Paul Allen Wants to Teach Machines Common Sense
- 6 years ago
Paul Allen Wants to Teach Machines Common Sense
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen said Wednesday
that he was pumping an additional $125 million into his nonprofit computer research lab for an ambitious new effort to teach machines “common sense.”
The money for the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence will about double the lab’s budget over the
next three years, helping to fund existing research as well as the new effort, called Project Alexandria.
It can’t read a textbook and understand the questions in the back of the book,” said Oren Etzioni, a former
University of Washington professor who oversees the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
“To make real progress in A. I., we have to overcome the big challenges in the area of common sense,”
said Mr. Allen, who founded the software giant Microsoft in the 1970s with Bill Gates.
In the mid-1980s, Doug Lenat, a former Stanford University professor, with backing from the government
and several of the country’s largest tech companies, started a project called Cyc.
He and his team of researchers worked to codify all the simple truths
that we learn as children, from “you can’t be in two places at the same time” to “when drinking from a cup, hold the open end up
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen said Wednesday
that he was pumping an additional $125 million into his nonprofit computer research lab for an ambitious new effort to teach machines “common sense.”
The money for the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence will about double the lab’s budget over the
next three years, helping to fund existing research as well as the new effort, called Project Alexandria.
It can’t read a textbook and understand the questions in the back of the book,” said Oren Etzioni, a former
University of Washington professor who oversees the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
“To make real progress in A. I., we have to overcome the big challenges in the area of common sense,”
said Mr. Allen, who founded the software giant Microsoft in the 1970s with Bill Gates.
In the mid-1980s, Doug Lenat, a former Stanford University professor, with backing from the government
and several of the country’s largest tech companies, started a project called Cyc.
He and his team of researchers worked to codify all the simple truths
that we learn as children, from “you can’t be in two places at the same time” to “when drinking from a cup, hold the open end up