The Cyc Foundation: Introducing

Introducing:

The Cyc Foundation

April 13, 2006 April 13, 2006

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Motivations Wikimedia Foundation: “Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.”

Cyc Foundation: “Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to programs that reason with the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.” April 13, 2006

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Topic Map – Top Level

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Cyc Reasoning System Knowledge Users User Interface (with Natural Language Dialog)

Cyc

Reasoning Modules

Cyc Ontology & Knowledge Base

Interface to External Data Sources External Data Sources

Data Bases

Web Pages

Text Sources

Other Applications Cyc API

Knowledge Entry Tools

Knowledge Authors

Other KBs

Help Find Information by Inference (+KB) Query: “Someone happy”

Caption: “A man watching his daughter take her first step” April 13, 2006

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Help Find Information by Inference (+KB) (∃x) (feelsEmotion x Happiness Positive)

Lo gic a

l In

fe

re

nc e

(d ed

uc ti

on

)

Query: “Someone happy”

Caption: “A man watching his daughter take her first step”

(∃x,y) (and (father x y) (gender x Female) (sees x y) (walking

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Help Find Information by Inference (+KB)

Lo gic a

l In

fe

re

nc e

(d ed

uc ti

on

)

(∃x) (feelsEmotion x Happiness Positive) ...

(implies (and (isa ?BIG-EVENT HumanLifecycleMilestone) (doneBy ?BIG-EVENT ?CHILD) (sees ?PARENT ?BIG-EVENT) (children ?PARENT ?CHILD)) (holdsIn ?BIG-EVENT (feelsEmotionTypeAtLevel ?PARENT (PositiveAmountFn Pride))))

...

(∃x,y) (and (father x y) (gender x Female) (sees x y) (walking

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ALICE • • • • • • • • • •

JUDGE11[9:26:0]I WILL ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS PROGRAM[9:26:0]Do you think your plan will succeed? JUDGE11[9:26:16]WHAT IS THE COLOR OF A BLUE CAR PROGRAM[9:26:16]WHAT COLOR IS a blue car JUDGE11[9:26:35]WHERE IS SUE’S NOSE WHEN SUE IS IN HER HOUSE PROGRAM[9:26:35]Where it belongs. Try searching the World Wide Web. JUDGE11[9:26:49]WHAT HAPPENS TO AN ICE CUBE IN A HOT DRINK PROGRAM[9:26:49]Try it. JUDGE11[9:27:25]HOW IS THE FATHER OF ANDY S MOTHER RELATED TO ANDY PROGRAM[9:27:25]Fine as far as I know.

Natural Language Understanding requires having lots of knowledge 1.The pen is in the box. The box is in the pen. 2. The police watched the demonstrators… …because they feared violence. …because they advocated violence.

System: Ready for input. User: what do you know about anthrax? System: By “anthrax” do you mean (1) the heavy metal band or (2) bacteria? User: 2 System: Here is what I know about it: Anthrax is a species of organism. All anthrax is a bacterium. All anthrax can lethally infect mammals. Anthrax is extremely toxic for people to inhale. Iraq has biological weapons that deliver anthrax. Anthrax is opaque, tangible, microscopic, . Anthrax can be dried into spores stored indefinitely April 13, 2006

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System: Ready for input. User: what do you know about TR1? System: I know nothing about it. What sort of thing is TR1? User: bacteria System: TR1 lethally infects_________? User: People System: By “People”, I assume you mean human beings, not People Magazine. System: Does it infect some broader category of animals (e.g., air-breathing vertebrates, chordates, placental mammals, primates, eucaryotes, etc.)? User: mammals April 13, 2006

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System: Is TR1 similar to anthrax? User: yes System: Which of the following are true of TR1: . . . User: Al Qaida possesses some TR1. System: Ready for input. User: Does Osama Bin Laden control anything that can be the basis of weapons of mass destruction? System: Yes, some TR1. User: please explain System: Osama Bin Laden controls Al Qaida. Al Qaida posseses some TR1. TR1 is a bacteria that lethally infects people. April 13, 2006

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Efficiency vs. Expressiveness

Efficiency

C++

Continuing improvements in inference performance won’t negatively effect expressiveness. Use two cooperating languages (EL and HL) to escape the limitations of an age-old tradeoff.

