<
artificial intelligence> A large
knowledge-based system.
Cyc is a very large, multi-contextual
knowledge base and
inference engine, the development of which started at the
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
in Austin, Texas during the early 1980s.
Over the past eleven years the members of the
Cyc team, lead
by
Doug Lenat, have added to the knowledge base a huge
amount of fundamental human knowledge:
facts, rules of
thumb, and
heuristics for reasoning about the objects and
events of modern everyday life.
Cyc is an attempt to do symbolic
AI on a massive scale. It
is not based on numerical methods such as statistical
probabilities, nor is it based on
neural networks or {fuzzy
logic}. All of the knowledge in
Cyc is represented
declaratively in the form of logical
assertions.
Cyc
presently contains approximately 400,000 significant
assertions, which include simple statements of fact, rules
about what conclusions to draw if certain statements of fact
are satisfied, and rules about how to reason with certain
types of facts and rules. The
inference engine derives new
conclusions using
deductive reasoning.
To date,
Cyc has made possible ground-breaking pilot
applications in the areas of
heterogeneous database browsing
and integration,
captioned image retrieval, and {natural
language processing}.
In January of 1995, a new independent company named Cycorp was
created to continue the
Cyc project. Cycorp is still in
Austin, Texas. The president of Cycorp is
Doug Lenat.
The development of
Cyc has been supported by several
organisations, including
Apple,
Bellcore,
DEC,
DoD,
Interval,
Kodak, and
Microsoft.
http://cyc.com/.
Unofficial FAQ (http://robotwisdom.com/ai/cycfaq.html).
(1999-09-07)