sense
CACM Aug 1990
Steve O’Hara
UTSA CS 7123
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Motivation
Software is “brittle”
Examples:
A skin disease diagnosis program that is told
about a rusty old car and decides it has
measles
A car loan authorization system approves a
loan from somebody whose years at the
same job exceeds their age
A digitalis dosage system that does not
notice when the patients age (49) and
weight (102) are switched
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Words are Deceptive
MicrowaveOven isa KitchenAppliance
Dishwasher isa KitchenAppliance
Ahdfdiwhefh isa KitchenAppliance
MicrowaveOven requires Electricity
Dishwasher requires Electricity and Water
Water is a Liquid
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Artificial Intelligence
To achieve an AI requires:
Language / Logic
• How to express knowledge
Manipulating Knowledge
• Rules of many flavors
The Knowledge Base
• Nobody is really working on this
• Not Cyc, not google, not wikipedia
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Expert System Rules
IF frog(x)
THEN amphibian(x)
IF amphibian(x)
THEN laysEggsInWater(x)
IF laysEggsInWater(x)
THEN livesNearLotsOf(x, Water)
If livesNearLotsOf(x, Water)
THEN NOT livesInDesert(x)
Looks Intelligent, Right?
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
However …
Does Freda lay eggs?
Is Freda sometimes in water?
Is Freda a person?
Is Freda larger or smaller than the
Pacific Ocean?
Does Freda live on the Sun?
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Overcoming Brittleness
Cyc Project started in 1984
Led by Dr Douglas Lenat
Funded by Bill, Steve, you and me
Now Cycorp, www.cyc.com
Only “true” AI project left
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Hmmm ….
Bogosity: The Lenat
The unit of bogosity, derived from the fictional
field of Quantum Bogodynamics, the lenat is
seldom used, as it is understood that it is too
large for normal conversation. Its most common
form is the microlenat. [The Original Hacker's
Dictionary. Retrieved on 2006-11-08]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_u
nits_of_measurement#Bogosity:_The_Lenat
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
The Cyc Project
Representation Language
Inference Engine
Ontology of the KB
The KB
Applications
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
CycL - Representation
Clean and simple semantics
Yet speedy inference
Epistemological level
• First order predicate calculus (good)
Heuristic level
• Special purpose logic (custom)
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
CycL Example
transfersThrough(owns, physicalParts)
owns(Guha, Toyota0093)
physicalParts(Toyota0003, WheelRR0093)
Can infer owns(Guha, WheelRR0093)
without any special logic
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Cyc Ontology
Thing
• InternalMachineThing
The number 5
The string “foo”
• RepresentedThing
table
TheWhiteHouse
TheFourthOfJuly1990
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
High Level Classes
IndividualObject –vs– Set
Substance –vs– Individual
Process –vs– Event
Walking –vs– WalkingToTheMailbox
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
What Cyc Knows -- Buying
Payments made through the mail are not
normally done in cash
Candy costs double at a movie theater
Agents need to own items they consume
If you buy something, a sub-event
involves paying the seller
Agents own items that are of some use to
them
Etc.
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Machine Learning
Roams the KB (at night) looking for
unexpected symmetries
Surprisingly, the size of the KB has
fluctuated over the years as patterns
have emerged and more general
rules have replaced groups of
specialized rules
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Applications (in 1990)
Large Engineering Knowledge bases
Axiomatizing Human Emotions
Machine Learning by Analogy
Qualitative Physics Reasoning
Natural Language Understanding
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Applications (now)
From www.cyc.com
Intelligent Search
Excel spreadsheet logic
Machine Translation
Text understanding
Picture Categorization
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Language Understanding
The pen is in the box.
The box is in the pen.
The police watched the demonstrators …
• because they feared violence.
• because they advocated violence.
Mary and Sue are sisters.
Mary and Sue are mothers.
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07
Conclusion
One of the most ambitious software
projects ever undertaken
Best Marketing ever
Love it or hate it
Fantastic potential
Steve O’Hara, Cyc, 9/26/07