PASCAL

HL (heuristic level language) EL (epistemological level language)

LISP First-order logic

nth-order logic English, German

Expressiveness April 13, 2006

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NOW: CyN in Doom3 (2005)

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BURC: Bootstrapping Using ResearchCyc • Goal: To extend Cyc’s knowledge base using “relationships implied to be possible, normal or commonplace in the world” • Prior work with Cyc knowledge entry has been manually oriented • How will we collect common sense without a body and manual labor…? • Read, Parse, Mine! • Proposal: Read text, Parse into a database, Extract relations between words, Propose hypothetical relations between concepts April 13, 2006

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BURC: Basic Analogy • • • • •

The Shotgun approach to the Human Genome Extract millions of fragments Knit them back together by finding commonalities Will it work for the Human Memome? James Burke: ‘Mr. Connections’

Lenat’s Bootstrap Hypothesis: once Cyc reaches a certain level/scale it can help in its own development and start using NLP to augment its knowledge base April 13, 2006

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Mining Adjective Knowledge Example • “white blouse” as factoid fragment

• Hypothesis: (plausibleValueOfType Blouse mainColorOfObject WhiteColor)

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Flow of Processing BNC Data

Parser 1

Parser 2

Parser 3

Parser 4

Parser 5

Frag File

Frag File

Frag File

Frag File

Frag File

Merged Frag File Upper Ontology Core Theories

Extractor / DB Manager

Domain-Specific Theories Facts (Database)

Cyc/Rcyc April 13, 2006

Hypothesis File

Link Fragments DB

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(Very) Brief History of Cyc • c. 1967 – AI is used on toy problems. • c. 1977 – Expert systems reason in narrow domains. • c. 1983 – Lenat, Minsky, Feigenbaum, Kay, and others recognize need for a substrate of shared world knowledge; and realize it would take hundreds of person-years to “prime the pump”. • 1984 – Admiral Bob Inman convinces Lenat to leave Stanford and pursue this high-risk, high-payoff project (Cyc) within MCC. • 1994 – Cycorp is formed.

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“The driver of the power of intelligent systems is the knowledge the systems have about their universe of discourse, not the sophistication of the reasoning process the systems employ. Cyc has not only the world’s largest knowledge base, but the best represented from a technical point of view.”

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Ed Feigenbaum inventor of the first expert system 30 editor of the AI Handbook

“People have silly reasons why computers don’t really think. The answer is we haven’t programmed them right; they just don’t have much common sense. There’s been only one large project to do something about that, that’s the famous Cyc project…”. April 13, 2006

-- Marvin Minsky 31

How has Cycorp done? • • • • • •

20 years 3 million facts and rules (hand-entered) Compelling demos Some applications (constrained by business model) The basis for much greater growth “If the right way to build an A.I. involves giving Cyc away for free, that is what we will do.” – Doug Lenat (repeatedly) – Note: Jury is out on what the “right way” is

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Cycorp: True to its Promise • OpenCyc – The entire Cyc structural ontology: FREE – 300,000 concept terms, ~2M facts and rules

• ResearchCyc – – – –

Equal to Full Cyc (w/ Research-only license) Source code for inference engine not released And it doesn’t API with 18,000 functions and macros! really matter. Ability to compile in your own additions

• Q: Will more be released? A: It depends. – Cycorp must financially support its own R&D. – Existing releases must result in major project benefits. April 13, 2006

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Time for the Next Phase • Cycorp has gotten us to where we are – Representational ability – Inference ability – …and will continue (R&D leader, commercialization

• The rest of the world will help get us where we are going – Breadth of content – Broad real-world diffusion The thinking that got us to where we are today is insufficient to solve the problems that exist today. To solve today's problems requires a new level of thinking. April 13, 2006 34 -- Einstein

rate of learning

2004 2006

1984

Building Cyc qua Engineering Task g via learnin e anguag l l a r u t na

ng rni

is yd

c

ery v o

b

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codify & enter each piece of knowledge, by hand

CYC amount known

n-years o s r e p 750 rs ime yea 21 realt April 13, 2006 lion $75 mil

Fro

nti

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of h

um

an

kn

ow led

ge

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Building Cyc qua Engineering Task

rate of learning

2004 2006

1984

10 years

codify & enter each piece of knowledge, by hand

CYC

1000 years

amount known n-years o s r e p 750 rs ime yea 21 realt April 13, 2006 lion $75 mil

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How will we get the knowledge?

Games That Matter! April 13, 2006

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Foundation as Continuation • Are we trying to make an A.I.? – No.

• Are we trying to make computers behave much more intelligently? – Yes!

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Mission (DRAFT) The Cyc Foundation has been formed as an independent not-for-profit organization to hasten the arrival of intelligent tools that will help humanity.

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Assumptions • (Currently) 9 ideas that shape strategy, objectives and policy • These may need to be validated, modified or augmented • In some cases, assumptions are followed by related policy April 13, 2006

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Assumption #1 Long before computers are as smart as people, they will be (in some cases already have been) put to use to cure disease, address hunger problems, make important new scientific discoveries and help people work together. Smarter computers will do a better job of this.

