Douglas Lenat: Cyc and the Quest to Solve Common Sense Reasoning in AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #221
Why Hacker News recommends it
Pointed to as the long-form interview for understanding Lenat's work, especially after his death.
What it is
Lex Fridman interviews Douglas Lenat, founder of Cyc, a decades-long project to encode common-sense knowledge and reasoning for AI. They discuss symbolic AI and how it may complement neural networks.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2021 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends roeles · 2021-11 · on “Love seems like a high priority”
I thought that Douglas Lenat's remarks (at Lex Fridman's podcast) about this were really insightful[1]. [1] [this video]
Recommends mindcrime · 2023-09 · on “Doug Lenat has died”
If anybody wants to hear more about Doug's work and ideas, here is a (fairly long) interview with Doug by Lex Fridman, from last year. [this video]
Recommends HarHarVeryFunny · 2023-09 · on “Remembering Doug Lenat (1950–2023) and His Quest to Capture the World with Logic”
There's an interesting (& long!) recent Lex Fridman interview with Doug Lenat here: [this video] Lenat thought CYC and neural nets could be complementary, with neural nets providing right brain/fast thinking capability, and CYC left brain/slow (analytic/reflective) thinking capability. It's odd to see Lenat discuss CYC the way he does - as if 40 years on everything was still going well despite it having dropped off the public radar twenty years ago.
Cites CodeGlitch · 2021-09 · on “Deep Learning's Diminishing Returns”
I do wonder if we'll see the rise of symbolic AI to give deep learning a sense of common sense? I've been thinking a lot about this interview on Cyc: [this video]
Cites HarHarVeryFunny · 2023-09 · on “Remembering Doug Lenat (1950–2023) and His Quest to Capture the World with Logic”
I'll admit it was news to me that Cycorp is still around! There's an interesting thread here that provides some insight from former/current employees into what they are actually doing nowadays. [LINK] There's also a lengthy Lex Fridman interview with Doug Lenat, from just a year ago, here: [this video] It seems as if the "common sense expert system" foundation of CYC (the mostly unstated common knowledge behind all human communication) was basically completed, but what has failed to materialize is any higher level comprehensive knowledge base and reasoning system (i.e some form of AGI) based on top of this. It's not clear from the outside whether anyone working at Cycorp still really believes the