On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, Alan Grimes wrote: > > We have a team of computational linguists who have added the > > vocabulary to make Cyc able to represent lexical concepts. > > But its still not the meta-vocabluary/meta-ontology that is required to > whack the problem.
Agreed, but we believe that it is a step in the right direction in that for Cyc to read it must understand word senses, parts of speech, English syntax and so forth. > > > > In 2003, our data entry activities will be emphasized as a result of > > our participation in Darpa's Total Information Awarenesss program for > > which we will construct a Terrorism Knowledge Base, containing all the > > open-source terrorist individuals, organizations and events that we and > > our sub-contractor experts can input. It is hoped that the TKB will > > prove useful, by answering interesting paramertized questions, for US > > defense and intelligence communities. > > Working for the Ministry of Information, I see... > I DON'T EVEN WANT TO KNOW YOU. =\ The press stories on the Darpa TIA will probably have the opposite of the instigator's original intent, in that the program has been strongly defended by those defense and senior government officials who were not previously well versed on the program, and are now well briefed. > This is serious stuff. I would say that you have an ethical duity _NOT_ > to aid in this monsterous abuse of power. In the wake of 9-11, Cycorp had a brainstorming meeting as to how we could respond to Darpa's call to its contractors for ideas. In that first meeting I proposed extending Cyc to create a Terrorism Knowledge Base. Although I did not contribute much thereafter to our winning proposal, I do feel that I doing my part to defend the US against future terrorist acting as the TKB project manager. The content of the TKB will be drawn from open-source non-classified material, for example: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/ . Using technology such as the TKB to examine local, state, and federal information on US Citizens, as well as information purchased from commercial transactional databases, is outside the scope of the Darpa TIA program (the US Dept. Of Defense is forbidden to spy on US Citizens) - This is the major error of the recent news articles which implied that the pentagon plans a supercomputer to spy on Americans. However the new Homeland Security Agency has a mandate to share all available government information and will have a research agency like Darpa, which is named HS-ARPA (Homeland Security - Advanced Research Projects Agency). I would expect that Cycorp could send them proposals to use our technology, as program solicitations unfold. I have no moral or ethical problem trading off the potential for privacy abuse for detection and deterrence of terrorist attacks. The Act establishing the Homeland Security Agency contains provisions for protecting privacy and I trust that framework. As one of the research groups in this forum, or elsewhere, begins to evidence AGI, then its management will have to decide how the US military will use it. So the issue you raise is a general one. -Steve -- =========================================================== Stephen L. Reed phone: 512.342.4036 Cycorp, Suite 100 fax: 512.342.4040 3721 Executive Center Drive email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Austin, TX 78731 web: http://www.cyc.com download OpenCyc at http://www.opencyc.org =========================================================== ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
