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Would the Semantic Web (e.g. vertical knowledge graphs) qualify as AI? Anything resembling OpenCog or Freebase isn't AI—it's just a database with clever retrie

by seiji 12y ago

Would the Semantic Web (e.g. vertical knowledge graphs) qualify as AI? Anything resembling OpenCog or Freebase isn't AI—it's just a database with clever retrieval through traversal hierarchies. The world does need better ways to analyze data sets, but conflating information retrieval with self-directed AI is misapplying the term "intelligence."

mindcrime 12y ago
In practice, "AI" is used as an umbrella term that definitely includes that kind of stuff. I can't speak for YC, but IMO Semantic Web work should probably fall under the AI umbrella in this case. (Edit: in the interest of full-disclosure, my startup is doing a lot of work with Semantic Web technologies, particularly in terms of applying them to Enterprise knowledge management)
- seiji 12y ago
  I think there's two viewpoints. There's "outside in" when the media calls things like Siri "AI" then there's the scifi AI perspective where we want talking starships. Siri++ doesn't get us closer to sarcastic GSVs. If saying a structured connected wisdom of the crowds folksonomy is actually AI helps people get funding/attention/growth, that's what people will do. There's also "middle out," but that's a talk for another day.
  - mindcrime 12y ago
    FWIW, when you talk about the Semantic Web, that also entails reasoning and reasoners, and there's no requirement that those reasoners be simple deductive logic based reasoners. Work being done to make a more useful reasoner could certainly be "real" AI work. I'd also personally say that "knowledge representation" is part of AI, and KR problems are also being attacked by the SW community. Those, among other reasons, are why I say that one should classify SemWeb "stuff" as AI. But you're right to say that there are different definitions, and it does depend on who you talk to. The media definitely take a more expansive view of AI than probably most of us, but what can ya do? shrug
  - neuralk 12y ago
    A third and important viewpoint is academia. In that realm, you'll often hear people give the definition: "AI is search," which would encompass reasoning algorithms, knowledge bases and ontologies like the Semantic Web. Deep Blue and Watson come to mind as the best examples of AI as reasoning through search.
walterbell 12y ago
It's not information retrieval if there's no information to be retrieved in a vertical market. With the right incentive structures and business model, new vertical data sets can be generated, which enables new applications of existing algorithms. Hopefully the term AI still includes cybernetics (e.g. Biological Computer Lab), and is not limited to currently fashionable neural nets. In cybernetics, the vertical observer is as important as the observed "data".
nl 12y ago
I have a natural language question answering system build on top of information repositories. Understanding the intent of questions is an AI topic for sure.

by seiji 12y ago

mindcrime 12y ago

In practice, "AI" is used as an umbrella term that definitely includes that kind of stuff. I can't speak for YC, but IMO Semantic Web work should probably fall under the AI umbrella in this case. (Edit: in the interest of full-disclosure, my startup is doing a lot of work with Semantic Web technologies, particularly in terms of applying them to Enterprise knowledge management)

seiji 12y ago
I think there's two viewpoints. There's "outside in" when the media calls things like Siri "AI" then there's the scifi AI perspective where we want talking starships. Siri++ doesn't get us closer to sarcastic GSVs. If saying a structured connected wisdom of the crowds folksonomy is actually AI helps people get funding/attention/growth, that's what people will do. There's also "middle out," but that's a talk for another day.
- mindcrime 12y ago
  FWIW, when you talk about the Semantic Web, that also entails reasoning and reasoners, and there's no requirement that those reasoners be simple deductive logic based reasoners. Work being done to make a more useful reasoner could certainly be "real" AI work. I'd also personally say that "knowledge representation" is part of AI, and KR problems are also being attacked by the SW community. Those, among other reasons, are why I say that one should classify SemWeb "stuff" as AI. But you're right to say that there are different definitions, and it does depend on who you talk to. The media definitely take a more expansive view of AI than probably most of us, but what can ya do? shrug
- neuralk 12y ago
  A third and important viewpoint is academia. In that realm, you'll often hear people give the definition: "AI is search," which would encompass reasoning algorithms, knowledge bases and ontologies like the Semantic Web. Deep Blue and Watson come to mind as the best examples of AI as reasoning through search.

walterbell 12y ago

It's not information retrieval if there's no information to be retrieved in a vertical market. With the right incentive structures and business model, new vertical data sets can be generated, which enables new applications of existing algorithms. Hopefully the term AI still includes cybernetics (e.g. Biological Computer Lab), and is not limited to currently fashionable neural nets. In cybernetics, the vertical observer is as important as the observed "data".

nl 12y ago

I have a natural language question answering system build on top of information repositories. Understanding the intent of questions is an AI topic for sure.