The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
Cyc
A large knowledge-based system.
Cyc is a very large, multi-contextual knowledge base and
inference engine, the development of which started at the
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
in Austin, Texas during the early 1980s.
Over the past eleven years the members of the Cyc team, lead
by Doug Lenat, have added to the knowledge base a huge
amount of fundamental human knowledge: facts, rules of
thumb, and heuristics for reasoning about the objects and
events of modern everyday life.
Cyc is an attempt to do symbolic AI on a massive scale. It
is not based on numerical methods such as statistical
probabilities, nor is it based on neural networks or fuzzy
logic. All of the knowledge in Cyc is represented
declaratively in the form of logical assertions. Cyc
presently contains approximately 400,000 significant
assertions, which include simple statements of fact, rules
about what conclusions to draw if certain statements of fact
are satisfied, and rules about how to reason with certain
types of facts and rules. The inference engine derives new
conclusions using deductive reasoning.
To date, Cyc has made possible ground-breaking pilot
applications in the areas of heterogeneous database browsing
and integration, captioned image retrieval, and natural
language processing.
In January of 1995, a new independent company named Cycorp was
created to continue the Cyc project. Cycorp is still in
Austin, Texas. The president of Cycorp is Doug Lenat.
The development of Cyc has been supported by several
organisations, including Apple, Bellcore, DEC, DoD,
Interval, Kodak, and Microsoft.
(http://cyc.com/).
Unofficial FAQ (http://robotwisdom.com/ai/cycfaq.html).
(1999-09-07)