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Assumption #2 Cycorp has developed and cared for what we believe is an important piece of the AI puzzle. They have always wanted to release it to the public, but it had to be when people could realistically develop it further on their own without in some way endangering the project. One fear was “forking”, or creating incompatible variants of the knowledge base. Cycorp and The Foundation will cooperate on 1 KB. April 13, 2006

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Flow of Cyc Data Cyc Foundation Cycorp RCyc User

Gamer / Wikipedia user April 13, 2006

Team: - Subject-matter expert - Ontologist 43

Assumption #3 The knowledge that will give computers human-like intelligence ultimately needs to be free. That's our best hope of having it put to best use. Portions of knowledge will always be held proprietary. The more shared a piece of knowledge, the greater will be the force pulling all of its representations toward freedom (to avoid the burden of maintaining a non-standard representation). April 13, 2006 44

Assumption #4 Proposed Semantic Web standards (such as those related to OWL) are an important step in the right direction, because they provide a foundation for working with meaning on the Web. The Cyc ontology will be a valuable addition, because it can act as a semantic hub, allowing us to have shared meaning. There is some concern that a top-down central ontology will dictate use of terms that may not meet a project’s needs. We will be able to show that use of the Cyc ontology can satisfy both needs and will be a useful complement to the great work that has already been done toward the Semantic Web. April 13, 2006

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Assumption #5 We all have something to learn. We all have something to teach. The Foundation mission will benefit from a very broad base of support, rather than the traditional rule by the technical elite.

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Assumption #6 For this effort, focused work by many will be more valuable than genius work by a few.

To be most helpful, people should work together, and on tasks where they are capable of contributing successfully. (Example: don’t go off and try to “solve the A.I. problem” by yourself.) April 13, 2006

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Assumption #7 Regular humans can be turned off by overly technical talk that is out of place – and rightly so.

We need to be inclusive in our language and in our activities in order to ensure the broadest base of support and participation. This is especially true in the Cyclify initiative. April 13, 2006

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Assumption #8 There is no “us” and “them” • The Foundation is managed by its volunteer board and run by its volunteer members • The Foundation will start with no employees • The will be no BDFL – Benevolent Dictator for Life April 13, 2006

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Assumption #9 Fun is mandatory! • By comparison, contributing to SETI is like cleaning your oven while you sleep. • This work will be hands-on, compelling and (hopefully) addictive. • If you’re not having fun, find out why and fix it. April 13, 2006

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y f i cl

Foundation Goals

C•y Convert human knowledge to a form that computers can reason with

– Grow the Cyc Ontology and KB Exponentially

• Establish a standard vocabulary and language for representing concepts & knowledge • Support the creation of intelligent tools • Promote free and efficient knowledge transfer April 13, 2006

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Cyclify Knowledge Collection Activities • Web Games – Validate acquired knowledge – Multiple-choice fact entry – More?

• Wikipedia Linking • KR Dating Service – Wiki-based knowledge entry – A SME paired with an ontologist

• WordNet Linking April 13, 2006

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Playflow Within Cyclify RCyc User Wikipedia Data

RCyc

Cycorp K. Acquisiton Data

Game Server

Wiki Knowledge Server

Team: - Subject-matter expert - Ontologist April 13, 2006

Wikipedia user

RCyc

Gamer

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Status:

I’m thinking of a sentence…

I have 2 answers True

False Don’t Know

Doesn’t make sense

Fibromyalgia is caused by ticks.

Because I read about it on the web. Score: April 13, 2006 24

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Status:

Submitting...

I think this sentence is probably not right

Thank you! Answers: 2 You agreed with: 100% I now have a better understanding of: Fibromyalgia is caused by ticks. Next

Score: April 13, 2006 26

Score: +2

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Current Architecture

computer (inside)

computer (outside)

Cyc Image

GAFs web gathered hypothesized asserted …

Applet Applet Forward rules

Applet

Question Server (java)

KAGs PostGRES database

SubL form, running KAG-collecting query

Populator (java)

XML file April 13, 2006

scp

XML file

DMZ Boundary

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Cyc Foundation Projects • • • • • • •

Nonprofit Formation (planning/budgeting/filing) Foundation Website Cyclify Fundraising Membership management Events ResearchCyc – Recommend Cyc features / functions / design – Help with ResearchCyc testing, documentation

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Budgeting • Must develop budget related to Year 1 plan • Possible areas of spending – – – – –

