A couple of replies rolled into one post:
Talli:
So as you're working out your use cases, it might be nice to
work one out that somehow defines how OpenCyc would benefit
a CRM system. Or actually to write a use case for a CRM system
would be great too. A $6.5 billion dollar industry could always
use an open source solution
Improving the CRM capabilities of OpenACS is definitely one
of the uses of OpenCyc that I see and I have been discussing
this off-line with a couple of people. One simple use is
auto-classification of trouble tickets with a business rules
engine for routing. This would require training the system by
describing a vocabulary, but there are tools in OpenCyc to do
that. The rules are a separate issue, though. As always, in the
OpenACS context, is how to create a framework for
customization with the correct level of integration with all of the
existing modules in the system that could take advantage of
such capabilities.
Roger:
Here is another article about Cyc and its descendant
OpenCyc. This article places its creator somewhere other than
the top of the AI field. In particular, it questions the methodology
of his approach.
I am aware of the criticisms of Lenat's work and approach,
and, frankly, I don't know that they apply here because I am not
interested in a general solution to the AI problem, which as I see
it, can be thought of as how to apply "what I know" to situations
that don't fit "what I already know." There is a general learning
problem which may have to do with a combination of crystalline
intelligence (which is based on experience) and fluid intelligence
(which is a set of rules that help you apply crystalline intelligence
in unfamiliar contexts). I am a big fan of what I call "artificial
artificial intelligence." I don't really care if it's "true" AI -- what I
want is something that behaves intelligently, which in this case
means that it "knows" when it "doesn't know what it doesn't
know" and organizes things the best it can so that a person can
make the decision.
Michael:
I was originally thinking about relationships between content
items only, but you could do it with relationships to categories or
keywords as well. How much would you have to change in the
content repository data model in order to do this?
I have no clue, which is why I hope that someone with a
deeper technical understanding of the OpenACS data model will
jump in here and elucidate the magnitude of effort involved in
getting something like this started. I know that this is something I
want to do for my project, I just want to make entirely sure that I
am not doing something that won't benefit the community at
large.
