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Project News for OpenCyc

  • Cyc Training - Spring 2009

    ======== Course Announcement =========

    What: Cyc 101 - Intro to Cyc
    When: May 11-13, 2009 (3 days)
    Where: Cycorp headquarters in Austin, Texas
    Total Cost (including lunches): $1,900*

    This course will familiarize you with Cyc's powerful knowledge representations and tools and will provide ample opportunity to use those tools to represent semantic information in Cyc.

    Cyc 101 is a three-day workshop, balancing focused lectures with hands-on practice to reinforce the concepts and techniques being presented. The course aims to have you spend as much time as possible interacting with Cyc. Upon completing the class, you should feel comfortable navigating Cyc's huge knowledge base (KB) and have a strong basic understanding of how to find and make use of relevant KB content. You will also learn how to extend Cyc's KB by entering simple facts and rules using the Cyc KB browser interface.

    Even if you have read all of our online documentation, you will still be able to derive the following benefits from attending this class:

    * Hands-on, guided practice under the watchful eye of experienced Cyc developers;
    * A deeper understanding of the advantages and pitfalls of certain representational choices or design decisions. The intent behind such decisions is not always apparent in the online material, and sometimes is best conveyed through anecdotal examples and live interactions;
    * Answers to specific questions you may have about your envisioned use(s) of Cyc and new ideas of how Cyc might benefit your organization;
    * An opportunity to better understanding of Cycorp, the Cyc Foundation, and the ResearchCyc community and you each of these can support (and benefit from) your ongoing use of Cyc.


    ======== Course Announcement =========

    What: Advanced Cyc Topics
    When: May 14-15, 2009 (2 days)
    Where: Cycorp headquarters in Austin, Texas
    Total Cost (including lunches): $1,200*

    his course will cover advanced topics in knowledge representation, ontology development, efficient machine reasoning, and interfacing to external data and applications. The content will be adapted to the needs of the course participants, so please contact us for further details.

    More information on the course and how to register can be found at:http://cyc.com/cyc/technology/training/register

    If you have any questions, please email cyc101@....

    We look forward to seeing you in class!
    ____________________
    *Special rates available to full-time students, faculty, and federal government employees, as well as group discounts.
    Please email cyc101@... with any questions.

    2009-01-09 15:42:41 PST by larrycyc

  • We'll be right back ...

    We're working on a new release of OpenCyc with even more content, greater platform portability, better performance, and improved reliability. Sorry we don't have a release available at the moment, but keep your eyes on this space for news of the new release. In the meanwhile, you can still access OpenCyc content via our semantic web endpoints (at sw.opencyc.org) and web services (at ws.opencyc.org). Thanks for your understanding and patience.

    2009-01-09 13:29:51 PST by larrycyc

  • Cycorp is pleased to announce the Cyc ATP Challenges at CASC

    <html>

    <head>
    <title>
    Cyc ATP Challenges at CASC
    </title>
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.cyc.com/favicon.ico";>

    </head>
    <body>

    <big>
    Cycorp is pleased to announce the Cyc ATP Challenges at CASC!
    </big>

    <h2>Background</h2>

    <p>

    The

    <a href="http://www.cyc.com">Cyc</a>

    knowledge base comprises hundreds of thousands of
    concepts, interrelated through millions of formal
    assertions representing a broad scope of common-sense
    knowledge. As such, Cyc provides a foundation for semantically-aware
    solutions in a wide range of domains.

    </p><p>

    <a href="http://www.opencyc.org">OpenCyc</a>

    is an open source ontology, derived from the full Cyc
    knowledge base, that contains virtually all of the Cyc concepts but
    only a subset of the assertions about each concept.

    </p><p>

    Beginning with

    <a href="http://www.cs.miami.edu/~tptp/CASC/J4/">CASC-J4</a>,

    the CASC competition will include problems
    derived from OpenCyc knowledge base content and answerable queries
    over that content relying on inference chains of interest to the
    domain of common-sense reasoning.


    </p><p>

    A detailed description of the problem set can be found
    <a href="http://www.opencyc.org/doc/tptp_challenge_problem_set">here</a>
    under the section
    <a href="http://www.opencyc.org/doc/tptp_challenge_problem_set#scaling";>
    "The Scaling Challenge Problem Set"</a>.

    </p><p>
    The problems relevant to the Cyc ATP Challenges constitute the CYC
    category under the new
    <a href="http://www.cs.miami.edu/~tptp/CASC/J4/Design.html#CompetitionDivisions">LTB division</a>
    of the competition.
    </p>

    <h2>Prizes</h2>

    A cash prize of <strong>100 euros</strong> will be announced and awarded at the end of the
    competition to each winner of two related challenges:

    <h3>(1) CYC Completeness Challenge</h3>

    <p>

    The CYC Completeness Challenge rewards pragmatic completeness over the
    CYC category of the LBT division. The winner will be the prover that
    can successfully solve the most CYC problems during the competition.
    Ties (if any) will be broken based on the median time spent by the prover
    on its answerable problems.

