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last time I looked at OpenCyc's knowledge base, the information encoded was all strangely specific academic stuff - like very fine classifications and relations

last time I looked at OpenCyc's knowledge base, the information encoded was all strangely specific academic stuff - like very fine classifications and relationships between species of tapeworms and of fungus. There was very little daily-life common-sense knowledge, even though that's often the hook in interviews and articles about Cyc's purpose. I'm not sure why that's true - maybe it's hard to decide what the 'facts' are about normal human life, but the more academic something is, the more there's a consensus, rationalized 'reality'

stereolambda 7y ago
This happens also with similar bases in my experience. I suspect it's very much an economic phenomenon. It's easy to hire someone to input relations from a textbook if not from Wikipedia. It's hard to find someone with credentials for "understanding everyday life on philosophical level", and for logical formalisms, and also no overriding penchant for philosophical bikeshedding. Even then, it would be a time-consuming and thus also costly process.
brundolf 7y ago
Employee of Cycorp here. A few thoughts: - At least right now, we have a good amount of common-sense information about the world (I don't know when "last time" was for you). - That said, we have a lot of highly specialized knowledge in various domains, so if you took a random sample of the knowledge base (KB) it may not be as common-sense-centric as you'd hope. But the KB is also incredibly large, so that doesn't mean we don't have much common-sense, just that we have even more other stuff. - Often for contracts we get paid to construct lots of domain-specific knowledge, even if the project also uses the more general knowledge, so this biases the distribution some. - Information that's already well-taxonomized is low-hanging fruit for this kind of system; its representation doesn't take nearly as much extra thought and consideration, so it's a faster process, which also biases the distribution some.
- jey 7y ago
  What are some interesting examples of common-sense that has been formalized and encoded?
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    One of our primary test suites is what we call "Common Sense Tests". They comprise a set of common-sense questions that require some leaps of reasoning to answer, and we use them as a metric of our common-sense knowledge. So for example: Would a human dislike touching a/an incandescent bulb while the electric lamp is powered on? Yes. ?HUMAN dislikes being a performer in the ?TOUCHING. • Embodied agents dislike performing acts that cause them discomfort. • ?HUMAN is an embodied perceptual agent. • ?HUMAN is a human. • Every human is an embodied perceptual agent. • ?HUMAN deliberately performed ?TOUCHING. • ?TOUCHING causes some discomfort. • Touching something that is too hot to touch causes pain. • The quantity range pain includes all points in some discomfort. • ?PART is too hot to touch. • When an incandescent bulb is on, it is too hot to touch. • ?PART is an incandescent bulb. • ?PART’s current state is powered on. • When a lamp with a bulb is on, so is the bulb. • ?PART is a physical part of ?DEVICE. • ?PART is a physical part of ?DEVICE. • ?PART is a physical part of ?PART. • ?DEVICE’s current state is powered on. • ?PART is a light bulb. • ?PART is an incandescent bulb. • Every incandescent bulb is a light bulb. • ?DEVICE is an electric lamp. • ?PART was affected during ?TOUCHING. We have a couple thousand of these, which we've aimed to make as diverse as possible
    - jkaptur 7y ago
      So to "change a lightbulb", so to speak, the system decides something like "turn off the lamp first". But then the evaluation above says that the human would not dislike touching the bulb, but, in reality, it's still too hot. So you could incorporate some kind of cooling rate, then change the above to "When an incandescent bulb has been on x of the last y minutes it is too hot to touch". This all seems just impossibly complicated (not that I can think of something simpler!) - am I missing anything?
- kick 7y ago
  OpenCyc hasn't been a thing for something like a decade, so even if "last time" was yesterday, it'd still be on outdated information (because Cycorp keeps things proprietary, hidden and unauditable). Do you know when they last pushed it out? It's been a while.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    It has indeed been a while, unfortunately. I don't know the exact date. Some of us here are trying to push for a revival of OpenCyc or something similar, to democratize things and get third-party developers playing with the system, but for now OpenCyc is not really supported.
    - kick 7y ago
      Good luck! That's a really genuinely exciting prospect. I hope you succeed!
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  What's an example of something that feels just out of reach? What's the simplest thing that feels impossibly far away?
zozbot234 7y ago
> the information encoded was all strangely specific academic stuff - like very fine classifications and relationships between species of tapeworms and of fungus. Even Wikidata mostly looks like that, despite being intended quite clearly as a "general purpose" knowledge base. Mostly because this sort of information is easily extracted from existing, referenced sources. The "general purpose" character of it all comes into play wrt. linking across those specialized domains.