Legal filings Server hosting W3C membership Conference attendance Fundraising

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Foundation Website • Requirements – – – –

Content management features Collaboration features Out-of-the-box ease of use Free

• Currently evaluating Joomla (Mambo) • Desired launch: May 15 April 13, 2006

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Cyclify Projects • First Web Game – Develop game – Viral marketing – Add wiki linking activity

• Wiki Knowledge Collection – Set up wikip.cyclify.org – Add frame for ontologizing – Feed wikip links to Web game

• Back End – Design and implement PlayFlow – Submit collected knowledge to Cycorp April 13, 2006

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Fundraising • Individual Memberships – Free membership for first 6 months for Cyclify members and ResearchCyc users? – How much? – What do you get?

• Corporate Donations – Need to prepare story – Seems feasible to get donations April 13, 2006

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What does nonprofit mean? • Cannot have investors or disburse earnings • Can have earnings, though • Revenues must come from services that are within mission • 501(c)(3)? (like Wikimedia Foundation) • Or 501(c)(6)? (like Eclipse Foundation)

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The Foundation Board of Directors Name

Position

Role

John De Oliveira

Founder and President

Strategy, Corp. Fundraising

Mark Baltzegar

Co-Founder and Vice President

Strategy, Game Devel., IT

OPEN

Secretary, Treasurer

Secretary, Treasurer

David James

Board Member

Organizational Dynamics

OPEN

Board Member

Standards

OPEN

Board Member

Events, Operations Delegator

OPEN

Board Member

Architecture, Playflow Design

TBD Sept. 2006

Board Member

Oversight

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The Foundation: Membership Project Leader, Cyclify

Stu Baurman

Keith Wright

Project Leader, ResearchCyc

Kino Coursey

Pierluigi Miraglia

High Scorer (current month)

Douglas Miles

Gavin Matthews

High Scorer (all time)

Arturo Hernandez

Joe Simone

David Whitten

Guyren Howe

~100 ResearchCyc Users

Brad Bouldin

John Cabral

YOU!

Larry Lefkowitz

Ben Rode

Bill Jarrold

Jason Azbahr

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ResearchCyc Users Government-related Government

Language Computer Corporation

Air Force Rome Labs

21 Century Technologies st

Houston VA Medical Center

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Austin Info Systems

Lockheed Martin ATLD

MIT Media Lab

Stanford NLP Dept.

U of Pennsylvania

Rensselaer AI and Reasoning Lab

Radboud U (Netherlands)

Stone’s Throw Technologies

U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Northwestern U

U of Toronto

ISI

Knowledge Media Institute, Open University U of Stuttgart U of Minnesota Witan International

Linkoping U (Sweden)

NTT Communications Science Laboratories (Japan) Fraunhofer Institute Sapio Systems (Denmark) Terra Incognita

Trimtab Consulting TNO-DMV (Netherlands) Microfabrica, Inc.

New Mexico Highlands Univ. Harvard U

Commercial

ANSER, Inc.

SRI

Daxtron Labs

University U of Maryland

LBJ School of Public Affairs

Xerox PARC

U of Hawaii

Tokyo Inst. of Technology

Institute for the Study Of Accelerating Change

NPOs 65

How can I help? • Humans (a.k.a. common sense experts) • Programmers – Web programmers – Cyc programmers

• Ontologists • Subject-matter experts • Bloggers April 13, 2006

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Human Cyclists* • • • • • • • • • •

Play the Web Game Come up with new game ideas Link Wikipedia to Cyc Learn more about Cyc Befriend an ontologist Tell a friend about Cyclify Write to a blog about Cyclify Help with viral marketing Design a logo T-Shirts: Buy one, or Create and sell them

*April From 13,now 2006on, we’re all “Cyclists” – people who interact with Cyc in one way or another. 67

Programmers • • • • • • • •

Help design and build a web services interface Learn the architecture of Web Game #1 Design an add-on for the Web game Learn how to use the question server Propose a new game Help develop/support technical infrastructure Help organize documentation Help write the Cyc books – to be published by O'Reilly

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Ontologists • Identify gaps in the knowledge base • Befriend a Subject Matter Expert – Work together on a domain

• Befriend a Human Cyclist – Teach one who wants to learn basic ontology skills

• Help organize documentation • Help write the Cyc books April 13, 2006

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Bloggers • Blog about Cyclify • Link to each other’s blogs

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Timeline (Milestones) • May 15 – Launch Foundation Website • Build membership up until July 15 • June 15 – File Articles of Formation w/ Sec. Of State – First Web game in beta

• July 15 – Launch Game • October – First OpenCyc build containing game data April 13, 2006

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