    </p>

    <h3>(2) CYC Efficiency Challenge</h3>

    <p>

    The CYC Efficiency Challenge rewards both processing efficiency and
    pragmatic completeness over the CYC category. For each successfully
    solved CYC problem, a utility metric will be applied to the time taken
    to solve the problem. The total utility for a prover is the sum of
    the utilities for each of the problems it successfully solves.
    The winner will be the prover with the highest total utility over the
    CYC category.

    </p>

    The utility metric to be used is defined as follows
    <sup><a href="#note1">[1]</a></sup>

    <blockquote>
    Utility(t) = (Tb/t)^(1/CB)
    </blockquote>

    where :

    <blockquote><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
    <tr valign="bottom"><td>t </td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>the time taken to solve the problem

    <sup><a href="#note2">[2]</a></sup></td></tr>
    <tr valign="bottom"><td>Tb</td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>a baseline allowed time to solve a problem</td></tr>
    <tr valign="bottom"><td>CB</td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>the Completeness Bonus parameter
    <sup><a href="#note2">[3]</a></sup></td></tr>
    </table></blockquote>

    <p>

    For CASC-J4 the values which will be used are

    <blockquote><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">

    <tr><td>Tb</td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>10 seconds</td></tr>
    <tr><td>CB</td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>5</td></tr>
    </table></blockquote>

    </p><p>

    All times will be rounded to the nearest hundredth of a
    second, and 0.00 will be treated like 0.01 when computing the utility metric.

    </p>

    <!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
    <hr>

    <h3>Notes :</h3>

    <p>

    <strong><a name="note1">[1]</a></strong>

    Here is an overview of some landmark values of the utility metric :

    </p>

    <style type="text/css"> table.utility td { font-size: 8pt; } </style>
    <blockquote><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="utility">
    <tr><th align="right" width="40%">t (sec)</th>
    <th align="center" width="20%"></th>

    <th align="left" width="40%">Utility(t)</th></tr>
    <tr><td colspan="3"><hr></td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 0.01</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">3.981</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 0.02</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">3.466</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 0.05</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">2.885</td></tr>

    <tr><td align="right"> 0.1</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">2.512</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 0.2</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">2.187</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 0.5</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">1.821</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 1</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">1.585</td></tr>

    <tr><td align="right"> 2</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">1.380</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 5</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">1.149</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 10</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">1.000</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 20</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">0.871</td></tr>

    <tr><td align="right"> 50</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">0.725</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 100</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">0.631</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 200</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">0.549</td></tr>
    <tr><td align="right"> 500</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">0.457</td></tr>

    <tr><td align="right"> 1000</td><td align="center">=</td><td align="left">0.398</td></tr>
    </table></blockquote>

    <strong><a name="note2">[2]</a></strong>
    Due to the batch nature of the CYC category, the time taken to solve a
    problem must by necessity be estimated. Assume we have

    <blockquote><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
    <tr><td>TOTAL</td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>the total number of problems in the CYC category</td></tr>
    <tr><td>N </td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>the number of CYC problems solved</td></tr>

    <tr><td>T(0) </td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>the CYC category start time</td></tr>
    <tr><td>T(k) </td><td>&nbsp;=&nbsp;</td><td>the time when solution k is announced</td></tr>
    </table></blockquote>

    The solution time t for problem k will be estimated as

    <blockquote>
    t = (T(k) - T(k-1))*(N/TOTAL)
    </blockquote>

    The solvability ratio (N/TOTAL) attempts to reasonably distrubute the total time
    spent between the N solved problems and the TOTAL-N unsolved problems.

    <p>

    <strong><a name="note3">[3]</a></strong>

    The Completeness Bonus (CB) parametrizes the importance of completeness versus
    efficiency.

    </p><p>

    Note that when CB = 1 there is no benefit at all for additional completeness.
    Utility in this case simplifies to answers / second.

    </p><p>

    Note that as CB approches infinity there is no benefit at all for
    additional efficiency. Utility in this case simplifies to 1.

    </p><p>

    When CB = 5 the metric results in a reasonable tradeoff that rewards efficiency
    while still favoring completeness.

    </p>

    </body>

    </html>

    2008-08-08 11:28:13 PDT by larrycyc

  • OpenCyc now w/links to WordNet

    The latest release of OpenCyc (1.0.2) contains links between thousands of Cyc concepts and the corresponding WordNet synsets.

    2006-10-27 07:54:24 PDT by larrycyc

  • OpenCyc 1.0 Released

    OpenCyc 1.0 is now available and it's bigger and better than ever.
    OpenCyc 1.0 includes the entire Cyc ontology containing hundreds of
    thousands of terms, along with millions of assertions relating the terms
    to each other, forming an upper ontology whose domain is all of human
    consensus reality. The ontology is freely available for research or
    commercial use under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

    In addition, this release includes

    * English strings corresponding to all concept terms, to assist with
    search and display.
    * A compiled version of the Cyc Inference Engine and the Cyc
    Knowledge Base Browser.
    * Documentation and self-paced learning materials to help users
    achieve a basic- to intermediate-level understanding of the issues of
    knowledge representation and application development using Cyc.
    * A specification of CycL, the language in which Cyc (and hence
    OpenCyc) is written.
    * A specification of the Cyc API for application development.

    2006-08-10 11:04:35 PDT by johndcyc