<div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto"><br>Dear colleagues,<br><br>I am very sorry to share with you the sad news that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat" target="_blank">Douglas B. Lena</a>t, one of the pioneers in AI and KR, founder of the Cyc project and Cycorp, passed away last Thursday (August 31, 2023) in Austin, Texas.<br></div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><br></div></div></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto"><div><i>How many people have in their lives a 2-10% chance of dramatically affecting the way the world works? When one of those chances comes along, you should take it. --- Douglas B. Lenat [1]</i></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Dr. Lenat was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University and Stanford University. He was awarded the biennial IJCAI Computers and Thought Award. He was the first Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Cognitive Science Society. He was the only person to have served on the scientific advisory boards of both Microsoft and Apple.</div><div dir="auto"><i><br></i></div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto">Here are some excerpts from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/technology/douglas-lenat-dead.html%20." target="_blank">the recent New York Times article</a>:</div></div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><br></div></div></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><div><div><div><i>At the University of Pennsylvania, he completed three degrees in four years — bachelor’s degrees in math and physics and a master’s in applied mathematics — before moving to the West Coast for his doctorate. He enrolled at Stanford to study artificial intelligence. His thesis committee included three of the researchers who had founded the field in the late 1950s.</i></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><i><br></i></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><i>In the late 1970s, as a professor of computer science at Stanford University, Dr. Lenat developed an A.I. system he called <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/eurisko" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">Eurisko</a> — a Greek word meaning “I discover.” It was designed to automate the discovery of new scientific concepts, methods and laws by analyzing data. Running across dozens of computers, Eurisko could discover possibilities that Dr. Lenat — and other humans — had not. But it needed help from human judgment. Machines could not be truly intelligent, he realized, unless they, too, had common sense.</i></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><i><br></i></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><i>The experience inspired a new project that would consume him for the next four decades. The project was called Cyc. He set out to define the fundamental but largely unspoken laws that outline how the world works, including everything from “you can’t be in two places at the same time” to “when drinking a cup of coffee, you hold the open end up.” He knew it could take decades — perhaps centuries — to complete the project. But he was determined to try. </i><i>He and his collaborators wound up spending more than 2,000 human years on the project, writing more than 25 million rules.</i></div></div></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><div><div><div><br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><div><div><div><i>In the fall, as ChatGPT captured the public imagination, Dr. Lenat and the cognitive scientist Gary Marcus began a new paper meant to show the new generation of researchers what they could learn from his nearly 40 years of work on Cyc. </i><i> <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.04445.pdf" style="font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-variant-alternates:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-kerning:inherit;font-feature-settings:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">A shortened version</a> was published a month before he died. “He took on the project that no one else had the guts to take on,” <a href="https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/doug-lenat-1950-2023" target="_blank">Dr. Marcus said</a>. “He never completely succeeded. But he showed us at least part of the way.”</i></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto">The recent articles [2,3,4] by Dr. Lenat describe the role of CyC in KR and AI, with historical remarks and future possibilities.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">With our deepest condolences to Dr. Lenat's family, colleagues, and friends.<div><br></div><div>Kind regards,</div></div></div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div>Esra</div><div dir="auto"><br></div>[1] Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere .<br></div></div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto">[2] Knowledge graphs: Introduction, history, and perspectives. Vinay K. Chaudhri, Chaitanya Baru, Naren Chittar, Xin Luna Dong, Michael Genesereth, James Hendler, Aditya Kalyanpur, Douglas B. Lenat, Juan Sequeda, Denny Vrandečić, Kuansan Wang. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aaai.12033" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1002/aaai.12033</a></div><div dir="auto">[3] Creating a 30-Million-Rule System: MCC and Cycorp. Douglas B. Lenat. <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9713910" target="_blank">https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9713910</a> <br></div>[4] Getting from Generative AI to Trustworthy AI: What LLMs might learn from Cyc. Doug Lenat, Gary Marcus. <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04445" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04445</a></div></div>
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