stereolambda 7y ago

This happens also with similar bases in my experience. I suspect it's very much an economic phenomenon. It's easy to hire someone to input relations from a textbook if not from Wikipedia. It's hard to find someone with credentials for "understanding everyday life on philosophical level", and for logical formalisms, and also no overriding penchant for philosophical bikeshedding. Even then, it would be a time-consuming and thus also costly process.

brundolf 7y ago

Employee of Cycorp here. A few thoughts: - At least right now, we have a good amount of common-sense information about the world (I don't know when "last time" was for you). - That said, we have a lot of highly specialized knowledge in various domains, so if you took a random sample of the knowledge base (KB) it may not be as common-sense-centric as you'd hope. But the KB is also incredibly large, so that doesn't mean we don't have much common-sense, just that we have even more other stuff. - Often for contracts we get paid to construct lots of domain-specific knowledge, even if the project also uses the more general knowledge, so this biases the distribution some. - Information that's already well-taxonomized is low-hanging fruit for this kind of system; its representation doesn't take nearly as much extra thought and consideration, so it's a faster process, which also biases the distribution some.

jey 7y ago
What are some interesting examples of common-sense that has been formalized and encoded?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  One of our primary test suites is what we call "Common Sense Tests". They comprise a set of common-sense questions that require some leaps of reasoning to answer, and we use them as a metric of our common-sense knowledge. So for example: Would a human dislike touching a/an incandescent bulb while the electric lamp is powered on? Yes. ?HUMAN dislikes being a performer in the ?TOUCHING. • Embodied agents dislike performing acts that cause them discomfort. • ?HUMAN is an embodied perceptual agent. • ?HUMAN is a human. • Every human is an embodied perceptual agent. • ?HUMAN deliberately performed ?TOUCHING. • ?TOUCHING causes some discomfort. • Touching something that is too hot to touch causes pain. • The quantity range pain includes all points in some discomfort. • ?PART is too hot to touch. • When an incandescent bulb is on, it is too hot to touch. • ?PART is an incandescent bulb. • ?PART’s current state is powered on. • When a lamp with a bulb is on, so is the bulb. • ?PART is a physical part of ?DEVICE. • ?PART is a physical part of ?DEVICE. • ?PART is a physical part of ?PART. • ?DEVICE’s current state is powered on. • ?PART is a light bulb. • ?PART is an incandescent bulb. • Every incandescent bulb is a light bulb. • ?DEVICE is an electric lamp. • ?PART was affected during ?TOUCHING. We have a couple thousand of these, which we've aimed to make as diverse as possible
  - jkaptur 7y ago
    So to "change a lightbulb", so to speak, the system decides something like "turn off the lamp first". But then the evaluation above says that the human would not dislike touching the bulb, but, in reality, it's still too hot. So you could incorporate some kind of cooling rate, then change the above to "When an incandescent bulb has been on x of the last y minutes it is too hot to touch". This all seems just impossibly complicated (not that I can think of something simpler!) - am I missing anything?
kick 7y ago
OpenCyc hasn't been a thing for something like a decade, so even if "last time" was yesterday, it'd still be on outdated information (because Cycorp keeps things proprietary, hidden and unauditable). Do you know when they last pushed it out? It's been a while.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  It has indeed been a while, unfortunately. I don't know the exact date. Some of us here are trying to push for a revival of OpenCyc or something similar, to democratize things and get third-party developers playing with the system, but for now OpenCyc is not really supported.
  - kick 7y ago
    Good luck! That's a really genuinely exciting prospect. I hope you succeed!
Jeff_Brown 7y ago
What's an example of something that feels just out of reach? What's the simplest thing that feels impossibly far away?

zozbot234 7y ago

> the information encoded was all strangely specific academic stuff - like very fine classifications and relationships between species of tapeworms and of fungus. Even Wikidata mostly looks like that, despite being intended quite clearly as a "general purpose" knowledge base. Mostly because this sort of information is easily extracted from existing, referenced sources. The "general purpose" character of it all comes into play wrt. linking across those specialized domains.