April 22, 2005
Prepare To Cyc Out
It is reported that in the next few months a browser-friendly version of what is arguably the biggest, longest-running AI project in history, Cyc, will be made available, allowing laypeople (and bots?) to access its massive common-sense knowledge base and continue tutoring it, a process ongoing for 22 years now.
There is already a limited form of Cyc available, with a recent major update.
It will be very interesting to begin playing with this knowledge base and reasoning engine, and imagining artistic applications of it. There’s already a precedent for this — six years ago Michael applied some of Cyc’s knowledge base in his ideologically-biased documentary history project Terminal Time, a collaboration with Paul Vanouse and Steffi Domike.
The New Scientist article reporting on Cyc is also a good writeup of the history of the AI Winter.
April 23rd, 2005 at 10:24 am
This is so cool. It’s hard to tell exactly what will be made available online tho, huh? Do we know if there will be a programmatic interface, some kind of rpc, webservice, etc.?