Re: OpenMind Project at MIT

From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun Sep 17 2000 - 17:25:56 MDT


On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, you wrote:
> A project called OpenMind is currently in progress at MIT's Media Lab.
> According to Wired Online, small scraps of information pertaining to a
> particluar subject, photo or diagram etc. are provided by thousands of
> users to help create a kind of "common sense" for a connected computer.

I (and many others, I'm sure) see a lot of problems with this methodology.
Basically, it is a really bad implementation of CYC. Before the whole
MindPixel thing became a media sensation, I tried to see if I could get a
good explanation from McKinstry regarding how he was going to solve some
of the hard problems that aren't resolved by his design, since he was
constantly touting it over email. I didn't get much more than some vague
handwaving, which I assumed meant that some real issues weren't even being
addressed and at which point I pretty much dismissed the whole "mindpixel"
thing.

Of course as chance would have it, he became a momentary media darling
many months later, though the hype is lost on me. The only thing clever
about his design is that he got tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people to
participate in his silly experiment.

-James Rogers
 jamesr@best.com



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