as reported in U.S. News & World Reports.So, weve explored what AI is and how it is being used today, but what about those dreams of a mechanical brain which so closely approximate the human mind that real life like robots are possible. There is Cog, (Cognitive) which is the grand experiment in the latest approach to artificial intelligence: letting a machine discover the world on its own, the way humans do, rather than cramming its memory with some preexisting computer model that describes the world from a human perspective. Cog the android wannabe wannabe because it doesnt have legs yet. According to the creators, those will come later. For now, its still learning to coordinate its eye, head and hand muscles. On the other side of the coin is Cyc (World Book Encyclopedia), the most ambitious version of the old school, top-down system. Some $40 million has been invested on organizing Cycs reasoning engines and stuffing its knowledge base with a half-million rules derived from 2 million common-sense facts. These are the things people soak up during childhood like: Mothers are always older than their daughters. Birds have feathers. When people that other software might miss, Cycorp has a database of captioned photos. Most database managers retrieve photos based on a precise word match in the caption. Type in strong and daring person, and Cyc pulls up a picture captioned Man climbing mountain. Cyc knows that a man is a person, and that mountain climbing demands strength and is dangerous.die, they stay dead.(World Book, 1999).To show how Cycs common-sense method can help find information. The next stop for Cyc was to begin learning on its own by reading newspapers, books, and scientific journals. Then, in eight or nine years, Lenat figures Cyc will be smart enough for postgraduate work. It might help doctors make better diagnoses by checking medical records and presenting alternatives. Or it might help market researchers spo...
