Vulcan Project aims to build 'Digital Aristotle'..... By Luke Timmerman. The Seattle Times. "[Paul] Allen's private investment company, Vulcan, is announcing today that it is willing to bankroll three competing research teams from around the world for what it calls 'Project Halo,' a quest over the next 30 months to create a computerized tutor that's smart enough to pass college-level Advanced Placement (AP) tests in chemistry, biology and physics. Vulcan is trying to avoid being linked with forays into artificial intelligence -- colossally hyped flops since the 1980s that crumbled under sci-fi dreams of mimicking human motivation or emotion. This effort, they say, is more about 'knowledge representation and reasoning,' synthesizing existing information to produce not just a yes/no answer but a lucid explanation ... This is not going to be a sentient computer or have self-awareness or emotion or anything like that,' [Noah] Friedland said. 'We're going to have a hard-enough time with common-sense issues. But this is going to reason about science and be used as a tool for learning.'"
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:13 AM
