tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40429572024-03-13T09:02:44.129-05:00This is what's <i>on</i> the mind of someone who is trying to get everything <i>off</i> of his mind and into a more reliable medium.John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-45059142091455092722008-03-13T12:48:00.002-05:002008-03-13T12:49:25.081-05:00

Blogging on this topic has moved to The Cyc Foundation blog.

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1154455042215282382006-08-01T12:47:00.000-05:002007-01-05T18:44:20.410-06:00

At the AAAI conference in Boston, Peter Norvig of Google raised a concern about the Semantic Web to Tim Berners-Lee. The concern has primarily to do with ease of use.We're not going to have a smarter Web until and unless the new tools are easy enough to use. Until then, we'll have Web 2.0, as described here. As Zombini explains, these Web 2.0 technologies already have semantic qualities, but they

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1154452944578055712006-08-01T12:12:00.000-05:002006-12-16T07:39:37.690-06:00

A lot has been happening at the Cyc Foundation, even though nothing has been happening with this blog. Some folks have expressed confusion over where to go for Cyc Foundation information. People who want to get their hands dirty and participate can just email me (johnd at cycfoundation.org). Tell me a little about yourself and why your interested, and we'll add you to the mailing list and get you

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1148650676745538582006-05-26T08:23:00.000-05:002006-12-16T07:39:37.690-06:00

We had 10 programmers from around the country on a Skypecast (conference call) for 90 minutes last night discussing creating web services for Cyc. We've got some issues to work out with microphones and with getting on the call in the first place. Still, it was a worthwhile call.We'll be talking again next Wednesday (May 31, 2006) at 8:30pm Central Standard Time. Central time is one hour earlier

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1148148637389248362006-05-20T13:05:00.000-05:002006-10-18T03:24:27.473-05:00

Sorry for the gap in posts. I will try to get more consistent.If you ever wonder why it is so difficult for computers to understand natural language, check out this article by George Miller, creator of WordNet. In one example from his article, he points out that the following couplet from a Robert Frost poem . . ."But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.". . . has over 3

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1146458722204183422006-04-30T23:42:00.000-05:002006-07-16T15:36:27.990-05:00

We've had 1.5 handfuls of folks contact us from around the U.S. interested in helping with the Cyc Foundation. We're grateful for whatever help we can get. Broader support will probably start showing up once the first game is out there on the Web and once Wikipedia linking is underway. Of course, it would help to have help to get those things moving. So, we're dealing with a chicken and the egg

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145596680129612582006-04-21T00:04:00.000-05:002006-08-13T01:04:37.090-05:00

I've often heard that complaint when I describe that Cyc uses deduction to do reasoning. That's not how people think. First of all, I don't want to claim that Cyc "thinks" at all, but sometimes its expedient to use expressions like that.As for how people think, who knows? There's a lot of research in that area, but we really don't know yet how people think. I suspect it's quite different than the

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145510391951207892006-04-20T00:19:00.000-05:002006-04-21T00:04:17.833-05:00

I said I'd go into more detail about each of the activities in the Cyc Foundation's Cyclify initiative. The purpose that cuts across all activities is to grow the Cyc Knowledge Base. Initially, the focus is on what we call breadth or coverage. We want everything one could think of to have a concept term or a way of forming one from functional terms. A concept term is something like #$CreditCard.

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145335483560116302006-04-17T21:27:00.000-05:002007-02-07T10:56:12.326-06:00

Cyclify, the grass-roots initiative of the Cyc Foundation, is composed of the following projects:Games for growing the knowledge baseWikipedia knowledge collectionPairing subject-matter experts (SMEs, pronounced "smees") with ontologistsAlignment with other sources (for example, WordNet)I'll make a separate post for each of these, in order to go into more detail. Something that applies to all of

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145244493367540582006-04-16T22:19:00.000-05:002007-02-08T13:27:27.170-06:00

New Scientist just published a new article about Cyc in which they say, "Cycorp has also just launched a trivia game for the public that will help fill in gaps in Cyc's knowledge."The Cyc Foundation is being entrusted with the responsibility for further development of the game. We're currently designing a new front-end for the game that will provide an arcade-like feel. We hope it will make game

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145242777360885202006-04-16T21:55:00.000-05:002006-04-16T21:59:37.370-05:00

While I was in college in the mid-Eighties, there was a buzz in the air about Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika. Those were times filled with anticipation of changing relationships, although few truly knew how much change was coming.Changes at Cycorp over the last few years remind me of those times. The iron curtain on Cyc is coming down with the release of the full Cyc ontology into open

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145156191765070342006-04-15T21:52:00.000-05:002006-04-16T15:54:57.946-05:00

Bill Jarrold of SRI sent me some comments about my presentation on the 13th (see below), and I'd like to respond. He said the presentation was pretty good, but noted:Some people will differ with your characterization that OWL contains no semantics. People are working on adding rules to OWL and OWL-Full is quite descriptive. OWL-DL is much weaker, but is computationally pretty good (description

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145155605101870532006-04-15T21:45:00.000-05:002007-02-05T00:49:03.896-06:00

I'm about to post a response to a comment I received about Thursday night's presentation, but first I want to define some terms. (The fact that I have to try to establish this common ground vocabulary in order to discuss these issues ironically argues my point for me, as I hope you'll see in the next post.) I invite corrections to my naive definitions, as long as the corrections can be stated in

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145083886115585342006-04-14T08:31:00.000-05:002006-08-14T16:04:01.886-05:00

Here's an announcement we posted today on the OpenCyc site.Austin, TX. April 14, 2006 --A new independent non-profit organization was announced Thursday night at the monthly meeting of Cyclify-Austin, the Cyc User's group. The Cyc Foundation is now forming to manage the OpenCyc ontology and to grow the ontology and knowledge base exponentially with the help of volunteers from all walks of

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-1145107231481800742006-04-13T08:13:00.000-05:002006-08-02T21:17:29.123-05:00

Portraits of me and my 6 brothers and sisters were done by an oil painter while we were on a trip to Florida when I was about 7 years old. He purposefully painted us to look a few years older than we actually were at the time (I forget why). We never quite turned out looking that way. As a result, I've got an example of what someone in the past thought (a part of) the future would be like.

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4042957.post-863878142002-12-22T00:53:00.000-06:002006-04-15T01:02:48.210-05:00

This is a test. This is my first blog entry, so I'm just testing how this works. The site for my primary project is here.

John De Oliveirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10315081070263177342noreply@blogger.com