Having spent the past 31 years memorizing an astonishing collection of general knowledge, the artificial-intelligence engine created by Doug Lenat is finally ready to go to work.
Lenat’s creation is Cyc, a knowledge base of semantic information designed to give computers some understanding of how things work in the real world.
Cyc has been given many thousands of facts, including lots of information that you wouldn’t find in an encyclopedia because it seems self-evident. It knows, for example, that that Sir Isaac Newton is a famous historical figure who is no longer alive. But more important, Cyc also understands that if you let go of an apple it will fall to the ground; that an apple is not bigger than a person; and that a person cannot throw an apple into space.
And now, after years of work, Lenat’s system is being commercialized by a company called Lucid.
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