Re: SUO: Re: SUO Ballot with 2 Questions
At 11:01 PM 6/5/2003 -0400, John F. Sowa wrote:
<snip>
>Pierre Grenon said a lot of things that I agree with to
>a large extent. I would just add a few qualifications:
>
>> To me anything which attempts to make me believe that OpenCyc
>> is better than anything else based on whatever heroic history
>> it has is marketing and bullshit. Cyc has been more shaped by
>> idiomatic intuitions and implementation constraints than
>> anything else. Maybe this didn't prevent it from being
>> successful, not sure it is a good piece of UO.
>
>The only point I disagree with is the implication that Cyc has
>been "successful". For 19 years, it has succeeded in getting
>research contracts. Nobody is buying it and using it to make
>money or to save money on mission-critical applications.
John,
I think this is a bit unfair or at least I disagree with your basic assumptions. Very few pieces of AI have been successful in the marketplace. Whether or not Cyc is a high quality knowledge base has very little to do with whether or not it has been successful in the marketplace. Being a good knowledge base/ontology is neither necessary nor sufficient for marketplace success. The marketplace is largely made up of people producing and consuming inefficient cars and appliances, sundry weapons, low quality music, bad food and alcohol and pornography. Small credit to anything if it succeeds in this environment.
I also dispute your denial that regular success in winning research contracts from the likes of DARPA isn't at least a somewhat reliable indicator of quality and success. Imagine if Microsoft had had to impress DARPA proposal reviews and evaluations for all these years.
Whether this applies to OpenCyc is, of course, another question.
(Good grief, how can you get away with writing this kind of stuff and then rewriting Cyc's SUO motions for them? ;>) )
Mike
><snip>
>John
>
>