Bot Contest

@_@ Do you mean like Cyc?

Well regardless it'd be insane to try that in a system like this with thousands of users, many on 56k.

Speaking of powerful computers, I read about one at the BBC website that was being made to try to illustrate the beginning of the universe or something. It had 7 terabytes of hard drive(1 terabyte = 1000 gigabytes), and its other stats were hugely impressive as well.

Oh I never said it'd be useful HERE...besides the fact, with an AI like that already set up, most of a user's "programming" would consist of giving various emotional weights to subjects and that'd get boring fast.

::drools at the thought of 7 terabytes::
::shudders at the thought of trying to fill 7 terabytes on 56k::

zx20,

I've heard about Cyc. Was that project at all successful?

::shudders at the thought of filling 100GB on 56k::

What is this "Cyc" you speak of?

Years ago, a team of people was working on a program called Cyc, educating it about basic world knowledge that we take for granted--even form new associations based on its past knowledge. Last I'd heard, they'd got it up to about the level of a human 4-year-old.

Cyc wasn't designed with a lot of specific responses in mind, but mostly processing. The idea was to have as close to actual thought as possible. Example: Cyc was told that someone named Mary Shepherd liked it, and based on its knowledge that similar things/people tended to like each other, it asked "Am I a person? Or is Mary Shepherd a computer program?"

Now you've got me wondering too, so I'm going to look it up.

Duh. www.cyc.com

Btw, Cyc pronuces as "psych".

Wow, how very, very Steven Spielberg.